From the Sidelines: With the NBA in disarray...

By Albert Chen

COURTESY TIM BOYLE/NEWSMAKERS With Michael Jordan gone, NBA Commissioner David Stern is left with players like Latrell Sprewell to carry pro basketball's torch.

Mr. Stern, please do us all a small favor and call off the NBA season. I'm more excited about the Golden Globes than a Pacers-Jazz final. I'd rather see Dan Reeves do the Dirty Bird than watch Shaq brick another free throw. So please, let's wait until November and give this thing another try. And hopefully by then, Michael Jordan will be sick of getting shown up by Kevin Costner in these celebrity golf tournaments and come back.

Even the players seem as if they'd rather be doing something else. Only four Knicks bothered to show up to a team workout earlier this week. The top pick in last year's draft, the Los Angeles Clippers' Michael Olowokandi, is off in Europe playing with Kinder Bologna (yes, that is a basketball team) and won't come back until mid-February. A long list of free agents remained unsigned this week. And though the season is scheduled to start in two weeks, no one seems to be in a hurry.

Cancel the season. It's not worth it. No one cares.

NBA Commissioner David Stern has been hailed as one of the sports world's greatest minds for making the league faaaaaantastic and worth $2 billion. Stern entered the league in 1984, back when Larry and Magic were trading jump shots in the Finals and a kid named Mike was making his debut. Not bad timing. But with the ugly labor dispute and the retirement of Air Jordan, the NBA and Stern are suddenly holding their breath to see if the fans return to their seats.

So what exactly did the two sides accomplish? For starters, the owners and Stern were clearly the winners. The NBA is now the only of the big four professional leagues to have a maximum salary, which means that overrated players like Juwan Howard can no longer command $100 million salaries. This new regulation is huge--in Major League Baseball, among this winter's many mind-boggling signings was the Los Angeles Dodgers' landing of pitcher Kevin Brown, signing him to a seven-year, $105 million contract. Baseball's gaps between the haves and the have-nots, as a result of these free- agent moves, is now so large that there are only a handful of big-market franchises with a realistic chance of getting to the World Series. So the good news is the NBA dispute really wasn't a waste at all, and years from now pro-basketball will probably be better off than other sports.

But even if the mess turns out to have been worth it, if Stern is smart he'll still call off the season. Give fans time to forget about the nasty labor negotiations. Give us time to get to know our teams (with so many free agents, teams will get huge makeovers in the next week), and give the players that are 50 pounds overweight time to get back in shape and ready. We're in for an ugly season--if we choose to watch at all.

Stern is convinced that from the first tip-off on, true basketball fans will not be able to turn away from the league. These are, however, players that have gone nine months without competition. With no preseason and little training camp time, the first few weeks, perhaps months, of basketball will be ugly. It's not as if the NBA is all basketball fans can turn to--college basketball, with big-time rivalries like Duke-Maryland and Connecticut-St. John's, just keeps getting better and better.

Part of Stern's success has been his brilliant approach in marketing his league's stars. With Jordan gone, however, the only players making headlines today are Latrell Sprewell and Dennis Rodman. Stern must begin to sell teams and rivalries. A good model to follow is the marketing of this past season's New York Yankees, a team that was beloved by baseball fans nationwide even though it had no true superstars like Ken Griffey, Jr., or Mark McGwire.

The season has gotten off to a terrible start ,with headlines of Sprewell's move to New York dominating basketball talk (I guess the organization just decided to give up on trying to get rid of its thug image). But the 1999 campaign still has a couple of interesting plots. Will Scottie Pippen prove himself now that he's out of Jordan's shadow and lead the Rockets to a crown? Was Larry Bird's first season as a coach a fluke? Are the Lakers ready to grow up? Is Ray Allen really filming another movie?

Still, right now, no one cares. And it's hard to believe that after a month of low-scoring basketball played by out-of-shape players, fans will be more excited. It's even harder to believe that an NBA matchup between the two favorites, the Indiana Pacers and the Utah Jazz, will make people care a whole lot more.

Call it all off, Mr. Stern. Wait until November. But even if you don't, not very many of us will notice--and if we do, we won't like what we see.

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