THE NBA / MARK HEISLER : Expansion Is Nice, but All Is Not Sugar and Spice

The hits just keep happening.

Toronto and Vancouver are joining the league in 1995. Mexico City is penciled in for 2000 (honest).

Diluting the talent?

Sure, but the Canadians are paying $125 million each, up a mere 385% from the $32.5 million for the last expansion class. For $125 million, David Stern would put a team in Vladivostok or your back yard, provided you had a new arena.

Look at the bright side: There should be someone worse than the Clippers at the end of the century.

Whatever happened to this delightful league where everyone liked everyone except Red Auerbach and Darrell Garretson?

Item: After years of peaceful labor relations, the players are upset at the owners’ idea of a partnership.

They caught the owners hiding luxury suite money, obliging the owners to settle out of court.

They signed away the licensing money for $500,000 a year and saw the league take home $100 million.

Now the players claim they want to scrap the whole deal: the salary cap, the draft, the graduated free agency system.

Stern, gulping in anticipation of his first difficult labor negotiation, actually asked reporters--”plead” was the word he used--not to play up rifts between labor and management. This is getting to be standard procedure with Stern, a plea to soft-pedal whatever issue is at hand, perhaps dating to his difficulty last spring when he tried to interpose himself between Michael Jordan and a press corps asking questions about his gambling.

However softly you say it, the league has its own demands.

It wants the current salary cap loophole closed. If the players fight them on it, the NBA will surely take a strike.

Item: The NBA keeps suing and losing.

For a league run by lawyers, these guys are on a cold roll.

They sued Chicago Bull owner Jerry Reinsdorf to bar him from putting games on the WGN superstation. Reinsdorf won and increased his schedule. The NBA sued again. The case is ongoing.

They sued the Portland Trail Blazers to prevent them from offering Chris Dudley that one-year termination clause that effectively blew up the salary cap. The NBA lost before an arbitrator, a special master and a federal judge.

Item: The owners won’t do what Stern wants, either.

Reinsdorf defied him in the TV case.

The Trail Blazers defied him in the Dudley case.

Charlotte’s George Shinn blew his wage scale out of the water on a lark, signing Larry Johnson, who had three years left on his $20-million contract, to an $84-million extension.

Then there are the local beauties, Minnesota Timberwolves owners Marv Wolfenson and Harvey Ratner, who have been celebrating their All-Star season by threatening to move their five-year-old franchise to Nashville or San Diego if the city doesn’t take over their arena.

Told a new building was a condition of entry, Harv and Marv built the Target Center with their own money but had a little cost overrun--from $50 million to $100 million.

When their financing collapsed, they got a loan from a Japanese bank that now runs the building $7 million in the red annually.

The Timberwolves, of course, are still playing to 95% of capacity despite stunted growth and remain wildly profitable.

“I’m aware of the irony, but it’s accurate,” Stern said.

“Yes, the team is doing very well. Yes, we’re proud to have it here, being well-treated. Yes, we really would like to keep it here. But yes, there is a terrible economic issue for the ownership that put it here.”

This isn’t exactly the backdrop Stern wanted for his midwinter night’s classic, a snowflake logo over the words: “The NBA, See It While It’s Here.”

Stern has taken over this case, personally. He told Harv and Marv to stop teeing the locals off with threats. He reminded the locals they have already lost the North Stars, and the Twins are up for sale.

Can you Minnesotans spell g-h-o-s-t t-o-w-n?

And, of course, he entreated the press to act responsibly.

Stern is doing OK on this front--the story hasn’t yet made “Hard Copy.”

This is what happens when you hit the big time. You make money, you lose paradise.

Tell those Mexico City Caballeros to keep an eye on their contractor and start saving up that $500-million franchise fee.

ELLIOTT FOR HORRY: THE DEAL FROM HELL

There are trades that hurt both teams but few that messed everyone up like the aborted deal of Detroit’s Sean Elliott for Houston’s Robert Horry and Matt Bullard.

Horry and Bullard, accepting their fall from the league’s No. 2 record to No. 26, reported to Detroit, where they learned that Houston doctors had discovered Elliott had a kidney ailment and the Rockets were holding the deal up.

Rocket officials wouldn’t talk on the record, so, inevitably, people gossiped.

Elliott, at home in Tucson, had to call a news conference to dispel rumors that he had AIDS.

Elliott’s ailment is treatable and curable, but the Rockets were in no mood to take a chance. They told the Pistons they’d go ahead if Detroit put up $10 million and its 1997 No. 1 draft choice, should Elliott go down this season or next.

The Rockets, it should be noted, are known for exacting standards in physical examinations. Last season, they nixed a deal for Greg Kite, who returned to Orlando and kept playing for the Magic.

Said Piston Coach Don Chaney, a former Rocket: “It looks like somebody got cold feet.”

The new Rocket owner, Les Alexander, had a news conference to refute the “cheap shots” he said were coming out of Detroit.

Horry and Bullard reported back to Houston.

Horry, asked if he thought he was there to stay, said: “Get back to me on Feb. 24.”

That’s the trading deadline. The Rockets, who started 22-1 and once led San Antonio by eight games, are a half-game up at the All-Star break.

“When San Antonio passes us,” Hakeem Olajuwon said, “maybe that’s going to get us to play the way we were.”

He said when , not if .

FACES AND FIGURES

Shut Up, Grasshopper: New York’s Patrick Ewing, upset at Shaquille O’Neal for bellowing, “Who’s the man?” in a Magic victory over the Knicks at Orlando, outscored him, 32-22, in a Knick victory at New York last week. Said Ewing: “He’s not the man, yet.” . . . O’Neal said he had been yelling to teammate Donald Royal, not Ewing, but stopped short of an apology. “Patrick knows the deal,” Shaq said. “If he plays me one-on-one the whole game, we’d see.” . . . Just saying no: Danny Manning ran out his short list of prospective employers: Orlando (thought to be the favorite), Charlotte, Miami, Phoenix, Lakers, Boston. The rebuilding Lakers are a longshot, but Manning respects the organization and he still loves L.A. “You look at teams like the Lakers, the Celtics and you know they’re going to do something to get back on top. Because that’s just the Lakers and that’s just the Celtics.”

Men of Teal, where are you? The Charlotte Hornets lost eight games in a row, finishing the first half of the season without Alonzo Mourning, Larry Johnson, LeRon Ellis, Scott Burrell and Kenny Gattison, all injured, leaving them with Mike Gminski and free-agent pickup Marty Conlon at center. Said assistant coach (for the moment) Bill Hanzlik: “We never thought we’d see the day when we worried about Gminski getting in foul trouble.” . . . The Hornets are No. 9 in the East, out of the playoffs, at the moment. A ninth-place finish would not send them back to the lottery, however. They flopped draft choices with Seattle in the trade that sent Kendall Gill to the SuperSonics. . . . Correction: A recent item in this column, stating that the Clippers do not have their top pick this spring, was wrong. In fact, they do--and it looks as though it will come in handy.

Randy Pfund, on the suggestion that his Lakers lack pride: “It’s funny how all of a sudden a couple of Pistons who were championship players seem to have lost a level of pride. Since Phoenix has lost Kevin Johnson and Charles Barkley, their pride seems to have gone down considerably.” . . . Utah’s Karl Malone, upset at being overlooked by fans, wasn’t going to the All-Star game until Barkley scratched and he was made a starter. The Mailman was also upset at the home loss to the Lakers--”embarrassing”--and the general state of the Jazz. “With what’s happening now,” he said, “I can see us (playing .500) the rest of my career. For nine years, it’s like we fooled everybody and we fooled ourselves.” . . . The Nuggets’ Rodney Rogers hit three three-pointers in 8.8 seconds during a loss to the Jazz. That projects, over 48 minutes, to 2,880 points. Said Denver’s Issel to Rogers: “That’s how many I’m expecting you to have tomorrow in San Antonio.” He missed by 2,880, going 0 for 5 against the Spurs.

Coach Phil Jackson, with the Bulls trailing by two at Phoenix, ran the same play on which John Paxson hit a three-pointer to win last season’s title. Sun Coach Paul Westphal told his team beforehand: “If they get a three, nobody gets to come back into the locker room.” Johnson grabbed Paxson to keep him out of the play, but Steve Kerr wound up shooting a three-pointer, whereupon KJ almost beheaded him and got a flagrant foul. “He’s not the cleanest player,” said Kerr, a former Sun teammate. “He’s got that face and that reputation as a good guy, but he’s a dirty player.” Said Westphal: “In Kevin’s defense, Kerr did not get a clean three-pointer.” . . . The Indiana Pacers won eight games in a row to reach .500 for the first time under Coach Larry Brown. “They’re going to be good,” former Pacer Chuck Person said. “They’ve got a lot of athletes, guys that play hard every night. Their team is 13 strong. They’re playing harder than all of the Pacer teams I was associated with. They’re trying to defend, which is the sign of a team that’s coming.” . . . Jayson Williams, on the rally that carried the Nets to 22-24: “I’m seeing Coach (Chuck) Daly smiling. Hell, I didn’t even know he had teeth.”