A Few More Whistles Is the Answer for NBA

While wondering why USA Track & Field doesn’t hold the national championships in Eugene, Ore., every summer, I was thinking:

Give David Stern credit. Even a marketing genius like the NBA commissioner knows his game is no longer fan-tastic. But instead of simply asking Madison Avenue to invent a new slogan--The NBA: It’s Still Not as Slow as Baseball!--he commissioned a distinguished group of coaches, players, former players and owners to fix it. . . .

That shouldn’t be as difficult as it seems. Instead of proposing a lot of new rules, all they need to do is advise NBA referees to enforce the ones they have. . . .

They could start with prohibiting holding, grabbing, clutching, pushing and shoving. . . .

I know what you’re going to say. There would be more whistles. That’s true at first. Eventually, though, players would re-learn a lesson that their junior high coaches surely taught them, that you play defense with your feet. . . .

If any rule needs an overhaul, it’s the one pertaining to illegal defense. It’s like pornography. You know it when you see it, but nobody can explain it. Make it simple. . . .

A concern about the committee is that it includes Pat Riley. Once a more vocal cheerleader for “Showtime” than Paula Abdul was, he now is the leading proponent of full-contact basketball. . . .

The Arizona Accord, the agreement signed less than two months ago by a cross-section of athletic administrators, athletes and media representatives declaring that character counts in sports, already has a couple of poster players in David Robinson and Tim Duncan. . . .

Mike Lupica, on ESPN’s “Sports Reporters,” was right when he said NBC executives should be telling themselves, “Maybe we could have done a little more Tim during the regular season, a little less Shaq and Kobe.”

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Of the petty complaints that some Angel players have about Terry Collins, the most petty is that he never played in the major leagues. . . .

Jim Leyland seems to command respect from teams he manages without having been a major league player. . . .

Same goes for Buck Showalter. . . .

The Dodgers will save a little money this season by not having to pay for Gary Sheffield’s family to attend the All-Star game. . . .

The fans aren’t clamoring to see him. He is 18th among National League outfielders in the most recent tally, behind even Bobby Bonilla. . . .

It seems as if pitching has been identified as the Dodgers’ problem. . . .

I’m not going to tell you that it’s not one. But the pitching for most other teams has been worse. When this week began, the Dodgers’ were sixth in the National League in that category. They were 13th in hitting. . . .

Eric Karros seldom wavers from his glass-is-half-full message. He recently told Long Beach Press-Telegram columnist Doug Krikorian: “Every team in baseball--even the worst ones--win seven, eight, nine games in a row. And our turn will come. We just haven’t put it together yet.” . . .

I guess I have to be the one to remind Karros that last season’s Dodgers never won more than four straight. . . .

Although Karros is no all-star first baseman, I’m not one who believes the Dodgers should trade him. . . .

They aren’t likely to get a more productive player for him, and they certainly aren’t going to get anyone who is better for the community. He recently co-hosted KCET’s pledge drive and is the Dodger representative in CaP Cure, the program to raise awareness and funds for prostate cancer research.

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For newspapers and magazines puzzling over how to attract larger female audiences to their sports coverage, the answer is figure skating. . . .

According to an ESPN Chilton Sports Poll, only the NFL, major league baseball, NBA and college football are more popular in the United States than figure skating. It was first among women, far ahead of No. 2 pro football. . . .

The WNBA was ninth overall (also trailing college basketball, auto racing and boxing but ahead of the NHL, golf, tennis, horse racing and soccer) but only seventh among women. . . .

With Old Trieste out, the Sempra Energy Hollywood Gold Cup on Sunday probably won’t have much impact in deciding a still very much undecided contest for horse of the year. . . .

Jerry Bailey, who should know something about horses of the year as the former jockey for Cigar and Skip Away, is smart when he declines to make a prediction. He’s the regular rider for one candidate, Victory Gallop, and is riding another, Real Quiet, on Sunday at Hollywood Park. . . .

The elimination of Thursday’s heats for the women’s 1,500 meters in Eugene was a break for Regina Jacobs, who now has to run only Saturday’s final. She is eyeing Mary Slaney’s 16-year-old American record and also trying to double in Sunday’s 5,000. . . .

Another race to watch is the men’s 200 on Sunday. It’s considered a duel between Michael Johnson and Maurice Greene, but John Capel, the Florida freshman who has run 19.87 seconds, shouldn’t be counted out. . . .

The other freshman who could surprise is USC’s Angela Williams in today’s 100. . . .

As far as Los Angeles is concerned, the 1984 Olympics are a gift that keeps on giving. . . .

The Amateur Athletic Foundation, endowed with a share of the Games’ surplus, recently awarded $2,698,480 to 15 organizations involved in youth sports, including $2 million to the Exposition Park Intergenerational Community Center. . . .

Nevertheless, I can’t resist repeating boxing scribe Bert Sugar’s description of the IOC bribery scandal: “Synchronized skimming.”

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Randy Harvey can be reached at his e-mail address: randy.harvey@latimes.com.