UP FOR GRABS : Jordan Is Gone, the Bulls Are Done and Road to the NBA Title Starts With a 50-Game Sprint

The NBA is back.

Are you?

Are you ready to shell out a couple hundred bucks to take the kid to see a game?

Are you ready to live and die with the ups and downs of the regular season?

Or has the lockout left you indifferent, content to catch a few scores and highlights on TV and glance at the standings in the paper?

This season isn’t about the product on the court, which will be substandard for at least a month due to out-of-shape players trying to mesh on thrown-together teams. This season is about the bodies in the seats.

Will the fans show up, offering bouquets in the form of bought tickets? Or will they stay home?

I thought the NBA was done, knocked off the pedestal, kicked to the curb. Then they started staging those free exhibitions and the strangest of phenomena occurred.

People in Toronto practically trampled each other to get into the upper deck of SkyDome to watch the Raptors play the Celtics.

New York fans cheered for Latrell Sprewell, NBA Bad Boy No. 1, as he scored 27 points in the Knicks’ opener.

People arrived at the Sports Arena 50 minutes early and stood in line outside the locked doors Wednesday night, waiting to watch the Clippers play . . . the Clippers in an intrasquad scrimmage.

The anecdotal evidence supports the rather surprising results of a Los Angeles Times Poll in which 76% of respondents who closely followed the NBA said the lockout would have no effect on their decisions to attend, watch or listen to an NBA game. (The nationwide survey of 960 adults conducted last week had a margin of sampling error of plus or minus three percentage points).

The poll also showed the vast majority of people paid little attention to the lockout. By taking their financial squabble past the original start of the season, the owners and players turned their backs on the fans. But the fans had already turned their heads.

Apathy is much worse than anger. At least hate implies an emotional connection. Basketball isn’t as deeply entrenched in this country as baseball. During the most recent baseball strike, when the owners canceled the World Series, many people took it as a personal affront.

But sports fans treated the absence of the NBA without rancor. There wasn’t a loud clamoring for its return.

Now that it’s back, well, might as well watch.

Starting the season in February adds some excitement to what’s usually the blandest month on the sports calendar. And there are only 13 weeks until the good stuff, the playoffs.

There are plenty of good story lines, plenty of reason to anticipate the start of this season. The NBA had become far too predictable over the last decade. Starting in 1990, every season Michael Jordan came to training camp he won an NBA title.

Now that the Bulls have been dismantled, who will take the crown?

The Lakers are a year older, but are they wiser?

Is Indiana, on the cusp for so many years, ready to move up?

The Jazz was good enough to beat any team except the Bulls the past two years. Is it Utah’s time?

Can the Rockets’ living Hall of Fame exhibit of Hakeem Olajuwon, Scottie Pippen and Charles Barkley hold up until June?

Oh yeah, there’s interest in this season. There simply isn’t passion.

For many years I followed the credo of a veteran NBA beat writer who proclaimed: “There is no other league.”

I was with basketball from Day One of the regular season, and riveted at the onset of the playoffs. The main reason I bought a mini-satellite dish two years ago was to get the NBA League Pass package.

Thanks to the lockout, I discovered other uses for the dish, such as watching “The Crocodile Hunter” on Animal Planet. (Have you seen this guy? He wrestles with crocodiles, plays with snakes and snorkels with sharks, all while wearing khaki shorts cut to John Stockton-like length.)

Now there isn’t enough incentive to get me to order up all those regular-season games again. Sorry, but the NBA without Jordan is like Soul Train without Don Cornelius--it just ain’t the same. No way I’m paying to see Sacramento-Golden State. DirecTV is offering a free preview for a week, and that will be plenty for me.

What the NBA really must worry about is what the kids are watching. Listen in to the schoolyard conversations and they’re as likely to be talking about a pro wrestler or a snowboarder as an NBA star. The NBA lost three months of TV time, an eternity for kids with short attention spans.

Then there’s the product.

The last vanguard of the NBA’s old school--that glorious 1984 draft that produced Jordan, Olajuwon and Barkley, among others--is almost gone, and the youngsters have yet to prove worthy of taking over.

No one cares enough to work hard at rebounding anymore, so Dennis Rodman is shopping himself around and the whole league is extending open arms to him.

Alonzo Mourning, who spent most of his last playoff matchup against Chicago wrestling with Rodman, said he could play with him. Shaquille O’Neal, who once called Rodman “a gimmick,” said he could play with him.

So it looks as though we’ll have another year of Rodman’s antics. At least that would serve to further delay his full-time commitment to acting.

In a nutshell, that’s really the best thing you can say about the start of the NBA season: It beats the alternative.

TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Times Poll on the NBA

How closely were you following the NBA lockout?

Not closely: 80%

Don’t know: 2%

Closely: 18%

Based on what you know, who do you think won the lockout?

Owners: 27%

Players: 17%

Both: 2%

Neither: 10%

Don’t know / Not aware:44%

How closely do you follow NBA basketball?

Not closely: 57%

Closley: 40%

Don’t know: 3%

Will the lockout by the NBA players and the owners of the NBA teams cause you not to go to an NBA game or watch or listen to the game, or will it cause you to go to an NBA game or watch or listen to a game , or will it have no effect one way or the other?

No effect; 76%

Don’t know: 1%

Go, watch or listen: 3%

Not go, watch or listen: 20%

How the Poll Was Conducted

The Times Poll contacted 960 adults nationwide by telephone January 27-29. Telephone numbers were chosen from a list of all exchanges in the nation. Random-digit dialing techniques were used so that listed and non-listed numbers could e contacted. The entire sample was weighted slightly to conform with census figures for sex, race, age, education, and region. The margin of sampling error for the entire is plus or minus three percentage points. For certain subgroups the error margin may be somewhat higher. Poll results can also be affected by other factors such as question wording and the order in which questions are presented.

Source: Times Poll

J.A. Adande can be reached at j.a.adande@latimes.com