A consumer's guide to the best and worst of sports media and merchandise. Ground rules: If it can be read, played, heard, observed, worn, viewed, dialed or downloaded, it's in play here.

A consumer’s guide to the best and worst of sports media and merchandise. Ground rules: If it can be read, played, heard, observed, worn, viewed, dialed or downloaded, it’s in play here.

By LARRY STEWART

Feb. 24, 2000 12 AM PT

What: “NBA Upsets and Underdogs” videotape

Producers: USA Home Entertainment and NBA Entertainment

Price: $14.95

Going on the assumption that everyone who loves this game also loves upsets and underdogs, the producers put together an entertaining 50-minute videotape about the NBA.

The host is Bill Walton, and appropriately the first story is about Walton leading the 1977 Portland Trail Blazers to an upset victory in the NBA finals over the mighty Philadelphia 76ers, who had Julius Erving, Doug Collins and George McGinnis. Coach Jack Ramsay says of Walton: “I’ve never coached a better player, a better competitor or a better person.”

Moving 22 years ahead, the second story is about Tim Duncan, who as a youngster in the Virgin Islands concentrated on swimming, hoping someday to make it to the Olympics. He didn’t begin playing basketball until he was in the eighth grade.

There is a segment on little guys who made it in the NBA--Avery Johnson, Calvin Murphy, Ernie DiGregorio, Spud Webb and Muggsy Bogues. DiGregorio, a star at Providence, was the NBA assist leader in 1974 with the Buffalo Braves--the Clippers of today--before injuries cut his career short.

A big guy who was a longshot to make it was Scottie Pippen, and his profile is a highlight of the tape. Pippen, his mother, his high school and college coaches, and a resident of Hamburg, Ark., Pippen’s hometown, were interviewed. Pippen couldn’t get a basketball scholarship so he went to Central Arkansas and was the team’s equipment manager before growing six inches by his junior year and finally earning a basketball scholarship. He was the surprise of the 1987 draft, selected by Seattle but traded to Chicago.

Other longshots profiled are Mario Elie, John Starks and the Orlando Magic’s Darrell Armstrong. There is also a segment on Kevin Garnett, who went straight from high school to the NBA, and a segment on the Denver Nuggets’ upset of the Seattle SuperSonics in the first round of the 1994 playoffs.