Get a Grip, Guys

It was a match made in heaven. They are now the Sunshine Boys of sport. If Bob Arum had anticipated this, he would have put it on pay-per-view for $49.95.

Last week, as the world turned, so did the rhetoric. Just when you thought you could see and hear nothing new, that the sports world had drifted into mind-numbing sameness, you discovered the Basketball Controversy. That’s right, BC, no S.

And the combatants?

In the red corner, wearing striped trunks and sneering, Ralph Nader. In the white corner, wearing black and scowling, David Stern.

Bet you never thought you’d see those two names in the same paragraph, much less the same fight. First Dempsey-Tunney, then Hagler-Hearns. Now Nader-Stern.

Nader, of course, is the Washington think-tanker/public activist, who has run for president four times and who got a lot of heat in 2000 for appearing to get enough votes to mess up the election worse than Florida’s hanging chads.

Democrats say he cost Al Gore the election. Republicans say he saved us from Al Gore.

Stern’s subject matter, while no less public, is lots less serious. He is the commissioner of the NBA. His hanging chads are Rasheed Wallace and Mark Cuban.

It began earlier this week, when Stern announced that the NBA was going back to the basketball it had used for years. The new one, introduced this season, had incurred the wrath of many players, especially the ones shooting 38%.

Stern finally caved to the whining and said that, effective Jan. 1, the NBA would bounce back to the past. The reaction among players was immediate. Some cried tears of joy. Others dribbled.

The whole thing seemed rather trivial, of course. They were all playing with the same brand of basketball. They were all arriving at games in Mercedes and Hummer limos, and leaving with briefcases full of stock certificates. So what if the basketball is more slippery than last season? Get me my broker.

Much ado about nothing, right? But then Nader took a pass at it.

Almost simultaneously with Stern’s announcement, a letter from Nader to Stern appeared in many newspaper e-mail files across the country. That meant, we might presume, that the letter was not really meant as much for Stern as for the next morning’s headlines. Publicly fighting for the consumer was one interpretation. Eleventh-hour grandstanding was another.

It seemed strange that the consumer most affected, most benefiting from Ralph’s roar, were several dozen millionaire jocks.

Among the points cited by Nader were that Steve Nash of the Phoenix Suns and Jason Kidd of the New Jersey Nets had injuries “like paper cuts” on their hands, that the new ball “frequently became lodged between the rim and the backboard,” and, our personal favorite, the New York Knicks’ Eddy Curry saying, “The ball never leaves my hand the same way.”

Nader ended his letter of chastisement to Stern with a body blow: “Perhaps, finally, you will learn your lesson as to your attitude toward the league you have been entrusted to manage. The well-being of the players should be your highest priority. After all, you need them more than they need you.”

What we had here was a great hissing match. And, as a reader service, we sought to report all of it. Nothing worse than holes in the hissing.

With no expectation of a return call, a call was made to Nader in Washington. Former presidential candidates shouldn’t call sportswriters back. It should be a rule. It should be beneath them. But then, this former presidential candidate had just taken up the cause of the poor, oppressed NBA millionaire, so who knew?

Nader called. We identified ourself as a sports columnist for the L.A. Times.

“Now, there’s one great gig,” he said.

Already it was hard to dislike this guy.

He responded calmly to the first question, something along the lines of: Why in hell are you wasting your time on guys who buy diamonds by the bushel?

He said he was an advocate for all workers, no matter their salary, and that he had been a sports advocate as far back as 1970. He also said he had a website, leagueoffans.org.

Then he got more specific about Stern. He called him “abrupt and autocratic.”

Oh, oh. The A-words.

Later, he added that Stern was “arrogant” and he was happy that, in his backtracking on the basketball issue, “Stern would now have to eat crow.”

Before the conversation ended, he said he and Stern had been at odds a few years ago, over officiating in a Sacramento-Lakers game. He said they had talked at that time, and though Stern had been dismissive, he also had been “polite.”

A call was made to Stern. Journalism dictates that. So does the basic human thirst for titillation.

Stern called back. He said he hadn’t read the letter until the night before, a full two days after his decision had been announced and Nader had sent his letter.

“I guess it got lost in the fan-mail folder,” Stern said, a smirk in his voice.

He was read Nader’s quotes. He responded that it was “good to know that Mr. Nader is following the headlines so well, so he can stay current on all the main issues of the day, such as Iraq, poverty, health care, unemployment, the budget deficit and the NBA’s basketball.”

As they say in fencing movies, touche.

What fun. Two big guys, huffing and puffing and blowing each other’s houses down.

We wonder if, somehow, they didn’t enjoy this. We know we did.

But seriously, folks ... We are still left to wonder if there will ever be closure here, if the ball will, ever again, leave Eddy Curry’s hand the same way.

We can only pray.

*

Bill Dwyre can be reached at bill.dwyre@latimes.com. To read previous columns by Dwyre, go to latimes.com/dwyre.