Texas Flee Market?

They’re already breaking up that old gang of theirs?

If it’s true Tim Duncan is thinking of leaving San Antonio and the Spurs are thinking of high-tailing it out of town with him, it’ll have been some brief honeymoon for the NBA champions.

Indeed, Duncan didn’t get so carried away in the celebration that he did anything rash, such as sign an extension. Instead he announced he’d decide next summer, when he becomes a free agent. This has teams with the requisite $7 million in salary-cap room, such as the Chicago Bulls and Orlando Magic, salivating at the thought of landing the man commonly referred to now as “the best player in the game.” It also has San Antonio management a little tense.

When former Spur Will Perdue, returning to the Bulls, threw out some garden-variety speculation about Duncan and Grant Hill--”Tim Duncan is not married to San Antonio by any means, he’s made that very clear. . . . You’ll have an opportunity to put Hill and Duncan on the same team. I find it hard to believe that both would turn down that opportunity”--Coach and General Manager Gregg Popovich and Detroit General Manager Rick Sund called the league, protesting that their players were being tampered with.

Of course, without a new arena of their own, what are the chances Duncan and/or the Spurs will stick around?

That issue, at least, will be resolved in a vote on a bond issue tonight--just before the Spurs open the season.

Or as Doug Beach, chairman of the Tourism Council and spokesman for a group opposing the new arena, notes, “Balloons and championship rings. I think it was purposely planed that way. The polls close at 7 and tipoff is at 8.”

By all accounts, the Spurs will need any edge they can get, because the public is skeptical and the opposition is powerful. San Antonio, also known as “the Honeymoon Capital of Texas,” is a charming place, with its lovely Riverwalk meandering through downtown, lined by hotels and restaurant courtyards--and the proprietors aren’t keen to see the team leave downtown for an arena on the east side.

The citizenry is just getting over the latest boondoggle, that white-elephant-at-birth, the Alamodome, built to attract the NFL. They built it, no one came and now the Spurs, the only tenant, want to split.

Recent polls show the locals warming at last to a new arena, but last week’s 44-36 edge in a University of Texas San Antonio canvass was still a statistical dead heat. Both sides planned a blizzard of TV ads, with the Spurs trotting out choirboy-looking, coming-off-surgery Sean Elliott.

“We won the championship,” says David Robinson, a 7-foot-1 version of Little Lord Fauntleroy, sounding unusually ominous.

“If this city says, ‘We still don’t want you to do that [build an arena, or more precisely, get one while providing 20% of the financing],’ that’s a pretty strong statement.”

Among Spur players, there’s even a rumor that management has told Duncan that if the bond issue crashes, he can choose their new city.

Of course, there also will be the little matter of defending their title--which won’t be made any easier by reporters in 28 league cities traipsing up to Duncan and asking about his impending free agency.

“I’m not worried about the distraction from within,” Popovich says. “I worry about it from without because I think no matter where we go, the media’s going to continually ask about it. I hope they don’t, but in that sense I think it’ll be a distraction for Tim.”

Not that Duncan won’t be up to giving intruders the usual blank look and no comment.

“I don’t think it will affect him because Tim is a pretty laid-back guy,” guard Avery Johnson says.

“I think some reporter in another city may ask him a question about it, he’ll give them a real short, quick Tim Duncan answer and that’ll be done with it. I don’t think it’ll be a distraction, at all.”

Barn Raising and Escaping

Of course, once the Spurs thought the Alamodome would be OK.

That was until they moved into it in 1993. Then-owner Red McCombs thought the sheer size and the excitement would be a plus. Insiders suspect that Red--who would soon sell and ultimately buy the Minnesota Vikings--knew he was on his way out and wasn’t worried about the details in the dome.

There was its vastness. On opening night, McCombs and his wife watched from one of the luxury boxes, located atop the second deck, closer to heaven, it seemed, than the floor.

After that, Red and his wife got courtside seats. And everything else, except for last season’s championship run, went downhill in the dome.

New Spur owner Peter Holt has been casting about for alternatives. Two years ago, he negotiated with the city for a downtown arena built by a sales tax, but it failed to get the required assent by the school board.

Now the Spurs and Bexar County have hit on a, theoretically, painless approach: a soak-the-visitors plan, raising the tax on hotel rooms and rental cars by 1.75%.

The problem, Beach says, is that taxpayers put up 80% of the money, while the Spurs take 90% of the revenues. He isn’t worrying about the threat, implied, whispered or subtly broadcast, that the team will leave town if the proposal is defeated.

“If that’s the way this is being characterized, that’s unfortunate,” Beach says. “If this one doesn’t pass, they can always go back to the table and negotiate a different deal.

“You can see what they’re doing in ‘the field of schemes.’ That’s the handbook for NBA owners who want new arenas. They say they’re going to go. They bring out their star player and say, ‘We can’t sign so-and-so.’ ”

However, if the proposal fails, the Spurs will have a disenchanted Duncan and 10 months to re-enchant him before he can talk to other teams, so Holt may prefer negotiating with the mayors of Las Vegas, New Orleans, Nashville or Anaheim than his hard-nosed local politicos.

“I change every day,” says San Antonio Express-News sports columnist Buck Harvey. “One day I think it’s going to pass because it’s one of those no-pain taxes. But the sentiment against spending public money to finance stadiums is still pretty strong.”

It’s not every NBA opening night that the league stops to note the outcome of a bond issue, but on this one, it will.

Paging Mr. Duncan, Paging Mr. Duncan

Now you see him . . .

There is nothing Duncan can’t do on a basketball floor, and lots of things, such as shooting from the outside and handling the ball, he does better all the time. If he’s a relative shrimp next to Shaquille O’Neal, he does the one thing O’Neal doesn’t--make free throws--which means Duncan is as useful in crunch time as any other, and Shaq is not.

Now you don’t . . .

Duncan is one of the NBA’s marquee young stars, or so they tell him. Not that he enjoys that end of it.

Away from the press, he’s easy-going, unpretentious and has a good sense of humor, but when the cameras roll he’s shy, if not as evasive as his rookie year when he rolled his eyes at the most fawning questions.

“He’s a laid-back cat,” teammate Mario Elie said. “Being from the [Virgin] Islands, I mean, that’s Tim.”

Says Steve Kerr, “He’s not shy, but he’s quiet. . . . He is being hyped [but] I think part of his strength is, he doesn’t believe it. He just plays. He doesn’t get caught up in all of it. I mean, he’s wearing jeans and button-downs to games, boots. He’s not Mr. Three-Piece Italian Suit. He’s who he is. He’s not going to try to be somebody he’s not. There are a lot of guys who come in the league and think, ‘I better start wearing a suit.’ Tim’s like, ‘Hey, forget that.’ ”

Duncan’s favorite movie, he often notes, is “Good Will Hunting,” the story of a young janitor at Harvard who hides the fact he’s a mathematical genius.

“I’m just a taller, slightly less hyperactive version of the [Matt] Damon character in that movie,” Duncan told Sport magazine. “I really liked how he probed people and found out their weaknesses.”

Spur management, loath to displease him, tries to smooth his way through his PR duties. On media day before camp opened, he did stand-ups before camera crews--”Hi, I’m Tim Duncan. Follow the Spurs on KSAT.”--but was excused from interviews. Everyone else--aside from Duncan, the Spurs are the NBA’s most cheerful and quotable team--talked up a storm.

The next day at practice, Duncan took questions, which, of course, soon turned to his free agency.

“I hope that we can put it off until the end of the year and worry about the season, and I’m going to try to play like that,” Duncan said. “I want to worry about the season and not where I’m going to be. . . .

“I love this city more than anything. It’s been great for me. It’s been a great experience. I’d love nothing more than to be back here, but it’s all going to work out at the end of the season. If something works out that’s better somewhere else, that’s where I’m going to be. . . .

“Y’all are going to keep asking every night, so it doesn’t matter. Hopefully, they can refer back to this so I don’t have to keep saying it over and over again.”

Of course, it was Duncan who chose this course, in the sure knowledge it would entail these questions. Because this was the first time they’d been asked, it was perhaps a tad early to be getting put out about it.

“You’ll see Tim in demeanor no different than in the past because that’s who he is,” Popovich predicts. “It’s not a turn-it-on-and-turn-it-off thing.

“Tim Duncan is exactly what you see on the court. He just plays the game. He’s a hell of a competitor. He only cares about winning and it won’t change, whether he has a great game or an average game, whether we’re champions or not. He plays the same way every day, every practice. . . .

“So did Larry Bird. So did Michael Jordan. So did Magic Johnson. That’s why Tim’s the best player in the league now. It’s not just talent. It’s the mental capacity and discipline and all those things and he’s got them all.”

As long as that bond issue passes, you can color Duncan silver and black for life. He’s laid back and likes warm weather. San Antonio is laid back with a mild climate. No one else who’ll be in position to bid for his services will have a Robinson to play alongside, nor are any of his suitors likely to have even a .500 record.

People close to Duncan say he isn’t going anywhere. Marc Scott, his best friend, college teammate and for the last two years, his live-in business manager, just bought a home in the area.

Looks as if Duncan may not simply disappear, Laker fans. Your heroes will just have to find a way through him, and it won’t be easy.