Real Judgment Awaits Albert

Before Marv Albert starts rehabilitating his image and his bank account, he ought to wait and hear what the judge has to say. All day long Friday, there were voices on the radio supporting Albert after it came out that WFAN was talking to him. Those people can’t help him. The next voice that matters here--the only one--is that of Judge Benjamin Kendrick of Arlington, Va., on Oct. 24.

Kendrick must have been more interested than anyone this week to discover Albert was considering a job offer two weeks before his sentencing. You know Kendrick hasn’t forgotten Albert standing there on the courthouse steps after his guilty plea for assaulting a woman, explaining that he’d was doing it only to end this terrible ordeal.

New York sports fans seem to have a lot of sympathy for Marv. So far this judge hasn’t shown even a little bit. You could also see how excited Kendrick was to be in the same courtroom with Albert’s famous big-shot attorney, Roy Black.

If Albert does manage to beat jail time, gets the suspended sentence he expects, plus a fine and community service, then he can go full speed ahead with his rehabilitation process.

But not on his battered reputation. On himself. Without any timetables, or guarantees. Admitting you have a problem isn’t the end of the process. It’s the beginning, if you are sincere about getting better. Albert has been in therapy a couple of weeks. Clearly his problems have gone on for years.

Albert needs to do this genuinely and not for show, and not while Howard Rubenstein, his publicist, decides when he should do Barbara Walters (the clubhouse leader in the Marv sweepstakes), and then Larry King, and maybe even David Letterman.

All of these bookings are being discussed, even as Rubenstein is in the Daily News, voice nearly breaking on the page in front of you, telling how Albert is trying to get help.

This is all so emotional you can barely hear the sound of the cash register at Rubenstein’s office.

Here is a question Marv needs to ask himself: How has Rubenstein’s advice worked out for him so far? He’s the one who told him back in May to hold a news conference and deny everything.

Albert needs to start thinking for himself here. And when the time is right, speak for himself. Until then he should tell everybody around him to shut up, about his therapy and everything else. Albert not only has to sort out his scrambled life here, he has to sort out his real friends. A good way to do this is to take a poll of his own and ask another question:

Which ones here are still making money off me, or still think they can make some down the road?

While telling me all the while how much they care.

If Albert thinks a publicist is more important than a therapist here, then he has no chance to come all the way back or even close. He will end up around the fringes of the career he once had the way Paul “Pee Wee Herman” Reubens did after getting picked up that time in a porno theater in Sarasota, Fla.

There is an honest chance that Albert can work at the Garden again, as early as 1998. But he honestly needs to face his own problems, what he did to that woman, what he did to himself, exactly what his guilty plea meant. He has not yet done this, whatever spin we keep getting on this, from all directions.

He can start as soon as he faces Judge Kendrick, the week after next.

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If the Atlanta Braves think that kicking the ball around against a Jim Leyland team is the way back to the World Series, they’re not even going to get a chance to lose their fourth Series of the ‘90s. Once again, the Braves try to sabotage themselves.

They have done it before, you bet.

You can go back across the decade and find a few moments, sometimes one moment, in big spots that changed everything.

Lonnie Smith not scoring on Terry Pendleton’s double in Game 7 of the Braves-Twins series.

Lenny Dykstra’s home run off Mark Wohlers in Game 5 of the 1993 NLCS.

Finally Jim Leyritz’s home run off Wohlers, Game 4 against the Yankees last October.

On and on.

There are a handful of reasons--but real good ones--why the Braves look like the Buffalo Bills of baseball, even if they did beat the Indians in the World Series of 1995.

The Braves better start catching the ball, or this will be another nightmare October to go with all the others.

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David (Law ‘n Order) Stern accuses the Knicks of trying to circumvent the salary cap with the Chris Dudley deal at a time when the 29 teams in Stern’s league are a combined $208 million over that cap.

If Pat LaFontaine can keep the old helmet on, he is going to go for about 60 goals this season.

Cecil Fielder has to get one swing with the whole season on the line.

Now you say goodbye or sayonara or bon appetit to him, and give the DH job to Mike Stanley, who got three hits his first three times up in Game 5 against the Indians.

Bernie Williams is so many wonderful things as a ballplayer, you don’t know where to start.

But a $10-million ballplayer isn’t one of them, whatever Sammy Sosa and Gary Sheffield are making.

Apparently there is some thinking that if we don’t get another Princess Diana story every other day, the whole world is going to get the bends.

Mets fans will find out in the next few months if the people who own and run this team are all the way into the game.

Sometime Thursday, and I’m not really sure when, the coverage of Dean Smith’s retirement started to be covered like a state funeral.

There are very few places in baseball more fun to watch a game than Jacobs Field in Cleveland.

When does Bob Davie pull the plug on Ron Powlus at Notre Dame?

Now that Notre Dame has lost four in a row and Miami is losing 47-0 to Florida State, maybe we should crank up that Notre Dame-Miami rivalry