THE NBA / MARK HEISLER : Webber-Nelson Relationship Has Been a Scream

Teen rebellion hit the Golden State Warriors last week and the spaghetti hit the fan.

Chris Webber, three months past 20 when the Warriors got him, now wants out, just when they’re on the verge of something big.

Webber’s list of complaints has been long and varied--he didn’t want to play center, he wants to go to a bigger city--but starts with his relationship with Coach Don Nelson.

Nelson is a screamer but has always been close to his players, who revered him. At least that’s how it worked in the old days, which ended when Webber became a Warrior.

Webber is an intelligent young man with a ready smile, an engaging personality and an acute sense of his own importance. His decision to attend Michigan made the Fab Five, but Coach Steve Fisher had to tiptoe around him for their two years together.

Nelson, who can still bellow from his tiptoes, went off on Webber during a game in Charlotte last season. Nelson had done the same for his stars through the years--Chris Mullin, Tim Hardaway, Marques Johnson, Bob Lanier--but Webber couldn’t get over it.

“Listen,” Webber told Mitch Albom of the Detroit Free Press last week, “I’ve had coaches that were absolute jerks. I mean, they screamed at us all the time. But you still have to respect people. You don’t yell at them: ‘Why did we draft you?’ in front of little kids in the stands.

“I talked to (Nelson) about it six or seven times last year. Sometimes we get along fine, but other times. . . . I just don’t know how he’s going to act. I want to be treated like a man.

“Take Glenn Robinson. If I were him, I wouldn’t even play for the Milwaukee Bucks now, after the way they started campaigning against him.”

The Bucks’ “campaign” consisted of disclosing their offer to Robinson. This throwaway line suggests more about Webber’s overindulged sense of pride than anything else.

In a better world, Webber would be told to take solace in his $75-million contract, learn to shoot free throws and shut up until he accomplishes something in this league. But that’s not how it works.

He’s a restricted free agent. He can force the Warriors to trade him by holding out, or by coming back and mooning around. This is a player’s game, and he’s the one great prospect who hasn’t been contractually tied up for years.

Webber’s comments hit the Warriors like a bomb. Nelson said, once again, he would leave before chasing a star player away--but noted that new owner Chris Cohan is backing him.

“As far as I’m concerned, I’m replaceable,” Nelson said. “I’d be happy just to go into the front office and general manage. That’s not what the ownership wants to do.”

Indeed, Warrior insiders say Cohan is bent on keeping Nellie.

Cohan and Webber met a week ago. Webber asked for a new deal with a two-year out that would make him a free agent by the summer of ’96 and assurances that the owner would act as a buffer between player and coach.

Cohan said no. Webber went public. The imp is out of the bottle and it’s going to be hell getting him back in.

MEANWHILE, IN THE CITY OF ANGELS . . .

Yes, there’s a local angle.

One of Webber’s agents, Detroit attorney Fallasha Erwin, invited the Clippers to tender an offer sheet for $132 million over 14 years--with an out clause after two seasons.

The Clippers suspect the invitation stems more from their having the only large salary slot around--Dominique Wilkins’ $3.5 million--than a sincere interest by Webber in playing for them.

The Warriors have the right to match and presumably would. Webber would get his $132 million deal, with the assurance of becoming a free agent in two years.

On the other hand, when you’ve got nothing, you’ve got nothing to lose. That’s where the Clippers are now as they decide their course.

The Lakers, with considerable interest, are longshots or worse.

Their largest slot is the $900,000 they get after James Worthy’s retirement. They can forget a trade. Nelson reportedly shopped Webber around the Eastern Conference but has no intention of sending him to anyone in the West, especially the Pacific Division, specifically the Lakers.

Take it as a compliment, Laker fans.

IT WORKED BETTER WHEN HE HAD RUSSELL

As part of this season’s farewell to Boston Garden, the Celtics are introducing one of their greats at halftime, starting in last week’s opener against the New York Knicks with the greatest Celtic of them all, Red Auerbach.

Proving he’s still Red at 77 and after a heart bypass, Auerbach incited the crowd to get on the officials.

“So far, it’s been a pretty damn good half--if the referees would get off their fannies,” he said. “If I was coaching today, I’d probably be thrown out by now. Let’s hear from you!”

The Celtics, trailing 60-55, lost, 120-97.

BIG GAME JAMES: AN APPRECIATION

This wasn’t how it should have ended for James Worthy.

His skills should have worn away, little by little, allowing him to substitute guile for that blinding speed and stretch his career to age 35, the end of his contract and beyond, like Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, whom he had planned to emulate.

His fondest wish would have been to earn that $12.2 million he will get for this season and next. He would be heartbroken to hear anyone say he’s taking the money and running.

But his wheels burned up in the damn-the-torpedoes ‘80s, in all those knee-torqueing, whirling-dervish spins of his that left defenders with their jaws hanging.

For seven seasons, he never averaged fewer than 19.4 points. He was in the league nine years before his shooting percentage dropped below 53.1%.

His numbers dropped off in the ‘90s, to 10 points and 40% by last season. It wasn’t a coincidence his knees deteriorated after the departures of Abdul-Jabbar and Magic Johnson. He tried to shoulder an insurmountable load and it crushed him.

“He was simply the most unique player I’ve ever coached at that position, maybe even ever seen,” said former Laker coach Pat Riley, now with the Knicks. “He was special. I don’t think there ever was a better player at that position. Four or five years before his knees went out on him, there wasn’t a better player. He just never got that demigod status because we already had two of them there.”

Worthy was perfect for a team that had known ego conflict, because demigod status was the last thing he wanted.

The son of a minister, raised in a North Carolina hamlet, Worthy might as well have been drafted by a team from Sodom or Gomorrah as Los Angeles.

He was a solemn young man who talked of going home and opening a funeral home after he retired. All he wanted to do in the meantime was fit in and win a few titles.

“When you’re young, you don’t know what to say, what to think,” Worthy said. “You just automatically think you’ve got to get out of here. . . . I didn’t think I could keep up with the pace, the traffic. Cultural shock. It was crazy for me. It was like practice, home, McDonald’s and back.”

The funeral home idea faded away so long ago, it embarrasses Worthy when it’s brought up now. He has business interests here, including a firm that makes custom shirts, and plans to stay.

At times like these, everyone is expected to say a few nice words about the departing player, but let’s face it, some of the Lakers were aloof or withdrawn.

Worthy, raised in the Dean Smith Forgive Them For They Know Not What They Do school of press relations, was a low-key interview, or no-key. Outside the cat-and-mouse, however, he was a real person, sincere and caring.

There were others as admirable but no one more likable.

FACES AND FIGURES

Our Derrick Coleman Boor of The Week Award goes to Derrick Coleman, who ignored new Coach Butch Beard’s dress code, boarded the Nets’ charter in sweat clothes, whipped out a checkbook and asked Beard if he could pay his fines for the season. Said New Jersey General Manager Willis Reed: “It disappoints me. If Derrick feels that’s the way he wants to live his life and he wants to be his own individual as opposed to being part of a team, he’ll never be a champion. And I’m saying that not as a general manager but as an ex-player who played on two championship teams and was willing to make sacrifices for his team.”

The Knicks gave fat extensions to Charles Oakley and John Starks but made free agent-to-be Anthony Mason a bare-bones offer, which he refused. Mason was suspected of being the locker room “rat” who gave the “Team Turmoil” story to the New York Daily News last season and was later suspended by Riley for insubordination. “Some things happened last year that made us think twice,” Riley said. “I don’t have to go back and talk about that, but if you’re going to live your life with somebody, you want to make sure you’re right and they’re right.”

The Miami Heat, long criticized for go-slow tactics, traded three starters--Rony Seikaly, Grant Long and Steve Smith--in six days. However, it remains a middle-of-the-pack team and the new center, Kevin Willis, 32, is three years older than Seikaly. Longtime Billy Cunningham watchers think the departing Miami co-owner simply got tired of listening to his star players whine and pulled the plug on them. Coach Kevin Loughery says his players have to “heal all the emotional scars that come when you make major trades. I mean, when you trade a guy like Grant Long--the most respected person on the club and one of the most respected people I’ve ever known--you are going to have players who feel wounded.”

Former Clipper Ron Harper, struggling to learn the Chicago Bulls’ triangle offense, made six shots in his first four games, missed 19 and didn’t play in the fourth quarter of the last two. “You get mad and lose a little faith,” he said. “But I’m here with new teammates and things will turn around.” Harper has plenty of time to learn the offense--five years, the length of his $19.2-million contract.

Everyone is pointing a finger at someone else for that made-for-TV Michael Jordan extravaganza. Larry King and Craig T. Nelson blasted the Chicago media for blasting them. NBA Entertainment, which staged the show, said the Bulls had input. Said Bull marketing vice president Steve Schanwald: “I was very disappointed and I feel the criticism was deserved. We asked for a Larry Bird night, an evening of basketball with entertainment thrown in. What we got was an entertainment evening, something like the Friars’ Club roasts Shecky Greene with some basketball thrown in.”

Our Deer in the Headlights Award goes to Philadelphia 76er center Shawn Bradley. He was booed upon introduction on opening night, scored one basket, had three rebounds, four blocks and 12 fouls in two games and was almost decapitated by a dunking Shaquille O’Neal. Orlando’s Nick Anderson called the Shaq-Shawn matchup “child abuse.”