League Scrambling Over This Mike Issue

Great moments in marketing, or big guys we’d really like to have had miked up:

NBC President Dick Ebersol: “David, we’ve got a little problem over here with our ratings on those bright young stars of yours. How about bringing Michael back one more time? Tell him we’ll kick in whatever he needs.”

NBA Commissioner David Stern: “He is back.”

Ebersol: “Right. A lot of good he does us, sitting in an owner’s box. No, as a player!”

Stern: “Let me get back to you. . . . Angie, get Michael Jordan. Try his cell phone.”

Thirty seconds pass. Stern checks the Nasdaq on his PC.

Angie: “Commissioner, all I get is a message saying Mr. Jordan’s on the golf course planning the Wizards’ future and can’t be disturbed and we should try David Falk.”

Stern: “Oh boy. I’d rather talk to a Third World dictator. OK, get him for me. . . . David? How’s the wife and kids? How long has it been?”

Falk: “Since ’95 when you had me barred from your presence after our decertification drive. Let me guess, you need something.”

Stern: “Well, now that you mention it, we’re having a little problem in the post-Jordan age and we’d like to defer it for, say, another five years. What would Mike want to play again?”

Falk: “Our price for saving your butt again? After everything you put me, I mean, us, through on the lockout? Let’s say $1 billion. Annually, of course.”

Stern: “I’ll get back to you. (Hangs up.) Yeah, after the lion lies down with the lamb. Angie, get me Dick. . . . Dick? Looks like no go on M.J. Falk wants $1 billion a year and if we say yes, I’m afraid he’ll say I have to dress up as the Phoenix gorilla and deliver his 4% commission personally. You have to come up with something else.”

Ebersol: “OK, let’s think about enhancing our production values. That’s what we do in TV when the product stinks. How about letting our hard-hitting, TV critic-schmoozing sideline reporter, Jim Gray, sit on the benches and interview the players and coaches during the game?”

Stern: “OK, but I’m not sure you’ll have an outlet with an FCC license left in America when it’s over.”

Ebersol: “Just order everyone not to curse.”

Stern: “Good idea. Here’s Dennis Rodman’s number. Call him for me, will you?”

Ebersol: “How about just putting cameras in the dressing rooms and miking the coaches?”

Stern: “OK, but those guys grow fangs during games. They yell at the players and the players tell them what they can do about it. It isn’t pretty.”

Ebersol: “Oh, we won’t use any of that stuff. We’ll have a guy in the truck, making sure nothing unpleasant gets on.”

Stern: “So what else is there?”

Ebersol: “How about when the coaches yell, ‘Get back! Get back! Get back! Oh, nooooooo! Time out!’ Our viewers will eat that up.”

Stern: “You want it, you got it. Good luck, for both our sakes.”

Several days later:

Stern: “Dick, we’ve got a little problem with that mike-the-coaches thing. I had to fine a bunch of them $100,000 to get them to do it and no one’s going for my freedom-of-access-in-the-Internet-age explanation. CNN/SI just took a poll and 93% sided with the coaches.

“When the Rockets were here to play the Knicks, Rudy Tomjanovich almost broke Tom Lasorda’s record for bad words in one sentence and now the other coaches want to canonize him. Larry Bird says if we put cameras in the Pacers’ dressing room, he’ll have his players walk through naked.

“The papers say I’m selling out to NBC, all because Tiger Woods won a bunch of tournaments and ran us over in the ratings for a few weeks, and that after all my happy-talk techno-babble all these years, I don’t have any faith in my own product. They say I may have messed up a time or two but this is the first time I ever made myself look pathetic.

“They say you should just knock off some of your bozo announcers, like Isiah Thomas, who keeps applying for jobs over your air, and hire Charles Barkley and watch everyone fall down laughing. They say your numbers were fine a year ago, even after the lockout, so why is everyone running around now like the sky’s falling?”

Ebersol: “That’s easy for them to say. They didn’t lose the NFL and have sponsors talking rebate.”

Stern: “I’m announcing we’ll try a compromise with boom mikes. Then we’ll phase it out and hope everyone forgets it ever happened. You’ll have to think of something else.”

Days pass.

Ebersol: “David! Listen to this! We’ll dress Ahmad Rashad up in a clown suit and have him host a $1-million quiz show at halftime!”

Stern: “Now you’re talking!”

Ebersol: “I still love this game!”

Together: “The NBA, when we get done with it, it’ll be fan-tastic again!”

FACES AND FIGURES

Kiss him goodbye too: Maurice Taylor has been gone for months, and now the Clippers are learning (once again) that one departure leads to another. Disheartened Derek Anderson, who also wanted to sign before the season, also is on his way out. Last week, Anderson told the Denver Post that the Denver Nuggets are “one of the top teams on my list. I have to be in a situation where I fit. Right now, it’s my choice and I can go where I want. I can’t stay long in this league by making mistakes and I’m going to take this decision like I did when I was going to college.”

Didn’t you used to have to wait until someone asked you to become an ambassador for the league? The Houston Rockets’ self-inflating Steve Francis has shown he really isn’t a jerk, even if he sometimes comes off like one. Francis is represented by Rock Newman, former heavyweight boxing champion Riddick Bowe’s manager, who got Stern to meet with them at the NBA offices. Also there were league executives Russ Granik, Rod Thorn, Howard Ballmer, Rory Sparrow, Satch Sanders, Mike Bantom and Brian McIntyre. “It didn’t go good,” Newman said. “It went great. They loved it when he said he wanted to be an ambassador for the league.” Said Francis: “Not too many players do that, especially with a day off in New York to do this and do that. I guess most guys don’t go over there.” That’s true. Most guys wait until they’re invited.

Detroit coaching search update: The Pistons asked Magic Johnson if he was interested. He said no. Isiah Thomas came in for a celebration, honoring the Bad Boys, but he has gone from owner Bill Davidson’s surrogate son to persona non grata. Asked if he would attend an owner’s reception, Thomas said, “I know when I’m not wanted.” Bill Laimbeer, the Worst Boy, is staging a full-court press for the job but isn’t expected to get it, since neither personnel director Joe Dumars nor star Grant Hill wants to deal with his petulance.

Still has that old touch: Upon retiring, Thomas angered Davidson by leaking to the press a detailed account of the sweetheart deal the owner was giving him to run the team. Now Thomas has the Raptors fuming after noting on NBC he “put this team together,” when only two of his players, Tracy McGrady and Doug Christie, remain. Said Coach Butch Carter: “We started out as an island in Toronto 19 months ago and no one cared about us. We pretty much took over after a scorched-earth policy. Everybody from the old regime tried to destroy everything and they still are today.”

Duel of the (old) titans: Patrick Ewing, dominated by Hakeem Olajuwon in the 1994 finals, outscored him, 16-4, in last week’s meeting, the first for the 37-year-olds in four years because of injuries. Olajuwon missed all nine of his shots. “You have to realize there’s a new generation and you know when it’s your time,” said Olajuwon, who intends to play next season. Apparently, he thinks his time will be up when his contract runs out or when the Rockets pay it off.

Latest Rick Pitino hint he wants out of Boston: Asked about a report he contacted St. John’s Mike Jarvis, he replied, “Maybe down the road I will contact him but right at this point I have not.”