They Didn’t Fold in Clutch

Thanks to baseball Commissioner Bud Selig, the hot topic in sports isn’t the World Series or the road to the Super Bowl or to the Final Four or any other road, except one that leads over a cliff.

The buzzword now is “contraction.” Selig is out to fold two teams and lots of people are on the bandwagon, metaphorically, at least, as when TNT’s Charles Barkley said the Chicago Bulls should be contracted too, to put them out of their misery.

Contraction is, indeed, a helpful concept and not only for artistic reasons. The possibility of losing three NBA teams and 36 jobs in 1981 produced an owner-player agreement that saved the league’s bacon.

Losing two baseball teams and 50 jobs might have had similar benefits--if it had been a natural process and major league baseball had persuaded union boss Don Fehr to make concessions as part of a new partnership.

Without Fehr’s participation, it’s not as promising. If the NBA experience is supposed to be a precedent, Selig messed up.

The market wouldn’t be terminating his teams; he would--buying out the owners, for as much as $250 million, folding their teams and then letting Montreal’s Jeff Loria and Florida’s John Henry play musical franchises on top of it, with Loria getting the Marlins and Henry getting the Angels.

Not that I sympathize with Fehr, whose union members are in better shape than their industry, but this must look more like a scheme than a crisis. If I were Fehr, I’d wonder, “Do they think I just had a lobotomy?”

For the NBA, contraction wasn’t a bluff but a real possibility.

The ABA’s Kentucky Colonels, Virginia Squires and Spirits of St. Louis had already folded in 1976 as part of the merger with the NBA.

By 1981, three more teams were about to follow. Magic Johnson and Larry Bird were in their third seasons but hadn’t gotten the league turned around yet. Teams were being given away, with new owners, like Donald T. Sterling, required to do little more than assume players’ long-term contracts.

“In ‘81, the wheels fell off,” says Orlando Magic Vice President Pat Williams, then the Philadelphia 76er general manager and a former minor league catcher and administrator who spent seven years running teams in the Phillies’ system.

“Cleveland, Indiana and Utah were three that were gone. And there was no potential for an owner. There was no future. Larry Fleischer [head of the NBA Players Assn.] read the tea leaves correctly, to his credit. He and David Stern [the NBA counsel before he became commissioner in 1984] basically partnered. And let me tell you, Larry was a tough guy. He was strong-willed. He could be very adversarial.

“His critics would say he folded, but I would say Larry read it right. He allowed the salary cap to be instituted and the drug testing and all those issues got resolved. The central issue was, 36 jobs continued.

“Larry Fleischer will never get the credit.... He could have been the biggest jerk in the world. He basically saved the game.”

Fleischer was a tough New York lawyer, like Stern, and their screaming matches were legendary.

Nor were NBA players pushovers. Their union was a pioneer, growing out of the civil rights movement in the ‘60s. The league didn’t have a work stoppage until 1999 because the owners feared the players.

However, in 1981, Stern and Fleischer seized the moment. Stern opened the books--which would become a key to maintaining the peace--and Fleischer, convinced, made a deal that served both well.

The league prospered. The small-market Jazz and Pacers, so close to the edge in 1981, subsequently appeared in nine conference finals and made the NBA finals in 1997, 1998 and 2000.

Deals go up to Shaquille O’Neal’s $134 million. Minimums are the highest anywhere, with a 10-year veteran guaranteed $1million a year.

The NBA’s sense of community has since been strained, to say the least, prosperity having led to resentment, ego struggles and, finally, a work stoppage in 1999.

The league struggles against the high-water marks in ratings and attendance it set in the ‘90s, when Michael Jordan was in his prime and new arenas began opening. Nevertheless, the NBA is now a major player and, along with the NFL, one of the lucky ones with meaningful cost controls.

Remember ‘81, when everyone knew the game was in trouble and came together?

Now it seems like the good old days.

Faces and Figures

Maybe it was a mirage, after all: It’s always special to see good little teams knock off good big ones, which is the essence of Don Nelson’s tilting-at-windmills style. Now, however, his Dallas Mavericks, who won 53 games last season and opened this one 5-1, are struggling. Nellie, who gave Shawn Bradley a seven-year, $30-million deal, has discovered anew that Bradley isn’t very good. Veterans Tim Hardaway and Danny Manning look their advanced ages, leading Nelson to remark how “old” his team is. “I can’t get Danny Manning and Tim Hardaway the way they played 10 years ago,” Nelson said. “I can’t do that. But they need to find a way to play a little better than they’ve played to be a factor.”

Job search: Clyde Drexler, former Trail Blazer-Rocket star and short-lived University of Houston coach, applied for the Portland coaching job last summer, didn’t get a call from GM Bob Whitsitt and then applied to owner Paul Allen for Whitsitt’s job. Instead, Allen gave Trader Bob a five-year extension. “Paul wanted me to be a part of the franchise,” Drexler said, “but as long as the people in charge are there, it is not going to happen. I can see where his hands were tied, although I think Whitsitt is going to cost him more in five years than Paul would have saved by firing him.” Drexler is now a part-time consultant for Denver GM Kiki Vandeweghe, but says he still hopes to be a general manager somewhere, meaning he soon may be applying for someone else’s job.

Another way the preps are different than the pros: Bull rookie Eddy Curry can score but doesn’t rebound as well and is 10 for 19 on free throws. “I think it’s the balloons and all those things they’re waving,” he said. “They didn’t have that in high school.”

Players endure Pat Riley’s drill-sergeant regimen in good times but lash back in bad ones, such as now, when the team is struggling and former Heat players are chiming in. Eddie Davis, recently dispatched to Cleveland, said Riley can’t coach young players, and a Riley favorite, Hardaway, bitter about not being re-signed, said, “I don’t see Riley winning a championship again. It’s going to be hard because he’s not going to have the same type of guys he wants. Guys 10 years ago would want to be in that philosophy. Now a lot of people have heard things, and guys don’t want to play there. And he’s not capable of changing.... I had to come to practice an hour early just to get my mental state prepared. There’s no need for that. And you can’t tell a player, ‘... you.’ You don’t talk to anybody like that. You don’t need to be tortured, talked about and smack-talked. Everyone has the same type of feeling I have.” Said Riley, taken aback, “I believed in Tim for 5 1/2 years. It was time to go in another direction. It was never personal. He had his best years here. Yeah, it bothers me, but I’m going to let it go.”

Anticipating the start of scapegoat season in the New York papers, heretofore reticent Knick GM Scott Layden met with beat writers before the game here against the Clippers, specifically noting how “well-coached” the bedraggled Knicks were. Said Coach Jeff Van Gundy after losing by 16 to the Clippers, “Scott’s a great guy and he’s great to work for and he meant well but we’re the Knicks. There’s no positives when you’re 4-7.” Two nights later, after the Knicks lost by 24 at Phoenix to go 4-8, Van Gundy said, “We were beaten in every phase of the game. Happy Thanksgiving,” and walked away.