Will NBA All-Stars Stop the Bickering to Play the Game? : Pro basketball: Answer comes amid squabbles that have tarnished polished image.

Days after a starter on the reigning NBA championship team went into the stands to duke it out with a heckler, about a week and a half after the disgruntled Denver center told the league to go to hell, and about a month after a certain chameleon-haired rebounding specialist was given a technical for staring at a referee, all of which took place as a Chicago-based star routinely fires public volleys at his general manager, the NBA comes together this afternoon to do the strangest thing. Showcase itself.

Laying low until whatever storm this is passes is out of the question, so the 45th All-Star game goes on as scheduled at America West Arena. Shaquille O’Neal. David Robinson. John Stockton. Hakeem Olajuwon. David Stern would like you to believe that all those positives, all the star power gathered here, easily outweigh the negatives that have dogged the first half of the season, but you get the idea he’s concerned too.

“That is not going to detract from the growth of this league as it participates with people like FIBA (the game’s international governing body) to make basketball the No. 1 sport in the world,” the commissioner said Friday. “But that is not to say we won’t be addressing it, as we have addressed every issue that has faced us about the performance of our players on the court and off the court. And that is a subject that is very much going to be discussed with our players’ association.”

For a product elevated to its current stature partly by marketing and imaging, this represents a problem. Young players are taking shots at the people once thought to be their bosses. Veterans lobby the league to remove the salary cap because, after all, players should be able to make whatever the market bears--unless that player is a rookie, and then he should have a cap. Derrick Coleman mocks team rules and isn’t picked as an Eastern Conference reserve, leading to speculation that the coaches bonded together to send him a message.

Players are angry with players. Players are angry with coaches. Coaches are angry with players. Players are angry with the Establishment.

Have a nice weekend!

“Last year the whole media aspect was marketing certain players,” Utah’s Karl Malone said, referring to much of the focus in the 1994 game in Minneapolis going to the new guard. “Now everybody is doing stories on how to go back and correct (the younger players’) problems. We were supposedly too old, so last year during the All-Star break, the marketing strategy was out with the old and in with the new.

“Now the NBA calls me up to do something, and Karl Malone is not too excited to do that because of what they told me last year.”

Which is why Malone told them this year he would not be coming because of a recent foot injury. “They” reportedly responded by gently nudging him with an undisclosed threat, so he reconsidered.

What’s a league to do?

There’s always this: When in doubt, look to Charles Barkley.

“I’m not a host,” he said. “They just happen to be freeloading in my city.”

But he is the local hero, so the festivities began Thursday with a charity roast--dubbed the Chuck Roast--that included about 1,000 people paying $500 each.

Billy Crystal--after noting “This is a large crowd. I’m not used to this. I go to Clippers games”--said Barkley “weighed 46 pounds at birth. When the doctor slapped him, Charles beat the . . . out of him.” Cotton Fitzsimmons, the Suns’ senior executive vice president, chipped in with, “Most of our budget goes to the police department. We’re always getting called to check on the Chuckster.”

Barkley responded in kind.

He thanked Jerry Colangelo, the Suns’ president and chief executive officer, for acquiring him, saying, “Sooner or later I would have lost one of those bar fights in Philadelphia.”

And he had a message for Stern: “You make $7 million a year. You ever hear the word salary cap?”

He was kidding . . . probably. It’s a little tough to tell these days.