Old, Straight-Shooters Go Way of the Dinosaurs

In case you blinked and missed it, the times, they aren’t a-changing in this league anymore. They’ve a-changed.

The revolution was televised, after all, and it’s over, as is the old order of Russell, Wilt, Elgin, the Big O, Mister Clutch, Dr. J, Showtime, the Celtic Mystique, Kareem, Magic, Larry and Michael.

For better and/or worse, it’s a brand new day.

The average age of the NBA’s top 10 scorers is now 25.

The leader, Kobe Bryant, is 22. Four of the top seven (Bryant, No. 3 Vince Carter, No. 6 Stephon Marbury, No. 7 Tracy McGrady) are 23 or younger. Shaquille O’Neal is an elder statesman at 28. Gary Payton, 32, is like their father, although they’re all more stable than he is.

The others are Jerry Stackhouse, (26), Chris Webber (27), Allen Iverson (25) and Antawn Jamison (24).

They’re precocious to say the least and at dizzying heights, personally and professionally. All are worth millions in salary and endorsements. All mess up, as young men must. Coaching them requires a star in his own right, preferably with a long-term contract.

It always was axiomatic anywhere in the pros--NBA, CBA, Europe--that veteran teams dominated. But that’s changing. Last season’s Lakers, with Shaq, Kobe and 10 veteran coat-holders, were the harbinger of something new, young, fresh and, as this season suggests, wobbly.

If you’re shooting 45%, you’re among the league leaders.

Only 11 players were above 50% starting the weekend. Twelve more were above 48%. The top 50 went down to 45.6%. That means the other 298 players are below that.

No, it’s not what you always hear, that today’s kids can’t shoot. They actually shoot better than ever. They just jack it up from the three-point line more than ever, which brings the overall percentage down.

Twenty years ago, the average team attempted two three-pointers a game and made 24.5%.

Now, the average team takes 14 and makes 34.3%.

If you’re averaging 100 points, you’re an offensive powerhouse.

Actually, there’s only one, the Lakers at 101.9.

The league keeps trying to bring the scores back up . . . but the coaches keep trying to lower them. So far, the coaches are winning by a big margin.

Last season, scoring, which had dropped 12 points per team per game in 20 years, went up six, which the league took as a personal triumph. Now it’s back down to 93, a pace that would make this the second lowest since 1958.

This is often interpreted as: “These kids can’t play like the old-timers, etc.”

What it really means is, coaches learned to coach defense. Also, the NBA game has too many gimmicks (see: the zone defense rule that runs the clock down), a problem that, despite years of pleas by men as respected as Larry Brown and Pete Newell, has never been addressed.

If you’re a rookie, you’re even more overmatched than your predecessors were.

After years of selecting ever-younger players, they’ve run out of guys ready to play when they get here. Now it’s like the baseball draft, which is developmental, where once it was like calling prospects up from triple A.

The Nets’ Kenyon Martin now leads the rookie scoring race--at a modest 10.6 points.

Said Net Coach Byron Scott last week, when someone mentioned that stat: “It shows you what kind of [rookie] class is out there. Kenyon is not, in my opinion, doing the other things.”

It only gets worse. There’s speculation that the next draft could feature the first prep player ever to be the No. 1 overall pick, 6-foot-11, 290-pound Eddy Curry of Thornwood High in South Holland, Ill.

Talent still tells in the end, but look out in the interim. As a rookie, McGrady played little and moped around. Now he’s a star--in Orlando, having ditched Toronto, where he had all those problems.

Highlight shows rule.

NBA Commissioner David Stern, the marketing crackerjack, now chides the press for glorifying individuals. The league now promotes teams.

Of course, business is still business. So David’s Web site, https://NBA.com, also runs its own Internet highlight show on Vince, Kobe or whichever young star is on TV that night.

Attendance is still dropping.

The league, which was over 90% of capacity in the ‘90s, is down to the low 80s.

So much for the ‘90s hype when the NBA’s game-of-the-future projections got as far out of hand as it did in the ‘70s, when the Knicks won two titles and Madison Avenue went nuts.

In the ‘90s, the NBA not only had Michael Jordan but a huge building boom.

The average NBA arena opened in the early ‘90s. Only seven teams (New York, Houston, San Antonio, New Jersey, Sacramento, Golden State, Seattle) remain in buildings that went up before 1988.

At first, fans streamed in, regardless of the product. Charlotte drew a capacity 23,000 in its first 10 seasons, the first five to watch Hornet teams that never made the playoffs.

Then the novelty wore off, so now everyone is back to selling basketball.

If you’re in the Eastern Conference, you, uh, aren’t very good.

We’ve seen disparities before. In the ‘80s, the Lakers strolled through the West while the Celtics and 76ers whaled the stuffing out of each other. But it has never been this bad.

Things were tough enough in the East before the losses of Alonzo Mourning, Grant Hill, Keith Van Horn and Derrick Coleman. (Actually, not having DC might have helped the Hornets, but the rest are missed.)

Of the first 85 interconference games, the West went 58-27, a .682 percentage.

Of course, some things never change, like Karl Malone, John Stockton, Donald T. Sterling and Isaiah Rider. Thank heaven for small favors.

FACES AND FIGURES

If he hasn’t had that talk with Stern yet, it’s coming: It was a busy week for Dallas owner Mark Cuban, who delivered the latest in his series of lectures to Phil Jackson about how many superstars it takes to win. Then a computer error spammed thousands around the nation from Cuban’s address book. He was sending out 1,000 e-mails, urging everyone to vote for Mavericks for the All-Star game but, as usual, insisted it wasn’t his fault. Then his offer to buy tickets for Maverick fans who showed up on the road in face paint backfired when the guys he treated in Houston were kicked out for spray-painting the Rocket mascot, Clutch.

Orlando Coach Doc Rivers, suggesting that the Trail Blazers’ problems started with that fourth-quarter lead they blew against the Lakers last spring: “I’m not an expert on the Blazers. I am an expert as far as having played on a team [’94 Knicks] that made it to the finals and didn’t win. The following year, the first month or two months, we stunk. We were 50% or a little bit better. It was really difficult to motivate us. Pat Riley was trying to, and I always felt subconsciously we were all thinking, ‘We’re going to get back to the finals, but we aren’t going to use it up right now.’ I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s what Mike Dunleavy is going through.” . . . Distraught Milwaukee Coach George Karl yanked his big three, Ray Allen, Glenn Robinson and Sam Cassell, in a loss at Atlanta, blasted them a day later for missing a team meeting, then ripped them again for not staying after a practice to shoot like their teammates. “And they’re the ones shooting all the shots,” Karl marveled. “It’s amazing, their irresponsibility of taking the most shots in every game and [complaining] about their shots and they never practice their shooting.” . . . Karl is a favorite of the Buck owner, Sen. Herb Kohl, but this is pushing it: Making $5 million a year, never having won a playoff series in Milwaukee, with a team he complains constantly about, Karl says he wants “Phil Jackson money” when his contract is up after the 2001-2002 season.

Dallas Coach Don Nelson, after Houston’s Steve Francis dunked and then stared at the Mavericks’ bench: “I’m his biggest fan. He’s still young and he needs to grow up and that’s what I told him. He’s such a great player, I told him that after the game that I didn’t want him to be like some of the jerks in this league.” . . . Wild times in Utah: Stockton, on watching Malone move ahead of Wilt Chamberlain into second place on the all-time scoring list: “I think everyone was really touched when it happened. I told him, ‘Good job. Let’s play.’ ”