Rodman’s Lounge Act Can’t Continually Play for Laughs

”. . . Some people automatically believe I have a drinking problem. It’s possible.”

--Dennis Rodman, Walk on the Wild Side

*

Letting Dennis be Dennis (cont.): Our hero leaves the team to work on his “non-basketball-related personal problems” and turns up in Las Vegas.

Gee, who’d have thunk it?

Oh, anyone who was paying attention?

That lets out Jerry Buss. He wanted to believe Rodman was a showman, playing this for laughs, although if he had checked, he’d have understood that, three titles or no three titles, the Bulls had precious few laughs.

(One Laker official did ask his Chicago counterpart about Rodman. Replied the Bull official: “I can’t begin to describe it.”

The Bulls’ guy told other staffers if the Lakers signed Rodman, he’d fall over, laughing. It’s not really true there are no laughs, it’s just that you have to wait a few years until another sucker undertakes the Dennis Rodman Experience.)

The Lakers are now clinging to the marital discord story, hoping as soon as Rodman resolves his problems with Carmen Electra, he’ll be back, taking his 15 rebounds.

People always want to believe he has problems like theirs. When he lit out this time, people suspected petty pique at the arrival of high-priced Glen Rice with another power forward, J.R. Reid.

The truth is anything but petty. This “showman” is in a world of hurt, thrashing about for anything-- adulation, women, the dice tumbling on the felt--to keep him going. People are always thinking rationally on his behalf, but desperation has a logic all its own.

His life has been spiraling downward for years, marked, as he, himself, notes, by ever heavier drinking.

As a Detroit Piston in the early ‘90s, he didn’t drink at all. Now . . .

“How do I do it?” he wrote in 1997. “How can a 35-year-old man drink his [butt] off, sleep very little and play in the NBA and still be the best conditioned guy out there? To give you the God’s-honest truth, bro, I don’t even know.”

The answer is, not as well as he did in 1997. He’s hardly the best-conditioned guy out there any more, or even as lucid as he was then.

He needs professional help but hates the thought, high-tailing it back down his drink-it-all, spend-it-all, gamble-it-all path to nowhere.

This isn’t the usual meaningless sports story. The problem isn’t patching Dennis up to keep him going a little longer, but reaching a terrified recluse, hiding in plain sight.

Not that the Lakers are well-suited to the task. Buss parties with Rodman. Last week, when Dennis took off for Vegas, Buss took off for Europe, turning his ward over to Jerry West, who had just come back from two days off himself, probably to escape the craziness.

Buss wanted Rodman because he needed a power forward, thought Dennis was his kind of guy and concluded he had nothing to lose, but he was wrong on at least one count.

His team has a lot to lose, and it won’t be easy to disentangle it from Rodman.

This trip is a graphic demonstration of how dependent the Lakers have already become on him. With him, they’re 9-0. Without him, they just went 1-3, beating only the dazed Timberwolves, who were playing their third game in three nights and still outrebounded them, 51-38.

In Cleveland, Shaquille O’Neal took 19 rebounds while everyone else got 18. In Philadelphia, the 76ers pounded them, 46-34, on the boards. Ever hear the saying, “No rebounds, no rings?” Also, no rebounds, no fastbreaks.

Unfortunately, their new savior is a genius at defending, rebounding, making the camera follow him and rebellion. Rodman isn’t so far out of it he can’t figure out he has reached the limit of what he can get away with--for now.

He has to play in 22 of the remaining 24 games to get his $3 million from Converse, knowing if he can hold it together for just a little while, Buss might sign him long term.

He’ll play great as he always does in these situations. The players, who were upset when they learned he was in Vegas--no matter how badly TNT’s Craig Sager mangled the story--will climb back on the bandwagon.

(This is standard: The Dodgers’ Kevin Brown demolishes a toilet with a bat and Davey Johnson says the toilet had it coming. Of course, no one else poses the ongoing threat to harmony Rodman does, not even Albert Belle.)

If the Lakers forget everything they’ve been through and sign him long term, they might as well change their logo to a picture of Dennis, over Kurt Rambis’ favorite saying these days:

“I’m not going to freak out over this.”

As soon as Rodman feels safe, it’ll start all over, the missed practices, pouts, ejections, etc.

Chicago, Los Angeles, Las Vegas. Wherever you go, there you are.

FACES AND FIGURES

At least, the Lakers are the talk of the league. Former Bull teammate Ron Harper on Rodman: “A cat cannot change its fur. A sheep cannot change into a cow. A lion cannot turn into a zebra. So how can you expect this man to change the way he’s been for a long time?” . . . The Bulls’ Randy Brown: “I don’t think the Lakers will be able to handle it. They really couldn’t handle the pressure of not knowing when he was going to come. He came and gave them this emotional high and now he leaves. They traded Elden [Campbell] and waived Corie [Blount] and now Dennis is gone. It’s going to affect them.” . . . Rex Walters of Miami, which considered signing Dennis: “Rodman coming here would have caused all kinds of turmoil. He’s got his own agenda. He’s only out to win for himself. We don’t need him.” . . . Miami’s Terry Porter: “Imagine if he showed up only a few minutes before a game and then left the team. That wouldn’t have been allowed to happen here.”

Knick Coach Jeff Van Gundy, usually politically adroit, blurted his admiration for the Nets for landing Stephon Marbury--despite the fact they beat out the Knicks’ desperate bid. “They’re brilliant,” Van Gundy said of the Nets. “They’re going to sell out every game. They are geniuses. I mean, think about the personnel they’ve gotten in the last two years. That’s a hell of a trade. Marbury’s a top-five point guard, easy.” Comment: Van Gundy wants out. Nobody’s that dumb.

Rodman, Derrick Coleman and now this overstuffed hot dog? George Steinbrenner, commenting on the firing of John Calipari by dint of the Yankees’ new partnership with the Nets: “The guy is 3-17. Three and 17! With a team that I heard the guy standing up there before the season started, saying, ‘Michael Jordan’s retired. The door’s open for us.’ Opens the door? Jesus, they better be fortunate I’m not involved. That’s all I’m going to tell you.” Somehow, we thought that was what he was going to say. . . . Before the game at Miami, Calipari, obviously reduced to desperate measures, had motivational speaker Tony Robbins talk to his team. Robbins talked about focusing one’s thoughts, illustrating it by breaking a wood plank in two. Seven Nets followed and did the same. Then they shot 36% in a 26-point loss. Then Calipari was fired. Aside from that, it worked OK.

Our Genius (cont.): Cedric Ceballos, who turned down a $6-million multiyear contract in Dallas, signed for one year at $750,000 and then broke both wrists, returned to watch practice and, as a joke, flipped off the arena lights, halting everything. He was fined. . . . Scottie Pippen, taking his anguish about the Rocket offense public: “I’m pretty frustrated. Playing the minutes I’m playing, I’m not involved in the offense. It makes the game not any fun anymore. My next step is to find why this organization wanted me.” Rocket officials noted Pippen led the team in shots. “He shouldn’t discuss that,” Charles Barkley said. “I told him that, and I said the same thing when Hakeem [Olajuwon] said it last year. That just gives the idiots something to talk about. I’m not going to discuss it. That’s something to talk about privately. I talk about my stuff privately.” Sure, Charlie, whatever you say.

Only you: Detroit’s Bison Dele, nee Brian Williams, reluctant to talk after a loss to the Raptors: “We’re modern-day gladiators. I don’t recall anybody ever interviewing losing gladiators.”

Reporter: “That’s because they were dead.”

Dele: “My point exactly.”