THE NBA / MARK HEISLER : As Goes the Scoring, So Go the Ratings: Way Down

Then there were Jill and Shane Lamb, a young couple from San Diego who won an XTRA radio contest for an expense-paid trip to Houston for the NBA finals.

After seeing Game 1, they sold their Game 2 tickets.

Maybe they’re not into this new defensive vogue. Purists may find it interesting to see if Pat Riley can win a title with Patrick Ewing, John Starks and 10 guys out of a weight room, but as entertainment, it isn’t Showtime.

TV ratings are sagging. Before the finals started, NBA officials were reminding people that last year’s Michael Jordan-Charles Barkley matchup, which outdrew the World Series for the first time, was one of those lucky accidents and a better comparison would be the ’92 Chicago-Portland final.

Then Game 1 drew the league’s worst rating since the ’90 Detroit-Portland final.

That was the game in which the Houston Rockets and New York Knicks put up 163 points, the fewest in the opener of the finals since the Lakers in 1954. That was the Minneapolis Lakers, who beat the Syracuse Nationals, 79-68, the spring before they put in the shot clock.

Riley, asked about it, bristled.

What did you think? This was like asking the head of the Strategic Air Command if he was in favor of powered flight.

“I’m not going to deal with other people’s perceptions about how we play,” Riley said stonily. “We play the game hard and we play defense, we emphasize that. We play within our strengths and we get the job done that way. I couldn’t give a damn what other people say about our style of play.

“I think what they should do is play five on four, OK? Any time you’re on defense, you keep one guy at the other end of the floor. We call it the Lone Ranger offense, the box and none. . . . That will score more points for you.”

Can he get a witness?

Riley pointed to former New Jersey Coach Chuck Daly, the man who ran the Bad Boys at Detroit. “He started it,” Riley said, “don’t blame me.”

Daly, however, advocates rules changes “to see if we can put the basket back into basketball.

“We’re pretty predictable,” Daly said. “Throw it into the post and see if the defense doubles down, then kick it out and swing it. Either that or the pick-and-roll.”

A lot of respected people--Daly, Larry Brown, Pete Newell, all defensive gurus--want to bring in the three-point line. Some want to throw out the zone prohibition. At the very least, the league should start experimenting in exhibition season.

For the record, the league insists everything is OK.

“A decade ago,” Commissioner David Stern said, “people that loved us said the scoring was too high, the players didn’t play defense, we should raise the basket because the players score too easily and allow the zone. The pendulum just goes back and forth, that’s all. . . .

“The fact that we’re having lower scoring is not anything that at this point is causing panic.”

Concern is the first day the ratings go down. Panic doesn’t set in until the second, so stay tuned.

FAMILY FEUD: C’MON DOWN!

Nice things happen to nice people.

Then there are the Seattle SuperSonics.

They have long been known as the league’s most abrasive front office with a history of wars with the media. Owner Barry Ackerley once tried to deny the Seattle Post-Intelligencer’s Art Thiel a credential and, when forced to capitulate, ordered him seated in a roof-top box called “the bucket.” The Seattle Times’ Steve Kelley got the bucket, too.

Another time, Ackerley threatened to arrest Thiel if he trespassed onto SuperSonic property with the rest of the press covering the draft.

Thiel called the bluff and Ackerley backed down. “But,” Thiel says, “I brought my toothbrush.”

Apparently Ackerley was sawing on General Manager Bob Whitsitt the same way all these years. This spring when jobs opened all over, the NBA’s newly named executive of the year, who is no humble servant himself, decided it was a good time to be on the market.

Whitsitt asked Ackerley to curtail his children’s growing role in the front office or release him.

Predictably, Ackerley sided with his kids and announced that Whitsitt had asked to be released from his contract.

Whitsitt, seeking to fax his own statement, was told he couldn’t use the team’s facilities. Ackerley then emptied Whitsitt’s office of the tools of his trade: telephone, fax machine, TV, VCR.

Whitsitt’s protege, Coach George Karl, is trying to jump ship, too, and is being mentioned as a possibility for every job that’s open, including the Clippers, who are thought to have him No. 1 on their list.

Ackerley, however, needed to keep someone and wanted Karl to take over the basketball operation. Karl declined and refused to attend last week’s pre-draft camp in Chicago. Finally, Ackerley hired Wally Walker, a former SuperSonic player who had become a stock broker and moonlighted as a broadcaster, as a temporary consultant.

Whitsitt reportedly can work for Portland owner Paul Allen for a large salary, but Ackerley is forcing him to earn his $500,000 a year doing nothing on “paid administrative leave.”

Karl is looking around--he’s especially interested in San Antonio with David Robinson--but has three years left on his contract and Ackerley can put him on paid administrative leave too.

No one has actually made it out the door, but they’re the most miserable 63-game winners on earth.

FACES AND FIGURES

The top of the draft is expected to go this way: 1. Milwaukee, Glen Robinson. 2. Dallas, Jason Kidd. 3. Detroit, Grant Hill. . . . How great a guy is Hill? He doesn’t even mind going to Detroit. “I’ll be happy to go anywhere,” he says. “It (getting drafted) has been a dream of mine so long I don’t even want to talk about it. I’m afraid I’ll jinx it. When I sign a contract, then I’ll jump like the Toyota commercial.”. . . . So far, negotiations could be going better: Chicago General Manager Jerry Krause walked up to free agent Horace Grant, still mourning fired assistant coach John Bach, and told him the firing was Phil Jackson’s idea. Grant told him to get away from him. . . . Lest anyone think a week went by without Jackson saying anything bad about the Knicks and Pat Riley, here’s Jackson’s latest outburst: “I’ve seen enough of the Knicks. I can’t stand watching them play. It’s ugly ball. . . . I wasn’t the guy who picked this fight. The first glimmer of this thing was when Pat started saying how it would be nice if Patrick (Ewing) got the same calls as Michael Jordan. Then he started calling me a whiner. But hey, this is the guy who started whining in the first place. He tries to put a spin on everything. He’s the media coach.”. . . . The lonely Croats: The Bulls are so concerned that Toni Kukoc feels out of place and will go back to Europe, they’re thinking of signing countryman Stojko Vrankovic, a bust with the Celtics. Meanwhile the Celtics’ Dino Radja, who had a fine rookie season, is thinking of going home. “It’s like talking to a nice girl on the phone,” Radja says of the NBA. “You like what you hear and you make a date but then you meet in person and see what it really is.”. . . . Jordan, asked if there’s a chance he’ll rejoin the Bulls next season: “There’s always a teeny, weeny possibility, but next year? It’s real teeny and real weeny.”