Grant Is Pondering Future

Horace Grant will be 36 this summer, and one of these seasons he’ll have had enough of Rasheed Wallace and Chris Webber and Tim Duncan, not to mention Phil Jackson.

He does not have a contract for next season, and it is possible the Lakers will give Grant’s minutes to young forwards Mark Madsen and Slava Medvedenko. He probably wouldn’t mind playing in Orlando, where he lives in the off-season, or perhaps in Washington, where old friends Michael Jordan and Charles Barkley are doing the old-timers’ thing and where his twin brother, Harvey, lives.

“I think about that constantly,” he said.

Grant also considers that he won’t play, that he’ll retire to a place where the only Webers are grills in his backyard that have no post moves.

“It could be it,” he said. “But some of my teammates said they want to see me play two, maybe three more years. I look at them like they’re crazy sometimes.”

Commissioner David Stern called on the players’ union to take a stronger role in addressing the flood of under-20 players entering the NBA.

More than 40 college underclassmen and high school players have declared themselves eligible for this year’s draft. During a pregame meeting with reporters, Stern expressed concern that the influx of young players would take jobs away from veterans and bring too mnay unprepared kids into the league.

Stern said discussions with the union about the issue have resulted in, “No headway whatever. I think the union is about as irresponsible on this subject as a union can be. There isn’t a player that I’ve spoken to that doesn’t think it’s a bad thing for the union and the league to be in the apparent position of condoning and encouraging high school students, and first-year college students, second-year college students to come out.

Asked later to clarify what he meant by “the union”, Stern specified National Basketball Players Assn. Executive Director Billy Hunter.

Stern said he did not blame general managers for scouting and drafting high school players, because if they somehow missed the next Kobe Bryant it would cost them their jobs.

Jackson’s son, Ben, graduated with honors from Colorado on Friday, which made Phil very proud. Ben has an English degree, which made Phil a little nervous.

“Some guys turn out to be journalists,” Jackson said, grinning. “I don’t know how good that is. But there’s still a ways to go. The written word is OK if you take care of it.”

Jackson, of course, would know. He’s practically on a book-a-season pace.