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[Josh Ozersky <josh_ozersky@yahoo.com>]

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Tuesday, Dec. 8 3:20pm ET
You're off if you think deal is in the offing
<Picture>
<Picture>By Jeffrey Denberg
Special to ESPN.com 

I wonder where their sense of reality is, these players and union
leaders who see a deal in the offing, who figure the divine hand of
Michael Jordan will wave a wand and an NBA season will spring into
action.



The other day, Milwaukee swingman Michael Curry, a member of the
players' negotiating committee, came to the absurd conclusion that a
deal is in the offing.



"We can go in tomorrow and get a deal done,'' Curry said a day after
Thursday's bargaining collapsed. "Once we agree on the numbers, the
(free-agent) timing-issue things will fall into place. Negotiations
are usually done in the 12th hour, and we're in the 12th hour.''



 <Picture: Rex Chapman>Free agent Rex Chapman says he will "think
seriously about not playing again" because of the lockout.

Uh, Mike, a word with you, please ...



It's all about timing, pal. Romeo and Juliet, that was bad timing.
Mark McGwire and 70 baseballs, good timing. The stock market, holiday
sales, fall planting. Timing. We could go on, but you get the idea.



The timing issue in basketball goes to the heart of free agency and
the Larry Bird exception. It also goes to the gut of fiscal calamity.



Basically, the NBA says it will not permit teams to sign outside free
agents to the limits of their salary cap, and then climb over the
ceiling by re-signing their own free agents. That's a policy that
brought them to their present economic circumstance. And that's the
issue that can destroy the season.



As NBA owners view the plight of the bankrupt Penguins and listen to
Bud Selig lament over irrational baseball spending among a handful of
rich teams, you can expect they will remain firm in their resolve.



The union could do itself a favor and muzzle Alonzo Mourning of the
Miami Heat.



Unable to brawl on the court because there are no games, Mourning uses
his mouth as cudgel and is no less a bully than the demonic presence
who assaulted Larry Johnson last spring in New York. "Greedy" is the
adjective Mourning used several times Thursday to describe the owners,
one of whom is paying him $105 million over seven years.



Mourning, you may recall, left Charlotte -- a city he professed to
love -- because an $11 million annual salary wasn't enough.





One thing Mourning and his negotiating partners should know:
Commissioner David Stern has not taken a penny in salary since August,
and will take no pay until the lockout ends.



Stern mentioned this in confidence a few months ago, but Jeffrey
Mishkin, the NBA's chief counsel, let that piece of news out in a
piece in Sunday's New York Times.



Stern said, "Since I've asked people in our office to make sacrifices,
I can hardly take a salary."



Like the 400 players who are not working, Stern lives on the money he
withdraws from the bank every week or so.



And in the matter of Mourning, we are reminded once again of the image
of a disconsolate Pat Riley, slumped against a wall after the
Mourning-Johnson fracas that doomed the Heat's playoff chances. We
know what Riley knows: Mourning will never be a champion.



When is the starting time?
Jayson Williams, the free-agent center who played with the Nets last
season, says he has it all figured out.



"I believe David Stern has a 56-game schedule all mapped out. I
believe the owners have a date (in mind to start the season). If they
put it out there too soon, it wouldn't work. They want any drop of
milk and crumb of cookie they can get," said Williams, insisting Stern
told him back in May that the league would be off until January. "If
he was facetious then, there's not going to be a season. If he was
serious, there will be."



Meanwhile, union director Billy Hunter confidently says the season
will start next month. I think these people are kidding themselves. I
think the owners are deadly earnest about not giving in.



And Stern says, "The notion that we would self-inflict the kind of
pain this industry is feeling because of some special clock we have to
make a deal, (when) we could never hope to get back, and won't get
back, the losses that we've had, the absurdity of that suggestion
tells you why we're going around in circles."



Knicks forward Buck Williams has it all figured out.



"You know as soon as this deal is signed, some player will
undeservedly get a large sum of money, and we'll all scratch our heads
and try to figure out why he gets $20 million or $100 million, when
you and I know his numbers don't warrant it," the veteran said.



Free agent Rex Chapman is mad as hell, and says he won't take it any
more.



"I will definitely think seriously about not playing again," said
Chapman, who played last season in Phoenix. "It's embarrassing for me
to be associated with this, when we seemed to have such a good thing
going. It seems laughable to me that we're sitting here in December,
not playing ball. It's just idiotic that this big game of
cat-and-mouse has gone on this long."



Do you miss the game?
Tim Hardaway's all-star game in Miami drew 2,500, less than half the
capacity of the gym, on Friday night.



The message here is that these all-star games during the lockout
simply aren't going to do very well, that people don't pay to watch
exhibitions, that they want tough, disciplined competition.



If you don't have serious hoops as counterpoint, where's the fun?



Maybe I'm a lone voice in the wilderness, but I miss this game.





Odds and ends
Isn't Portland the big winner in the lockout? The Blazers were due to
pay Kenny Anderson $5.8 million this season as part of last season's
deal that sent him to the Celtics. ... Brent Barry has told several
players he does not want to play for Pat Riley again. The youngest of
the Barry brothers likely will play on the West Coast after struggling
for a half-season with Miami. The Heat acquired him last February from
the moribund Clippers. ... Based on the Timberwolves' attendance of
738,572 last season, $18.95 of every ticket sold would have gone to
pay Kevin Garnett's $14 million salary this season. ... Rick Adelman's
off to an ugly start as Sacramento's coach. "I haven't talked to any
of our players. I don't know what players we will have through free
agency," the former Blazer and Warriors coach said. "I don't know what
the rules are going to be. We have only three or four guys who even
played together, and they aren't the main people. It's a big problem."





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