This One Could Have the Rate Stuff

In which the 76ers save the NBA Finals and bail out their beleaguered league . . .

It has been three seasons since the Finals featured an actual contest, a forlorn time NBA officials won’t forget, with Michael Jordan leaving just as the Internet age was kicking in, so their TV ratings fell even faster than everyone else’s, even as David Stern hyped his “rising young stars.”

Not that everyone went off their rockers in the meantime, but how about NBC’s halftime pageants now, with U2 and (gag) “Celebrity Weakest Link”?

Somewhere along the line, everyone forgot they were in the basketball biz, not the entertainment biz.

The NBA had problems, but the worst, and most overlooked, was the imbalance between East and West that saw the San Antonio Spurs and Lakers cruise in 1999 and 2000 with little drama or interest and diving ratings.

The league’s decline paralleled that of NBC, which saw its hot, hot, hot basketball property turn cold and, worse, lost its NFL property.

Not that years on top had convinced NBA sports boss Dick Ebersol he was the straw that stirred the drink, but he then tried to create his own football league, which, you might have heard, didn’t turn out too well.

Meanwhile, back in the NBA, Ebersol let Charles Barkley, whose wit, irreverence and big mouth made him the greatest TV prospect in a generation or ever, escape to Turner. So while Barkley was exploding on the scene, ripping NBC, his co-workers and even Turner’s schedule (the games NBC didn’t want, Barkley noted, correctly, breaking an industry taboo), Ebersol was trotting out the same-old dull talking heads.

Not that Ebersol and Stern had lost faith in their product, but they thrashed around in every direction. Let’s mike the coaches. Let’s mike the refs. How about interviews with the players at halftime?

In the absence of actual competitive basketball, of course, all that happened was the ratings kept falling.

The rising young stars kept rising, but this season’s playoff ratings, which spiked up during the Allen Iverson-Vince Carter shootout, fell off the table when the Lakers torched the Spurs in four.

The Lakers were just what the commissioner ordered, a glamour team in a huge market with appealing stars, but without a challenge, the postseason would have ended, not with a bang but a 10.0 record-low rating.

The Finals began with Stern, so numb from discussing his myriad problems, he was retreating into dark humor, as when he was asked before Game 1 about an Atlanta strip club court case involving several players.

“Wouldn’t you rather talk about declining ratings and attendance?” he replied.

Then came the 76ers’ Game 1 surprise.

Then, after the Lakers sniffed that they had seen the 76ers’ best, the visitors took a nine-point lead in Game 2, fell behind by 13 in the fourth quarter and then came back again, almost stealing another one.

Of course, Phil Jackson, being Phil Jackson, is still letting them know who the underdog is. (“If Philadelphia could have sustained what they played on Wednesday night, I’d have been very impressed.”) But for the moment, at least, it’s still anyone’s series.

For Stern, this was the mother lode, with his leading gangsta, Iverson, being rehabilitated into a sympathetic figure as leader of an appealing bunch of never-say-die guys.

The timing was perfect too, with negotiations underway for a new TV deal. Viewing rights being increasingly precious, Stern had already suggested they’d get a 25% bump from their current $2.1-billion package.

Of course, revived ratings at this tender moment could kick that up another 25% . . . or 50% . . . so the impact of these Finals may be measured in the billions of dollars.

Not that Iverson is completely reformed. He may be wiser, but he’s still a hard case, for better and/or worse.

He’s engaging in news conferences, baring his heart for all to see, but he’s scary too. He recently threatened a Philadelphia Daily News writer who, Allen thought, had been too critical.

He’s warrior to the core, a child of poverty born to a 14-year-old single mother, surrounded and bewildered by fame and fortune. He dresses down but flies his personal hair braider out for the Finals and puts her up in a four-star Beverly Hills hotel just so she can get his ‘do right.

What you see is exactly what you get. After he scored 48 points in Game 1, he was asked if it was “realistic” to think he could do that again. He thought that was funny, “real” being one of his favorite words.

“Is it realistic?” asked Iverson, leaning back. “Yeah. It’s realistic, man. It’s real life. Real life.”

Real enough. At about 5 feet 11, 160 pounds, Iverson is pound-for-pound the most dominating player the game has ever seen. It doesn’t matter whom the 76ers play, it can be the Lakers with Shaquille O’Neal and Kobe Bryant, and every game revolves around their warrior tyke. It’s lucky for the Lakers he isn’t 6-5 or a more consistent shooter or they’d really be in trouble.

“We love when everybody’s counting us out,” the 76ers’ Aaron McKie said last week, “saying we don’t have a chance because this team [Lakers] played 11 games . . . and we played almost a max of playoff games [18 before the Finals] and we’re tired and Allen’s wearing down.

“That guy’s not gonna wear down, I’ll tell you that right now. He’s not gonna wear down.”

By now, the Lakers have figured that out. Iverson and the 76ers won’t wear down or run off. They’ll have to be beaten and it might not be easy or fast.

Faces and Figures

You could tell Portland General Manager Bob Whitsitt was having trouble finding the right coach for his thorny players, when he contacted Denver assistant John Lucas, a great guy and a fast talker who’s a little weak on everything else. Other candidates include Magic Johnson (Whitsitt doesn’t want that strong a coach and Johnson’s family doesn’t want to relocate), Mike Fratello (good coach but good luck, because he’s even more of a martinet than Mike Dunleavy) and Lionel Hollins (former Trail Blazer but not a charismatic one). . . . Nazr Muhammad, a throw-in in the Dikembe Mutombo-Theo Ratliff trade, averaged 13 points and nine rebounds after joining the Atlanta Hawks, the problem being he’s a free agent and may leave them, as so many do. Said Hawk General Manager Pete Babcock: “The day of the trade, I called him on the phone and said, ‘We don’t play games with people’s lives. We’re up front with everybody.’ I told him he was in the deal for salary-cap purposes but that we’d give him a fair look. He dramatically exceeded our expectations.”

Predictably, everyone who works out Duke’s Shane Battier falls in love with him. Detroit Piston conditioning coach Arnie Kander tells a story about the days when Battier, a local high school star, spent summers working out at their facility. “We had one rule,” Kander said. “The guys had to clean the practice facility. Before they could work out, they had to report to [locker room attendant] Eddie Rivero and find out their responsibilities. I mean, they really cleaned. They did the floors, the toilets. They took out the pop bottles, whatever had to be done.” By the time Battier was a Duke sophomore, Kander told him he didn’t have to clean any more--but Battier insisted on doing it anyway, and did.

Not that it was hard for the Boston Celtics to recruit but: General Manager Chris Wallace tells of the time last summer when he took Austin Croshere to dinner in Beverly Hills and turned up wearing a Celtic jersey. Said Wallace: “I’ve got the jersey on and the jersey is cut for a 6-9 guy, so I look like one of those little kids with the arm holes coming down to my waist and this jersey tucked in to these nice slacks. The place went nuts. People were just laughing like hell. Austin and [agent] Dan Fegan got a big kick out of it too. Apparently not a big enough kick. They went to Indiana.”

The last word, as usual: Dallas Maverick owner Mark Cuban, pooh-poohing NBA conspiracy theories: “The NBA is not smart enough to put it together.”