THE NBA / MARK HEISLER : If Anything, an Insanity Cap Seems to Be in Order

Turn your back on these rascals for three months and look what happens.

Michael Jordan retires.

Charles Barkley says he will in a year.

The aspiring contenders start bidding against themselves to tie their young players up for life.

The Charlotte Hornets sign Larry Johnson to an $84-million contract.

Derrick Coleman sneers at the New Jersey Nets’ $69-million offer.

A source at Nike, which manages Alonzo Mourning, tells the Gaston, N.C., Gazette that when the Hornets ask Zo what it will take to lock him up, he will say $100 million. The Hornets, hard-boiled businessmen that they are, will probably give him $200 million as long as he asks nicely.

If you think the insanity is about to end soon, think again.

The salary cap is currently dead, a special master, arbitrator and a judge having agreed over the NBA’s vehement protest that one-year “outs” in long-term contracts are fair.

Thus a player such as Chris Dudley can turn down a $3-million-a-year offer from the Nets for a Trail Blazer contract that starts at $790,000, which is all Portland can offer under the cap. However, Dudley’s deal makes him a free agent again in a year. Because teams over the salary cap can still pay their own free agents anything, Portland will be free to bump Dudley to $3 million.

Of course, Dudley told the special master he was accepting Portland’s lower offer for lifestyle reasons. As ace lawyer David Stern remarked, look for Dudley to get a huge raise in a year to go with his fir trees.

The collective bargaining agreement expires after this season.

The union says it doesn’t expect a new one until the end of next summer, meaning the new loophole will stay open at least that long.

This also means the union membership, thought to be fat and happy, now has immense leverage. The league has to come to the players and pay them to close the back door.

Meanwhile, a big, new batch of free agents is scheduled to hit the market: Danny Manning, Detlef Schrempf, Dominique Wilkins, Isiah Thomas, Ron Harper and Rickey Pierce, to name the most prominent.

To paraphrase Ross Perot, that great sucking noise you hear is the sound of the college undergraduates heading for the NBA draft.

Having seen the packages given to Chris Webber ($75 million, 15 years), Shawn Bradley ($44 million, eight years) and Anfernee Hardaway ($45 million, 13 years, plus a $20-million loan), players such as Purdue’s Glen Robinson and Cal’s Jason Kidd will be tempted to join Duke’s Grant Hill in the lottery.

Robinson might have crashed the top three last spring as a freshman. Kidd, another sophomore, is considered the best point guard prospect since Magic Johnson. Hill, a senior, is sometimes compared to Julius Erving. With North Carolina’s Eric Montross--and George Washington’s 7-foot-2 Yinka Dare--they would make it a nice lottery, indeed.

In other words, the NBA as we know it is about to be shaken up, which could be a good thing for new have-nots such as the Lakers and Celtics.

Whatever happens, to quote Chicago Bull General Manager Jerry Krause, a man who should know, “It’s going to be an interesting season. That’s for damn sure.”

MEMO TO THE NFL: WATCH CHARLATANS

Or is it Charlotteans?

We’re talking about the people in the Hornets’ front office, on Hive Drive, not far from Billy Graham Parkway, in the heart of the Bible Belt and, apparently, high on life.

The staggering thing about handing Johnson $84 million was that they didn’t have to give him anything.

Johnson was already under contract for four more years at an average of $3.9 million, making him one of the league’s 10 best-paid players, and he wasn’t complaining about it.

“David Stern laughed when I told him about it,” Hornet owner George Shinn said.

“He said, ‘George, you’re going to give him twice the price we charged you for the franchise.’ ”

(This is a mistake the league won’t make twice. In 1981, Dallas entered for $12 million. The four-city class of 1989 and 1990 paid $32.5 million. This year, three groups in Toronto and another in Vancouver competed for the right to pay $125 million.)

Before proving to be a tough customer in a lottery, Shinn had distinguished himself chiefly by urging Hornet officials to acquire every Atlantic Coast Conference player he had ever heard of.

Accordingly, the Hornets drafted J.R. Reid and flirted with trading for Ralph Sampson. Then-General Manager Allan Bristow had to talk fast to keep Shinn from trading the pick that became Johnson to the Lakers for James Worthy.

Having developed, or stumbled over, two young superstars, Shinn trained his boundless enthusiasm in a new direction, finance.

“I just feel in my bones we’re going to win a championship here,” Shinn said. “But I also feel we can’t win it without Larry.

“If we want to win, we’ve got to pay the freight. Some teams have been destroyed because they were afraid to make long-term commitments.

“Quite frankly, I was scared initially, but as long as our fans, who have been so good to us, support us, we can afford to do things other clubs can’t do.”

Translation: We’re like oil sheiks in the ‘70s. We’ve got so much money coming in, we don’t know what to do with it all.

Indeed, the Hornets are the NBA’s answer to baseball’s Toronto Blue Jays and their Coliseum, the basketball SkyDome.

With 23,368 seats, the Coliseum is the league’s largest arena. The Hornets have sold it out for 204 of 209 games, the last 198 in a row, going back to Year 1, when the attractions were Kelly Tripucka and Kurt Rambis.

This gives the Hornets enormous muscle and they are beating everyone in the league over the head with it.

Says Shinn: “Spencer (Stolpen, Hornet president) had a mandate: a new contract for Larry, a new contract for Zo and then signing a free agent.”

The free agent they have in mind is Manning, which will not set them to laughing at the corner of Figueroa and Martin Luther King Drive.

FACES AND FIGURES:

Voice of reason, East Coast division: Knick General Manager Dave Checketts on the new frenzy: “I remember I was feeling that at least three times that, yeah, this is the catastrophe we’ve all been afraid of, this is the end of the world as we know it. I remember thinking that way with Hot Rod Williams and Danny Ferry. But we always figured it out, and we’ll figure this out.”

Voice of reason, Northern California division: King General Manager Jerry Reynolds on the rookies: “The danger isn’t that they get hurt. Insurance takes care of that. The danger is that they get a little injury or they aren’t as good as billed. Then you’ve got a Bo Kimble or Chris Washburn situation except instead of two or three years, now you’re talking about 10 or 15. If Hardaway has a minor knee injury and loses half a step, he becomes merely a good player and Orlando is in trouble. What they are doing is paying for superstars and obviously not all these guys are going to be.”

Voice of reason, Southeast region: Hawk President Stan Kasten on the union’s denunciation of the salary cap: “Yeah, we’ve got to do away with the scourge, that awful salary cap, that is keeping teams from giving salaries bigger than $84 million.”

It’s already been a tough season: Washington’s (Rarely in Service) Pervis Ellison underwent arthroscopic surgery on both knees over the summer and joined the team last week. . . . Mourning sat out the Hornets’ last game because of a sore knee and as a precaution won’t practice until Thursday. Said Bristow: “From being around Zo for a year, I don’t think he likes preseason.”

The 76ers’ Jeff Hornacek, seeking a one-year, $8-million extension, ended his holdout, assured by owner Harold Katz something will be done “soon.” Hornacek says that means by the start of the season or he might leave again. Translation: Please trade me somewhere, anywhere. . . . That’s (305) 577-4328, or call information: Miami’s Manute Bol, fined $25,000 for skipping two exhibitions to attend a conference on the Sudanese famine, said he didn’t notify the team because he didn’t have the phone number. . . . New Dallas Coach Quinn Buckner is installing the Bulls’ triangle offense. In the first four exhibitions, the Mavericks averaged 76 points and shot 36%. . . .

Still Dennis after all these years: Dennis Rodman has skipped two shoot-arounds in San Antonio. After the first, he said his girlfriend was sick, although she attended the game that night. After the second, he said he had slept through his wake-up call. Reportedly, he also told Coach John Lucas he didn’t need shoot-arounds because “I’m not a shooter.” . . . Rodman has bleached his hair blond and says Wesley Snipes copied it from him for “Demolition Man,” not vice versa. Comment: Don’t go joining the Hare Krishnas or anything on us, Worm, we need all the comic relief we can find.

War, famine, pestilence, insufficient compensation for Clyde: Clyde Drexler, who has had his contract redone four times, says he is due for a fifth. The last time he got a one-year, $8-million extension. This time he wants one year for $17 million. Billionaire Trail Blazer owner Paul Allen said no, from his yacht off Tahiti. “It’s an injustice,” Drexler said before slouching through a two-for-11 exhibition against the Cavaliers. “I put the team first for 10 years, but it’s time I stood up for myself.” And we aren’t even to opening night. Is this a great league or what?