Fracture of Values Leaves Its Mark

Well, what did you expect?

Many of the reporters who are here for this No-Really- We’re-Doing-OK All-Star game, go back to the ‘80s, which now seem groovy and intimate in comparison.

The ‘90s weren’t as much fun, since the press corps multiplied and the coaches got uptight and started closing everything, but they were much more successful.

Now the glow is off the league, but the players and coaches still are hauling money off in wheelbarrows, so what you have is . . . instant baseball!

Once, there was a sense of community, in which NBA players, owners and league officials felt part of the same thing. Now there’s an adversarial relationship between the league and a truculent union.

Now, as in baseball, everything is about turf and they’re all warlords.

Commissioner David Stern may stretch his credibility, extolling the record numbers of credentials issued here and NBA.com-TV and the WNBA and the new developmental league, while his ratings crater.

Nevertheless, Stern is the one trying to reinvoke the community and being rebuffed daily.

Suggesting more concern than he will concede, Stern sometimes calls up reporters, just to ask how they see the league. Saturday in a blatant attempt to give peace a chance, he brought Billy Hunter, the head of the players’ union, with him for his all-star news conference.

(Of course, Stern only will go so far. When Hunter moved toward the middle chair on the podium--Stern’s seat--the commissioner guided him to another one.)

However, as the questions and answers showed, Hunter remains skeptical of Stern’s initiatives.

The players think Stern steamrollered them in the last bargaining contract, even if their average salary will be $4 million next season, and Hunter’s first priority is maintaining his own credibility with his members.

Hunter was there to discuss his players’ image and behavior. Borrowing a phrase from diplomatic circles, Stern said they engaged in a “frank and open discussion.”

This is code for “We yelled some, but at least no one walked out, went home and mobilized troops.”

Actually, Hunter was candidly signaling his suspicions even before he arrived.

“They [NBA] deal with us when they feel as though they have to,” Hunter told the New York Times’ Mike Wise.

“It’s like they really want to act as if we don’t exist, almost as if: ‘Well, let’s pretend they’re not there because we don’t want to do anything to enhance their credibility or leverage they have with the players. Let’s do little things to irk them and keep them off balance.’

“I laugh about it half the time because I know, sooner or later, they have to deal with me. David needs all the help he can get right now from the union. That’s the reality. He knows it and I know it.”

In that case, Stern is in trouble.

Stern has tried for years to come up with something that would discourage teens from entering the draft. This isn’t a humanitarian gesture; he wants a healthy college game so he can piggyback off it again.

Nevertheless, it’s a good idea. One could argue it’s not a problem for the union, since kids leaving early threaten the jobs of current members, but Hunter opposes any restriction, calling it a “freedom of choice” issue.

As far as NCAA bureaucrats are concerned, Stern is head of the Evil Empire, so whatever he’s doing, even trying to let them keep their players, they’re not interested.

Now Stern is offering to fund a program to give underclassmen $20,000 loans to keep them in school, hoping that will get the NCAA to take his calls.

Good luck.

Nowadays, Stern has to threaten to suspend players to get them to this game. He fines them $10,000 if they blow off the interview session, a tradition started by Michael Jordan, but these days, some blithely pay up.

Kobe Bryant, the league’s pride and joy, missed the interview session and was fined $10,000. Shaquille O’Neal, who was in an adjoining ballroom Friday, skipped it too, but since he’s not playing, he probably won’t get docked.

Nor did the game get speeded up this weekend.

Stern had been dropping hints about dropping the incomprehensible zone defense rules. So the competition committee met for five hours and decided to do . . . nothing.

Or as one general manager on the committee, rushing for his dinner reservation, said, “If the ratings are down, don’t put that on the backs of the competition committee.”

So what are reporters to do? How about that old favorite, as sentimental as dropping a quarter in a juke box to hear “Heartbreak Hotel,” asking Karl Malone what he thinks about the modern generation?

“‘Instead of working to look different, just play the game!” said Malone, as always, the proud curmudgeon. “I don’t think Magic [Johnson], I don’t think [Larry] Bird, I don’t think Michael, I don’t think [Bob] Cousy, all them people back then, worked at being different.

“It’s a job now. This got to match. That got to match. This got to look like this. Just wake up, brush your teeth, wash your face, put something on, get ready to go play.

“Hey, seven, eight years ago, I made this comment, probably at an All-Star game, and I was criticized, because I was an old grumpy that time had passed and I wanted some attention. Now I’m having people come back up to me and say, ‘You know what, you were right seven years ago.’

“I think it should be a concern for everybody. I think that the product and the perception that we got out for the public right now, people don’t want it. . . .

“That’s one of the reasons I came here--and I didn’t fight it. I just wanted to come here because I hope that I can leave it a little bit better than what I found it.”

Well, at least it’s a lot bigger than what you found.

The real problem isn’t that players are young, or unruly or wear baggy shorts. It’s that, following so close on the heels of the all-conquering Michael Jordan, they lack stature, which only can be acquired over time.

“There is an amazing amount of talent in the league now,” says Orlando Coach Doc Rivers, who played against Johnson, Bird and Jordan.

“We’re on the verge of having a tremendous league, but it won’t happen until all these talented guys start winning big. People don’t love great individual performances. They love rivalries and they love championships. And those will come back.”

But not right away. In the meantime, this is what they’ve got, instead.

FACES AND FIGURES

Nice knowing you: In a virtual media blitz, Chris Webber seems to be signaling he’ll leave Sacramento (“I’m bored to death there every day”), saying the Maloof brothers, who have prostrated themselves at his feet, are doing so to “cover their backs.” . . . Said Webber to ESPN the Magazine’s Ric Bucher: “Before, I wasn’t ready to go to New York or L.A. Now it’s like I’ve paid my dues and had my quiet time. I’ve played with friends, and I know it hasn’t worked out. That makes me more anxious to prove I can do it. At the same time, I can just hear people saying, ‘Hey, you’re not going to make the same mistake again, are you?’ All I want is for all this to be worth something. Above all, I want to be with a group that I can help, and can help me win a championship. I just don’t know how to go about finding that.” . . .

He isn’t losing it, he just misplaced it: The sight of the young Clippers throwing passes off the backboards for dunks in the fourth quarter of their rout of the Chicago Bulls must have flipped out Coach Tim Floyd. Ejected for bumping a referee, Floyd then dictated a statement to explain his side--which the team refused to issue. “It’s easy to say that the stress is getting to him, but I know Tim Floyd and he’s not losing anything,” General Manager Jerry Krause said. “Sure, the losing is affecting everybody. He’s never been involved in it in his life and I’ve never been involved in it in my life. It affects you day and night. But Tim’s not losing it. He’s handled this entire season and this situation with the utmost class.” . . .

Charlotte’s Baron Davis, on his comeback: “People were saying, ‘He shouldn’t have left early and you see what happens when you leave early.’ I even heard some of my old coaches saying, ‘He wishes he wouldn’t have left early.’ Earl [Watson] and them had told me that the UCLA coaches were saying, ‘He wishes he wouldn’t have left early.’ Things of that nature really push me.”

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All-Star game

* When: 3:30 p.m. today

* Where: MCI Center, Washington

* TV: Ch. 4