City Might Not Sleep, but It Can Hype

It has been a rough decade here at the center of the basketball universe.

This must be the center because it says so in the New York papers, which are full of allusions to Madison Square Garden, site of today’s All-Star game, as “the Mecca,” a self-congratulatory device that works well in the five boroughs where the papers circulate.

In real life, the Garden is a Mecca for the suckers who plunked down as much as $1,250 a night ($101,250 a season) to see the old, tired Knicks. That was before Patrick Ewing got hurt, reducing them to hopeless mediocrity and a No. 7 playoff berth, if everything goes right.

But then maybe this was an off-year for Broadway and the Metropolitan Opera too.

New York is still special, where kids like Michael Jordan from hamlets like Wilmington, N.C., come to prove they’re for real, as a look at his face when he’s in the Garden will tell you.

New York actually did rule this league once, but that was long ago. Jordan--and the cable TV explosion that created national teams with national followings--finished that. By the ‘90s, when Pat Riley turned the moribund Knicks into the hottest ticket in town, he was incredulous to find he had an enemy in Commissioner David Stern, a keen judge of marketing values, who had figured out the league’s future lay, not with Riley’s roughnecks but the telegenic Jordan.

Stern started changing the rules to protect the artists from the bruisers, a welcome development for fans who actually liked the game. That was the beginning of the end of Riley and his Knicks in New York.

Now the Knicks must suffer the indignity of a New York All-Star game with no one from New York’s team. At least, they get one last starry night in this century, because it’ll take a genius or a miracle to get them out of their salary-cap mess before 2003.

“Now the whole sport comes to Broadway,” the New York Daily News’ Mike Lupica wrote. “And some of us New York City nationalists just feel this way:

“The NBA All-Star game finally comes back off the road this weekend.”

Flying in the face of such emotion, the league is daring to present next year’s game in--hide your eyes, New Yorkers--Philadelphia.

As anyone here can tell you, if the NBA can make it there, it can make it anywhere.

HE CAME, SAW, CONQUERED AND GOT FIRED, AS USUAL

Does Pat Riley pull back? I mean, why is that question always asked of me?

--Doug Collins, before the season

The Pistons lost 116 games in two seasons before Collins won 100 in his first two. Of course, nine months later, when he went out in a fireball as predictable as it was spectacular, who could remember?

Collins is a bright guy with a boyish, Huck Finn charm but a volatile side he couldn’t hide. Riley always looks cool, but with the transparent Collins, everything showed--fear, ego and insecurity.

“It became increasingly apparent that Doug won games and we lost games,” center Brian Williams said. “If you won a game, you were the greatest. If you lost a game, you were a worthless . . . and I don’t know why you are on our team.”

There was a never-ending crisis atmosphere, as the coach ran around spewing emotion and questioning loyalty. Collins cried after they were swept in the playoffs and after beating his old Bulls team. After routing the Knicks in Allan Houston’s disastrous homecoming, Collins told his players that as far as he was concerned, Houston could “rot in hell.”

Applying the coup de grace himself, Collins got ready to bail last spring, getting the team to cram the three years and $3.5 million on his contract into one year at $3.5 million, the most transparent of ploys.

Joe Dumars got hurt, Grant Hill sagged under the load, losses mounted and so did invective. The resident Mr. Nice Guys, Dumars and Hill, began smuggling out news of their imprisonment until management rang down the curtain, ending everyone’s misery. What took so long?

Like the Bulls, the Pistons, who now have young stars, a lot of salary cap room and tougher hides, were a better team for hiring Collins, and for firing him.

‘PHIRE’ SALE BLAZES IN PHILADAELPHIA

The 76ers had a 6-2 run after shipping out Jerry Stackhouse, their franchise-designate from the 1996 draft, but since, they’re 0-7. If you’re wondering who’s next on the Larry Brown Shuttle, the short answer is, “Who isn’t?”

Allen Iverson, their franchise-designate from the ’97 draft, is again reportedly at odds with Brown and teammates. Said a 76er to the Philadelphia Inquirer: “A lot of us in here are tired of having to sit here and explain the . . . he’s been doing on the court.”

As with Stackhouse, economics seems to lurk behind Brown’s impatience, after Iverson’s agent, David Falk, rebuffed a 76er overture.

“We told him, ‘Hey, Gary Payton is making $85 million, and he’s the best point guard in the game,’ ” a team official told the Inquirer. “Falk responded by saying: ‘$85 million? Hey, that’s a good starting point.’ ”

Falk probably wants Iverson out of there. You can color Allen gone.

Jim Jackson, whom Brown acquired in the ill-fated Keith Van Horn trade, perhaps to give him a matched pair of upcoming free-agent shooting guards with Stackhouse, is showing little, and according to one agent “getting cheaper and cheaper by the hour.”

Clarence Weatherspoon, a free agent, has been buried on the bench and is out of there. Brown is talking about keeping Derrick Coleman at next season’s $13-million salary, rather than pay him $5 million and cut him, but Coleman is vowing privately to leave.

Brown says rookie Tim Thomas is the lone untouchable. That means he probably won’t be traded for a year.

FACES AND FIGURES

As expected, the Nuggets fired General Manager Allan Bristow, architect of this disastrous season. Bill Hanzlik might follow. A Denver TV station was set to start a coach’s show with him but was told by someone from Ascent Entertainment, the corporation that owns the team, to hold off. Bristow lowered the team’s cap--and talent--level to almost nothing, hoping to attract free agents, but it doesn’t look promising. Said the Bulls’ Scottie Pippen: “I’d need all $20 million they’ve got under the salary cap. I’d need Broncos season tickets. Right now they’re not a good team. I’d look to go as a free agent to a team that is a contender.”

Break me off some of that gratuitous violence: Can someone at ESPN tell Stuart Scott to knock off the “gangsta-slapping” references when he narrates highlights? . . . Chutzpah: Great to see the Latrell Sprewell defense team call Gene Orza from the baseball players’ union to describe how the most messed-up game on the American sports scene handles its problems. Orza’s truculent union got Roberto Alomar’s modest five-game suspension for spitting in an umpire’s face suspended until the next spring and helped cancel a World Series, doing irreparable harm to the game that feeds its members. As far as this case goes, Johnnie Cochran has more credibility.

Orlando is shopping Rony Seikaly, fearing he might retire and finish his career in Greece. One scenario has him going to Charlotte with Vlade Divac going to the Clippers and Brent Barry to the Magic. . . . Toronto’s (for the time being) Damon Stoudamire attended all-star weekend as a fan. Said a Toronto newsman: “There is no truth to the rumor he will set up a kiosk and hand out resumes to passing GMs.” Stoudamire says privately he will only consider going to Houston, New York and Portland. . . . Meanwhile, back in Portland, Trail Blazer Coach Mike Dunleavy is hoping. “It has almost reached the point where they [Raptors] can’t afford not to trade him,” he says. However, the Raptors don’t want Kenny Anderson, who has announced he won’t go to Toronto. The Knicks are trying to get into it, offering Chris Mills and Chris Childs for Anderson. . . . Maybe Stoudamire could use a valet: Raptor Coach Darrell Walker, the last prominent holdover from the Isiah Thomas regime, could be fired at any moment. Walker and Stoudamire reportedly still phone Isiah frequently for advice.