NBA Stars All Dribble While They Are Talking

If television producers ever decide to thoroughly combine sports with comedy, they’ll stitch microphones into uniforms and pump up the volume.

Call it woofin’, trash talk, or smack, it seems to reach a crescendo during the NBA playoffs.

Opponents who can’t stop Dirk Nowitzki from scoring fight back by calling him “Irk.” Why? No ‘D’ in his game, no ‘D’ in his name. Ouch!

Charles Barkley, according to Associated Press, used to needle former Laker A.C. Green, a deeply religious man, by saying, “If God is so good, how come he didn’t give you a jump shot?”

But experts in psychology say athletes should take care not to whiff when they woof.

Witness Portland Trail Blazer Ruben Patterson, giddy after three consecutive victories over Dallas in the first round, opining that the Mavericks were “a little scared” heading into Game 7.

Dallas, of course, won that game, and afterward Maverick Coach Don Nelson had this for Patterson: “Thank you, Ruben, for being dumber than a rock.”

Trivia time: Who has the longest current streak of consecutive NBA games played?

Understudies: The NBA’s spin is that these playoffs are a great opportunity to watch the league’s new stars. But Washington Post columnist Tony Kornheiser isn’t buying it.

Lamenting that charismatic headliners such as Michael Jordan, Shaquille O’Neal, Kobe Bryant and Allen Iverson have been replaced by no-name bit players, he compared it to having tickets to see “The Producers” on Broadway, then “finding out as you walked in the theater that Nathan Lane’s and Matthew Broderick’s roles this evening will be played by ... Stephen Jackson and Bruce Bowen.”

Head games: The New York Mets have fired their team psychologist because he was breaking rules by hanging out in the dugout, prompting this response from ESPN’s Sal Paolantonio:

“Hello! If there’s any team in baseball that needs a shrink on the bench, it’s the Mets!”

Wild pitch: Cleveland Indian pitcher Terry Mulholland doesn’t think much of baseball’s plan to award home-field advantage in the World Series to the league that wins the All-Star game. He told the Akron Beacon Journal, “It makes about as much sense as if they decided home-field advantage on spring training standings.”

Error prone: San Jose Mercury News columnist Skip Bayless likes hockey players, but otherwise finds the sport “a terribly flawed game.”

“On radio, it sounds like one continuous mistake,” Bayless wrote. “So-and-so passes to so-and-so but the puck is stolen by so-and-so who is knocked off the puck by so-and-so who can’t control the puck and loses it to so-and-so.”

And so on and so forth.

Trivia answer: New York Knick Shandon Anderson, 499.

And finally: The Class-A Hagerstown (Md.) Sun is offering a free funeral to the fan who designs the most creative send-off.

Officials from the Gerald N. Minnich Funeral Home are sponsoring the “prize” -- a $4,000 value -- to spotlight the importance of planning.

Entries are to be in essay form, and the finalists will be asked to read theirs at a game Aug. 16.

A filler for the dead time between innings no doubt.

-- Mike Hiserman