Finally, a Break in the Action in NBA’s Shortened Season

The NBA took a break Friday and Saturday, with a total of only five games played on those two days.

It is the slowest period of the 90-day season.

“Basically, this was supposed to be All-Star weekend, and most of the buildings were booked. You can’t play games unless you have a place to play them,” said Matt Winick, the NBA official who was in charge of putting together the 50-game schedule following the lockout.

The Boston Celtics and Washington Wizards are going an entire week between games.

After losing to the Miami Heat last Tuesday night, the Celtics won’t play again until next Tuesday when they start a stretch of four road games in six days: at Sacramento, at Vancouver, at Portland and at Washington.

By the time the Celtics return to the Fleet Center to play Orlando on Feb. 24, it will have been 18 days since their last home game.

“They don’t have a building,” Winick said, referring to the fact that an ice show is occupying the Fleet Center. “If you can’t play at home, you have to play on the road, but most of these teams have no place to play on the road.”

After going a week between games, the Wizards will play 16 games in 24 days--including three sets of playing three games on three consecutive nights.

Five other teams--Cleveland, Toronto, Charlotte, Houston and Sacramento--have four consecutive days off stretching through this weekend, and five more teams will have three consecutive off days.

The exception to the rule is the Denver Nuggets, who are playing back-to-back games Friday and Saturday when practically everyone else is off.

“We’re playing the maximum number of games on this weekend that we can play,” Winick said Friday. “Buildings were heavily booked for other things, and that’s why Philadelphia is playing Friday and Sunday, because that’s where we were supposed to be for the All-Star game.”

No NBA team has as busy a schedule as the Harlem Globetrotters, who play Saturday afternoon at Madison Square Garden, Saturday night at Nassau Coliseum in Long Island, N.Y., and Sunday afternoon at the Meadowlands in New Jersey. That’s three games at three venues in 24 hours.

OUCH: The league office has notified Atlanta Hawks center Dikembe Mutombo to be careful with his elbows after he broke the noses of Cleveland center Vitaly Potapenko and New Jersey center Jayson Williams.

“In both instances, they were totally inadvertent,” NBA vice president for basketball operations Rod Thorn said. “He’s so tall (7-foot-2), his elbows are head high. But he has to be alert to hitting people in the face with elbows. It’s up to him to do something about it.”

Mutombo, the defensive player of the year in 1994-95, 1995-97 and 1997-98, has been criticized in the past for using his elbows.

After Williams went down in a heap from Mutombo’s elbow, the mood between the Nets and Hawks got downright nasty. So much so that Kendall Gill and Steve Smith, who had been jawing at each other and bumping one other during the game, got into a fight on the way to the locker rooms after the game.

“Dikembe’s got some sharp elbows,” Miami Heat center Alonzo Mourning said. “He caught me with a couple in practice at Georgetown, but he never broke anything. He did he break the noses of a couple of out teammates.

“If you’re not used to playing against him, he’ll catch you. He doesn’t do it on purpose, you just can’t stick your face in there. He’s not a dirty player, he’s just a tall player with sharp elbows.”

TOUGH TRIVIA: There are players from 26 foreign countries playing in the NBA this season. If you can name the players from Hungary, Haiti, New Zealand and Russia, you may be spending too much time following the NBA.

The answer is below.

TV RATINGS: NBC posted better-than-average ratings for its opening telecasts of the lockout-delayed season.

The late game of last Sunday doubleheader, Utah’s victory over the Los Angeles Lakers, had a 6.5 overnight rating and a 14 share.

The early games, regional coverage of the Miami Heat’s win over the New York Knicks or the Detroit Pistons’ victory over the Indiana Pacers, had a 5.1 rating and 12 share.

The two-game average was a 5.8 rating and 13 share.

Last season, NBC’s regular-season telecasts averaged a 4.6 rating and 12 share.

THIS WEEK: Tuesday is shaping up as a night of pretty good basketball.

There were four undefeated teams, Philadelphia, Milwaukee, Utah and Seattle, when the weekend began.

By Wednesday, there can be no more than two.

The Bucks will travel to Philadelphia to play the 76ers on Tuesday, and it will be a matchup of unbeatens if the Sixers manage to beat the San Antonio Spurs on Friday night and the Atlanta Hawks on Sunday afternoon.

Another clash of teams with perfect record is possible that night when the Jazz travel to Seattle to play the Sonics. Utah will go into that game 6-0 if it can beat Golden State on Friday night and Sacramento on Monday night, while Seattle can be 5-0 if it beats Denver on Saturday night.

Tuesday night’s schedule also includes Charles Oakley’s return to Madison Square Garden as the Raptors play the Knicks. Also, Luc Longley and Scottie Pippen will run into each other as Phoenix plays Houston.

TRIVIA ANSWER: Kornel David of the Chicago Bulls is the league’s first Hungarian player, Olden Polynice of the Seattle SuperSonics is from New York but was born in Haiti, Sean Marks of Toronto is from New Zealand and Nikita Morgunov, currently on Portland’s injured list, is from Russia.