THE NBA / MARK HEISLER : No Michael, Magic or Bird, so It Must Be the Shoes

Things are tough when we have to surrender the rights to our meal ticket to the baseball columnist, but Michael Jordan has retired/changed uniforms and life continues, more or less.

Here’s how it has gone.

-- The NBA is hanging in there.

With Jordan, Magic Johnson and Larry Bird gone, the league was supposed to have come on hard times. The season has been no artistic coup, but TV ratings haven’t dropped. But they haven’t risen, either.

Professional basketball remains a rising star, institutionally supported against a return to the bush-league days.

Sneaker companies still spend millions to promote basketball players above all other athletes. For the Super Bowl--a football game, after all--five of the seven athletes starring in commercials were NBA players.

In this year’s “Q” ratings, an independent marketing survey that advertisers use to determine “likability,” NBA players finished Nos. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 8 and 9. Respectively, they were Jordan, Shaquille O’Neal, Scottie Pippen, Charles Barkley, Johnson, Phil Jackson and Julius Erving.

Baseball’s Barry Bonds, by comparison, didn’t make the top 100.

NBA teams make almost twice as much from their TV network contracts as baseball teams. In the mid-1980s, baseball teams made almost twice as much as NBA teams.

-- This season stinks.

There are 10 teams on a 50-loss pace.

The playoff races are all but over. In the East, No. 8 New Jersey led No. 9 Charlotte by six games going into the weekend. In the West, No. 8 Denver was 5 1/2 games ahead of the No. 9 Lakers.

-- No one’s scoring any points, either.

The average NBA team is down five points from last season, from 105 to 100. Seven seasons ago, the average was 110.

“Expansion” and “dilution of talent” are usually blamed for any deterioration, but that’s a reach five seasons after the last one.

Sun Coach Paul Westphal has better suspects: the zone defense rules enacted in the early ‘80s to keep the lane open for drivers, and the new breed of control-mad, defense-oriented coaches.

The zone rules make it easy to get the ball to a post player since teams can’t double-team a man who doesn’t have the ball.

After that, everything becomes mechanical--and takes time: Feed the post, the defense double-teams, kick it out, the defense rotates, swing the ball before the defense rotates again.

Indeed, the slowdown looks like a trend, not a fad. The short-term tendency is to copy the champion, but the Bulls are decidedly up-tempo and hard to copy--ask the Mavericks’ Quinn Buckner. This goes deeper and needs to be addressed. Suggestion: Shorten the three-point shot by six inches and let teams play any kind of defense they want.

-- The three-time defending champions are staggering.

Big surprise, huh? The Bulls were like Wile E. Coyote chasing the Roadrunner off a cliff, staying up until he looked down. Reality, that killjoy, caught up with the Bulls after they hit the All-Star break with a 34-13 record and the easiest remaining schedule of the Eastern contenders.

Since, they are 2-6 at home and losing it in general. Pippen lashed out at Bull management and Bull fans. For variety, Jackson blamed 76er management and Bull fans (see below).

-- Pippen shouldn’t be allowed out by himself.

Is there anyone Pippen didn’t rip last week? “On principle” he protested re-signing Toni Kukoc, whose contract has a one-year out. Pippen said he deserved to be the highest-paid Bull, adding it was OK for Horace Grant to get all he could. Apparently the “principle” was keeping money from Kukoc.

Pippen ripped Barkley, who had been sneering at the Bulls’ success story--as events showed, with reason.

Said Pippen: “He only gives superstars like Michael, Magic, Isiah (Thomas) and Larry credit and respect. It’s all a front. . . . He walks around thinking he’s the ambassador of the league, but he’s a phony person. Until he gets a ring, he’s not the ambassador of the league. Until Phoenix wins a championship, I’m considering myself the ambassador.”

He made an obscene gesture to booing Bull fans, claimed they had never gotten on a white player and nominated--surprise--Kukoc, who, he noted, had been “0 for whatever.”

Pippen sort of recanted the next day in the non-apology of the season: “I pretty much apologize to some extent. I feel bad for saying it, but you can’t really take back things you said. But to some extent, I want to take back what I said.”

-- Jackson is showing the strain, too.

Stunned by getting beaten by the Jazz to Jeff Hornacek, he criticized 76er owner Harold Katz--”I don’t know the mind-set of Mr. Katz”--for cutting off talks.

The Bulls’ offer? Unrestricted free agent-to-be Scott Williams. They wouldn’t throw in a No. 1 pick, Utah did and Katz made the deal without giving the Bulls a chance to match.

Nor did Jackson like the booing.

“As many thrills and great games as we’ve given these fans,” he said, “that they should boo us . . . . They have absolutely no loyalty to this team. There’s no excuse for that.”

--Ambassador Barkley isn’t doing so hot, himself.

The last great player from the ‘80s returned at the All-Star break but largely confined himself to standing offshore and lobbing in shells. Of his first 97 shots, 20 were three-point attempts, of which he made five.

Since his return, Barkley has averaged 20 points and seven rebounds. Before he left, he was 24 and 12.

The Suns are 5-6 after the break and dropped to No. 5 in the West.

Barkley might simply be out of shape, but he might be saving himself too. He keeps saying last year’s 62 victories taught the Suns the regular season means nothing. For whatever reason, the Suns have never played with last season’s verve.

“We are not hungry,” Kevin Johnson said. “We don’t want it. We expect teams to lay down. It’s a lack of effort, it’s very disturbing, and at some point it’s really going to get us.”

-- Pat Riley still has a trick or two up his sleeve.

With Jordan gone, the league could use an entertaining team in New York. Instead, the Knicks have been dull as dishwater, and disappointments, besides.

“They say defense wins championships,” Barkley said after watching the Knicks shoot worse than 40% for the third time in four games. “There’s not any defense in the world that can win with an offense like that.” Whipsawed by his last four opponents, despairing of ever seeing one of his players except his seven-foot center make a jumper, Riley ordered the charter to take a right turn near Sacramento and landed in Reno.

He didn’t tell his players, who found out on the runway. Limos whisked them to the casinos where, of course, the losing streak continued.

Back in New York, everyone was wondering where they had gone. “SKIDDING KNICKS GO INTO HIDING,” a Post headline said, “RILEY SMUGGLES TEAM TO RENO.”

The next night, Riley demoted three starters and beat the Kings. As the Sundance Kid said, “Keep thinking, Butch, it’s what you do best.”

All in all, it might not be a banner season, but it’s still NBA basketball. It’s inimitable--er, fantastic.

FACES AND FIGURES

Don’t call us, we’ll call you: NBC passed up last Sunday’s Laker-Celtic game. TNT had Friday’s rematch in Boston on the schedule, but canceled. . . . Can you believe the Timberwolves pulled out of that Ed Pinckney-Mike Brown swap with Boston? By what stretch of anyone’s imagination would that deal make any difference, one way or the other? . . . Pinckney, informed it was in the works, said: “For whom? Damn. They wanted me out of town that bad?” . . . No one to fool with: Referee Steve Javie, who once ejected the Bullets’ mascot, tossed Portland radio announcer Mike Rice for throwing his arms up at a call. Mused Trail Blazer Coach Rick Adelman, whose team is often accused of crying: “No one can say it’s us now. It’s the Portland media.” . . . Then there was the night Javie ejected then-Piston coach Chuck Daly, assistant Dick Versace and center Bill Laimbeer and called a technical on the other assistant, Ron Rothstein. In Detroit, it’s remembered as the game trainer Mike Abdenour was one “T” away from taking over. . . . Paul Westphal, on Pippen’s blast at Barkley: “We’ve already played our two games against Chicago this season and we’re not supposed to play them again in the playoffs. Scottie must have figured out that Charles will retire and Scottie won’t ever (again) have to face him on the court.”

Hold that dynasty (continued): Larry Johnson and Alonzo Mourning are finally set to return, but too late. Assuming 42-40 makes the playoffs, the Hornets have to finish 19-10, and it might take more. The Nos. 5, 6, 7 and 8 teams are the East’s hottest. Going into the weekend, the Cavaliers were 27-10 after a 7-14 start, the Pacers had won 14 of 16, the Nets were 23-15 after a 6-13 start and the Heat had won 15 of 20. . . . Then there’s the Hornet search for a forward. They were talking Danny Manning, thinking about Horace Grant, could have gone after Buck Williams, but might have to settle for Frank Brickowski. “If (Manning) had been traded to Phoenix or Orlando, that would have pretty much closed the door on us,” personnel director Dave Twardzik said. “I don’t think that’s the case with Atlanta.”

Danny Schayes, asked how he was shortly before being traded from Milwaukee to the Lakers: “I don’t get to play, the team stinks, my wife is in Denver and it’s been 20 below most of the winter.” . . . The Cubs, bristling at being ignored in Chicago while Jordan tries out with the White Sox, asked WGN if Bozo the Clown, star of a children’s show, could try out. WGN said no.