Peter May Is Riled Up

[Way Of The Ray <wayray@ix.netcom.com>]

                 [The Boston Globe Online][Boston.com]

                 [Boston Globe Online / Sports]

                 ON BASKETBALL
                 Charity - NBA style

                 By Peter May, 12/08/98

                 Leave it to the NBA players to stage a charity
                 game in a city with legalized gambling, with
                 seats costing $1,000, and with the biggest name of all
                 still doing his Hamlet thing and staying on the
                 sidelines.

                 Boy, can't you see NBA fans turning on Showtime cable, or
                 better yet, rushing to the Atlantic City Convention
                 Center Dec. 19 to watch all those real-world-challenged
                 individuals do the benefit thing for - and we are not
                 making this up - NBA players in financial need? Thirteen
                 players apparently have committed; together, they earned
                 almost $90 million last year.

                 It's a shame there wasn't a laugh track accompanying
                 yesterday's announcement of the game. If we've learned
                 one thing from this idiotic lockout, it's that neither
                 side has engendered an ounce of sympathy from the people
                 who pay the freight. The players arrive for negotiations
                 in stretch limos. They wear Italian suits, caucus between
                 cell phone calls, wear sunglasses that cost more than
                 most people's wardrobes, and think a proposal to evenly
                 split revenues with their employers amounts to indentured
                 servitude.
            
                 This latest development, ''The Game on Showtime,'' is the
                 work of those two earnest Men of the People,
                 agents/henchmen David Falk and Arn Tellem. You may recall
                 that these two individuals tried to decertify the union a
                 few years ago because it agreed to a deal with the league
                 that made their clients, and themselves,
                 multimillionaires.

                 The game, if it can be called that, is being billed as a
                 matchup of players who've represented the United States
                 on various ''Dream Teams'' over the last six years,
                 although Larry Johnson and Derrick Coleman, those two
                 bastions of high society, apparently weren't invited. The
                 game may indeed click with the high rollers on the
                 Boardwalk and the nitwit celebrity hangers-on. They'll
                 probably be there to be seen by each other and the
                 Showtime cameras.

                 But Michael Jordan won't play because, his handlers feel,
                 it might send the wrong message to his legion of fans.
                 They really said that, apparently with straight faces and
                 noses that didn't grow. But they also said he might be
                 there, which has to be comforting to those who plunk down
                 $1,000 for those precious courtside seats.

                 Jordan, of course, doesn't do anything that doesn't
                 benefit Jordan. If he feels it's worthwhile to be there,
                 he'll be there. The reason he was in New York last week
                 for those unproductive bargaining sessions was for
                 personal business, not union solidarity. And, lest we
                 forget, you could paper the United Center with reprints
                 of his quote that he would never, ever, ever play for a
                 coach not named Phil Jackson. But he's still playing the
                 Consummate Tease.

                 Patrick Ewing, who earned around $20 million last season
                 and $18 million two years ago, made the stunning
                 admission that he is financially secure. But others, he
                 said, aren't so fortunate. These ''others'' work in a
                 league where the average salary is more than $2 million -
                 and rising; where the minimum salary is $272,000 - and
                 rising; and where untested rookies get three years -
                 guaranteed - and half of them still don't belong in a
                 diluted league.
                 Alonzo Mourning earned around $11 million playing for a
                 team which lost in the first round of the playoffs mainly
                 because he couldn't control his temper. The next ''big''
                 game Mourning wins will be the first, but he's one of the
                 richest players in the game. He was out there yesterday
                 speaking for those like him who have, well, bills.

                 ''We do have a lot of expenses,'' Mourning said.
                 ''Everybody's hands are out, and you try to help as many
                 people as you can. And this game right here is a way to
                 support the guys who are struggling financially at this
                 time.''

                 Thank goodness for that.

                 The only way to help the so-called ''struggling'' NBA
                 players is for these self-absorbed, delusional
                 individuals to accept the fact that the league is not
                 going to continue to operate a system where the tail wags
                 the dog. It's as simple as that. That won't be done at
                 any charity game or ensemble news conference, but in a
                 room with the very people who have agreed to pay them
                 those modest wages that are now in such dispute.

                 This story ran on page E02 of the Boston Globe on
                 12/08/98.
                 © Copyright 1998 Globe Newspaper Company.