NBA is ideal target for slap shot

Some might call it roughing. We call it a clean hit.

The NHL’s Dallas Stars have put up a billboard near the American Airlines Center they share with the NBA’s Dallas Mavericks. It reads:

“The only thing our refs shave is the ice.”

NBA Commissioner David Stern, dealing with the fallout of Tim Donaghy’s guilty plea for betting on games he officiated, had no comment.

Mavericks owner Mark Cuban, who doesn’t mind seeing Stern squirm a little, didn’t bristle at the Stars’ swipe. “I think it’s hysterical,” Cuban told the Dallas Morning News. “Good for them. It’s a fun ad.”

Other billboards in the Stars’ “Come into the cold” campaign designed by Door Number 3, an Austin advertising agency, take shots at other sports.

“One game a week? Is the N in NFL for Nancy?”

And “Maybe baseball should stop using the word sacrifice.”

We’ll side with the guys who keep playing after getting stitches and losing teeth on that one.

Bad lies

Golf World magazine has produced a fiction issue, with stories by Ethan Canin, Stephen Goodwin, William Kittredge and Max Adler.

Hey, we write golf fiction too.

On the scorecard.

Trivia time

If the injured David Beckham doesn’t play for the Galaxy again this season, what will be his approximate salary be per minute of playing time?

Hair today . . .

It sure seems as if everybody’s kicking Beckham when he’s down.

The website for the British tabloid the Daily Mail ran an enlarged a photo of him after getting treatment for his knee and ankle injuries. And it produced a close-up of Beckham’s closely cropped hair, calling him a “balding star,” whose “once-prized head of golden locks is starting to thin out.”

The harshest blow: A headline calling him “Golden bald.”

They have to be kidding

The NFL will replace its red, white and blue shield-shaped logo in 2008 with . . . a red, white and blue shield-shaped logo, USA Today reported.

The current logo features the red letters “NFL” and white stars on a blue background with a tilted football.

The new logo will have slightly different red NFL letters, fewer stars and a more sharply tilted football.

Comparing the two is like looking at one of those LIFE magazine picture puzzles challenging the reader to spot which details have changed. Not many.

Sure hope the NFL didn’t spend too much on that one.

South Africa’s team

The NFL also sent out a list of famous fans and their favorite teams.

Here’s one we didn’t expect: Nobel Peace Prize recipient Nelson Mandela favors the Dallas Cowboys.

Mandela spent nearly three decades in prison fighting apartheid.

He did his time for a bit more noble cause than, say, marijuana hauler Nate Newton.

Trivia answer

About $21,000 per minute.

Beckham, with a $6.5 million guaranteed salary, has played 310 minutes in six Galaxy games.

And finally

From reader Janice Hough: “And somehow the University of Idaho got convinced to open their season with USC. (The No. 1-ranked Trojans are favored by about 47.)

“Think it’s too late for Idaho to allege entrapment?”

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robyn.norwood@latimes.com