Fans Love This Game but Don’t Miss It

What if the NBA had a lockout and no one cared?

Because few do, aside from Spike Lee, Samuel L. Jackson and Dyan Cannon, who made those Nike ads pining for the season.

Of course, Spike, Samuel and Dyan were paid to act as if they had nothing else to live for. (They were acting, weren’t they?) For his part, Nike boss Phil Knight is deadly serious, what with his stock stagnating and his new product line going unpromoted. When Nike says “Hurry back. Please,” it means “before we have to write off next year too.”

Then there’s ESPN’s Stuart Scott. In a recent story about Packer injuries, he mused, “Green Bay needs running backs the way SportsCenter needs NBA highlights.” This may explain why it led one show with Karl Malone’s wild ramblings on relocating, which the inimitable Mailman soon retracted.

Aside from the principals, their entourages and corporate partners, the media and the core audience--the 15,000 or so in each NBA city rich enough to afford season tickets--no one seems too upset. Actually, not many seem to have noticed.

Last Saturday, The Times ran two letters to the editor on the lockout and, as Jim Healy used to say, “We don’t make ‘em up, pally.” We don’t run many because we don’t get many.

Nor is this just L.A. being laid-back.

“I guest-hosted a talk show for four hours last week,” says Atlanta-based agent Steve Woods. “Nobody wanted to talk about basketball. Nobody!”

Says Donnie Walsh, Indiana Pacer president: “I don’t know if we’re fortunate or not, but we haven’t really seen a reaction.”

Says the Boston Globe’s Bob Ryan: “You talk to the season-ticket holders, they’re happy to be saving the money. They’re being forcibly prevented from going to games they didn’t want to see.”

In late October, Commissioner David Stern joked, “I’m hoping for a seven-game World Series.” It turned out, he needn’t have worried. The Yankees won in four, baseball left the stage but no one seemed to miss Stern’s league.

In the wake of such apathy, even columnists with 20-inch holes to fill four days a week could hardly work themselves up to indignation, however richly deserved. The San Francisco Chronicle’s Tim Keown suggested there were insufficient villains, noting that in baseball’s landmark ’94 strike, dufus commissioner Bud Selig and whey-faced union boss Don Fehr were on TV nightly, saying infuriating things. Next to them, Stern and Billy Hunter are b-o-r-i-n-g.

“Once again, we turn to the baseball strike for guidance,” wrote Keown. “ . . . Remember how all of us, every columnist, talk-show host and fan said the same thing at the same time? We all said, ‘A pox on both their houses.’ . . .

“The baseball strike--now there was a work stoppage. There was some passion. Poxes flying everywhere, the baseball strike got biblical. Ah, those were the days.”

With luck, and a continuation of last week’s thaw, the NBA will get an agreement, start playing byChristmas and avoid baseball’s fate.

Of course, there’ll be a price to pay. The NBA can look forward to soft attendance, at least in the near term. In places like the Sports Arena, where attendance was already soft, it could disappear altogether.

The league that has long suffered sneers at its meaningless season, just asked the nation to excuse it for a month or so while it worked out some internal distribution-of-riches problems. Fortunately, or ominously, the nation passed the test with flying colors.

OK, WHICH ONE OF YOU IS THE BRIDE?

Proving again the NBA is still happening, whether or not it’s playing, Dennis Rodman married former Baywatch star Carmen Electra in a Las Vegas chapel, after which Rodman’s agent, Dwight Manley, protested Dennis had been “intoxicated to the point that [he] couldn’t speak or stand” and exploited by “leeches,” after which Dennis repudiated Manley’s comments and pledged his love for Carmen.

Manley has, in fact, helped Rodman pull his career together commercially. Of course, they met on the floor of a Vegas casino too.

Talk about providing straight lines for a grateful nation. It may not have been Edward VIII renouncing his throne because he couldn’t live without the woman he loved, but it’ll do on a slow-news week.

Sam Smith, Chicago Tribune: “So where do you suppose Dennis Rodman and Carmen Electra are registered? Has to be one of those strip joints out on Route 14 in the suburbs.”

Angie Wagner, Associated Press: “The bride didn’t wear white, and surprisingly, neither did the groom.”

Of course, as Smith notes, the real story is Rodman’s continued unraveling, personal as well as professional, disguised as lighthearted hard partying and wanton attention-grabbing.

Though Dennis was still effective last season, he’s going downhill as a player at 37. Phil Jackson forgave his antics but with Phil gone and General Manager Jerry Krause happy to weed out Phil’s people, Rodman is a long shot to return to the Bulls.

Jayson Williams says Michael Jordan has been recruiting him, which isn’t a good sign.

If this is the honeymoon, hang on, it’s going to be some marriage.