After Lockout, Plan Is to Lock In Success

Hi ho, hi ho, it’s back to work we go: The NBA has returned to its traditional fall start, even if last season’s, uh, interruption led some to suggest Jan. 1 was better.

However, when there are millionaires to be paid, in uniforms and owners’ boxes, 82 games are a must.

The NBA is rebuilding, not so much because of labor problems-- other leagues have had worse--but because its sun god, whose brilliance outshone their problems, is gone. Scoring dropped all through the ‘90s but who cared as long as Michael Jordan pulled in a big TV audience in the finals?

Last season was the hit Commissioner David Stern thought they had to take. Now, they hope they’re on the way back.

“This is a whole season, without any shadow of stoppage or departure,” Stern says. “We’ve had our stoppage. We’ve had our departure. Now we’re back to being what we are, which, we think, is an extremely exciting game with terrific young stars and every bit as much global and technological potential as any league in the history of the world.”

Don’t you get shivers down your spine when he talks like that?

Even if it works out, it’ll take time. Ten of the 13 openers didn’t sell out, including first-nighters in Staples Center (it was the Clippers, who were just happy with a paid 17,847) and Denver’s new Pepsi Center.

The Miami Heat and New Jersey Nets didn’t even hit 15,000. The next night, the Atlanta Hawks had 2,000 empty seats in the new Philips Arena.

Nevertheless, if Miami, which averaged 89 points last season, can get 128, even in double overtime, the new anti-contact rules must be working. Of course, three Heat starters fouled out and Coach Pat Riley suggested hopefully, “I don’t know if the league wants that very incidental contact called. I hope there’s some clarification.”

Opposing coaches insist Riley coached a manly game, figuring referees would tire of calling fouls and let his players bump to their heart’s delight.

It’s a lot to lay at the feet of the refs, who tend to make a statement, then slide back to the old interpretation. Stern insists that won’t happen, even if that’s not the clarification Riley was looking for.

For all the challenges, the hit may have been worth it. Jordan had to go sometime. Marketing people laud the new bargaining agreement as a model for everyone else.

“The NBA is probably the most stable sports league in the world because of that agreement,” says Dean Bonham of the Denver-based Bonham Group. “It has a degree of cost certainty. It now can boast a firm salary cap and a relatively long period of labor peace. You just don’t get that in sports today. I think the value of every NBA franchise went up 10%-20% the day that was signed.”

Now to see if all those terrific young stars can stay out of trouble long enough to unleash all that global and technological potential. . . .

YOU IN THE SUITES, FAX IN YOUR CHEERS

Not that an early-season game against Vancouver is a fair test, but one thing about the Laker opener in Staples that everyone noticed: It sure was quiet in there.

Staples was designed to be many things, but a bargain for the whole family wasn’t one (thank heaven for the Clippers, the sensibly priced alternative to NBA basketball) and intimate wasn’t another.

The day of the steeply banked, 15,000-seat venues is over, and local fans were mellow enough before they were moved into a hangar built to accommodate 160 luxury suites. After years of waiting, the Laker opener had the electricity of a nap.

“Let’s put it this way,” said Rick Fox, smiling, “the fans are still working out the acoustics.”

“It was very quiet,” Ron Harper said. “I mean, that place was very quiet. You could go to any high school gym and you’d get some loud noise.”

Laker fans rise to the occasion, in the playoffs, anyway, so they’ll find a way, even if it’s along the lines of John Lennon’s famous suggestion when the Beatles played the 1963 Royal Variety Show:

“Will the people in the cheaper seats clap their hands? The rest of you, if you’ll just rattle your jewelry. . . .”

FACES AND FIGURES

Here we go again: Patrick Ewing is mourning the departure of Herb Williams, the one New York Knick his age, and feels so estranged from the team, he’s rehabbing in private. Ewing recently aired complaints about the medical staff that told him it was OK to play before he injured his Achilles’ (“I’m not going to cry over spilled milk, but they told me it wouldn’t tear. Well, guess what, I tore it.”) and has joked more than once about being traded to Miami. Madison Square Garden boss Dave Checketts took him to dinner last week to chill him out. Of course, that became a big headline in the tabloids too. . . .

Fall apart early and avoid the rush: The Toronto Raptors are already acting weird, with Tracy McGrady complaining about playing time--after the opener--and Coach Butch Carter getting more tense by the day. . . . On top of that, rapper Percy (Master P) Miller, who got a publicity-gimmick tryout, blasted the team for cutting him. “I’m bitter,” he said at a news conference. “There was nothing I wouldn’t do for my teammates. I felt that we bonded as brothers. But in the end, nobody stepped up and told the truth.” . . . Replied the Toronto Sun’s Craig Daniels, quoting Jack Nicholson: “The truth? You can’t handle the truth!” . . . Said Charles Oakley, who hung out with Miller during the preseason: “That’s life. Who cares? We weren’t the ones who cut him. He’s going to continue making records and we’re going to continue playing basketball.” . . . Moral of that story: If Ice Cube asks to try out for the Lakers, better ask if he wouldn’t prefer doing the national anthem, instead. . . .

Big stars require big representation. The Charlotte Hornets’ Derrick Coleman has hired the same attorney who’s defending owner George Shinn in a sexual assault case. Dennis Rodman and Carmen Electra, involved in some unpleasantness in Miami Beach, retained the famed Roy Black. . . . Suggesting he hasn’t gotten it and never will, Coleman insists his recent arrest on a DWI charge, after a crash in which teammate Eldridge Recasner was hurt, was blown out of proportion. “People act like nobody ever had an accident before in their life,” he said. “I understand that we as athletes are under a microscope, but we’re human beings just like everyone else.”

The vote for a new arena in San Antonio passed. Tim Duncan said he’d still decide after the season, etc., but the odds that he’ll leave just dropped off the table. . . . The financially strapped Hornets, who’ve lost a string of free agents and potential free agents--Alonzo Mourning, Glen Rice, Vlade Divac, Matt Geiger--declined to extend Eddie Jones last summer. Jones, an upcoming free agent, says he’ll want the maximum, $90 million. “I don’t want to put everything out there right now,” he said, “but I do think I’m a max player. I will say that.” . . . Indiana Pacer Coach Larry Bird, after Al Harrington, two seasons out of high school, scored 29 off the bench in two games: “I thought Al acted like a kid last year. He didn’t take things seriously. He was lost. I think he knew if he continued on the pace he was going, he’d probably be in the CBA in three or four years. But he made the change over the summer. He’s grown up, he’s a man now, and he’s playing great ball for us.” . . .

Add, who cares: Minnesota Viking receiver Randy Moss said he wants to try the NBA but not with the Timberwolves, since, he notes, they don’t have much besides Kevin Garnett. Moss would prefer the Kings, with high school teammate Jason Williams, or the Lakers. . . . The 6-foot-4 Moss was all-state in basketball too. Gee, there aren’t too many of those around. . . . Vancouver Grizzly Coach Brian Hill, on the Laker triangle: “It makes it much harder to play double-team games because of the movement of the offense. The triangle is an offense custom-made for a dominant post player like Shaquille [O’Neal]. I think he’s going to have a break-out year.” . . . A Timberwolves official in Tokyo said players were asked to cover up tattoos at the headquarters hotel. Tattoos are less fashionable there, the official noted, except with members of the Yakuza, a Japanese crime syndicate.