They don’t want to be, like, miked

How to characterize the new edict obliging coaches to wear microphones and do interviews during nationally televised games?

Gee, what a novel idea.

Or not. Dallas Coach Avery Johnson, obliged to take part in the inaugural, noted the NBA was trying to “catch up to NASCAR and baseball” . . . to name two more sports that tipped off their desperation by letting TV intrude in their events.

As entertaining as those NASCAR drivers are, what strikes me when they’re chatting away during interviews at 150 mph is:

Isn’t there something they’re supposed to be doing, or is it really that easy?

Then there’s baseball, which began interviewing managers between innings, or tried to.

Old hands like Joe Torre and Jim Leyland had coaches stand in, and when obliged to appear in person looked like they were talking through clenched teeth.

How’s Lefty doing?

He has great stuff but it’s just the second inning.

Even the lordly NFL has sideline reporters interviewing coaches at halftime, if they can run fast enough to keep up and it means someone has to go up to New England’s Bill Belichick.

Coach, are you concerned about giving up 150 yards on the ground?

Whatever.

With all this interactivity, everyone’s ratings continue to decline, even the NFL, which this season had the five lowest-rated Monday night games ever.

Despite the new insights from its managers, Major League Baseball just saw the World Series post its three lowest ratings ever in consecutive seasons.

Now for the exciting debut of babbling coaches with the Denver Nuggets in Dallas!

Denver Coach George Karl:

“OK, Marcus Camby, get in the game, babe!”

Johnson:

“Way to go, Stack!”

That would be Jerry Stackhouse. Talk about participating in the experience! Then there was Karl’s memorable interview on the bench, in which he concluded: “I really think the key to our team is passing the ball.”

It may be the key to his team, which doesn’t pass the ball much after it’s inbounded. Everyone else already knew it was good to move the ball.

Not that it was a total waste of time. In that night’s second game, Portland’s Brandon Roy told the sidelined Greg Oden that Miami’s Shaquille O’Neal said to tell him, “You’re lucky you’re sitting out tonight.”

In the high point, Utah Coach Jerry Sloan was caught telling his team there were “four @#$%^&! minutes” left during Wednesday’s loss in Phoenix.

Unfortunately, this was a mistake on the part of someone at ESPN, who may not be at ESPN anymore.

If ESPN and TNT actually showed the interesting stuff, it would be great. But as NBA partners, their first obligation is to see that nothing too interesting goes out over the air.

In other words, this entire exercise exists to bring you the 20 least interesting things they pick up.

If you think the coaches are upset now, catch them if the real stuff starts going out:

Get back, Shaq! Get back, Shaq! Get back, Shaq . . . please? Oh, never mind.

That’s OK, Kwame, you’ll catch the next one!

OK, Rasheed, go in. Why not?

Predictably, the best thing to come out of this was the coaches’ protesting.

San Antonio’s Gregg Popovich, learning that a camera would be left in his dressing room to show his pregame speech, mused about leaving a camera in , Commissioner David Stern’s office to show his meetings.

As several coaches noted, they’ll now hold pre-pregame speeches to say what they want the way they want to say it.

The first coach to tell a sideline reporter what he could do with his microphone was Miami’s Pat Riley, who didn’t do his scheduled interview.

The most outspoken was the Lakers’ Phil Jackson, who called it “Big Brother-ish.”

It’s an apt metaphor for the NBA in general, with league brass sitting in New York monitoring everyone via TV, suspending players for offenses that weren’t called fouls and none of the participants complained about.

Unfortunately, while granting TV ever greater access, Big Brother, er, Stern keeps moving the print media farther and farther away from the floor.

(Oh, I forgot. His owners are doing it. He just couldn’t hold them back any longer.)

When I started doing this, we were next to the bench, which gave us a much better idea of what was going on.

However, we’re not NBA partners, so even if it profits from the space we give it, we don’t pay the league anything and everyone is happier if we don’t know too much about what’s going on.

Now we’re essentially part of the studio audience for a TV show, except we get to go backstage before and after . . . to publicize the next TV show!

Fortunately, there are people to talk to and rarest of all, actual thought about what’s going on as opposed to the high-decibel crossfire on studio shows, so there’s still something important we can aspire to provide.

Personally, I’m fine watching from home where I can actually see what’s going on in the game, which, as Stern promised years ago, is dazzling in HD on a big screen!

Like Winston Smith, the vanquished rebel, in the last line of George Orwell’s “1984,” I love Big Brother.

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mark.heisler@latimes.com