No Subject

Balancing the scales 

                  For every action, there was a reaction

                  By Michael Holley, Globe Staff, 12/26/98 

                     hey were the Yin-Yang team of the NBA. When they
take the
                     time to page through their green-and-white
leprechauned
                  yearbooks, the 1998 Celtics will certainly be
reminded of life's
                  basic, two-pronged proverbs. Here are a few of them: 

                  If something new is rising to the sky, something old
is inevitably
                  falling to the earth; 

                  If someone is giving you a glorious goodbye this
morning, the
                  see-ya-later-buddy may not be far behind; 

                  And, most important, if you happen to be setting a
scoring record,
                  a 3-point shooting record, or have a coach on record
saying that
                  you are his best point guard, here's some advice:
either pack your
                  bags or prepare yourself for a loss. 

                  That was the story of the Celtics' season. All parts
were balanced.
                  Positive met negative and good mingled with bad.
When all the
                  elements were put together, the result was
eventually disquieting
                  silence, also known as the NBA's lockout. But if the
Celtics were
                  paying attention to the trend of their season, they
wouldn't have
                  been surprised by the dispute. 

                  There were no complaints with their January. That's
when Robert
                  Parish returned to the FleetCenter to have his
peculiar number, 00,
                  retired. He was flanked by Kevin McHale and Larry
Bird, bringing
                  back memories of one of the league's all-time great
frontcourts.
                  And never mind that the current Celtics lost that
game to Bird's
                  Pacers. Only nine days later, Antoine Walker was
named to the
                  Eastern Conference All-Star team. He had spent the
previous
                  weeks doubting that he had national support, seeming
to forget
                  that the nation found out who he was when he scored
49 points
                  against the Wizards Jan.7. 

                  But that is where the up/down trend began. Because
as intriguing
                  as Walker's performance was, the Celtics still lost.
That was the
                  perfect preface for February, a month when you
learned to say,
                  ''Yeah, but what's the catch?'' when someone told
you something
                  good about the Celtics. 

                  A rookie named Chauncey Billups can tell you about
that. For
                  months, the point guard had heard rumors that the
Celtics were
                  going to trade him. They finally did Feb. 18. The
worst thing about it
                  for Billups was that he had to fly with the team
from Sacramento to
                  Vancouver, British Columbia, even though he knew he
was no
                  longer a part of it. He was a Raptor, just like Dee
Brown, Roy
                  Rogers, and John Thomas. The Celtics helped
themselves by
                  acquiring veteran point man Kenny Anderson in the
deal, but all
                  coach Rick Pitino had to do was go home to find out
how
                  unpopular the trade was. 

                  ''My son said he is going to run away from home,''
Pitino said of
                  Richard Pitino, who had grown close to Billups. ''He
hasn't talked to
                  me in two days.''

                  Brown did not mind being traded. He had begun 1996
by asking to
                  be traded and, finally, Pitino set him free. But not
before he left his
                  name in the FleetCenter books, dropping a record
eight 3-pointers
                  on the Mavericks Feb. 4. 

                  Up and down. Coming and going. In and out. That
theme didn't
                  stop in April when Walker scored a
FleetCenter-record 43 points -
                  only to be told to ''throw them out the window''
because Pitino
                  thought his forward's defense was poor in a loss to
the Nets. And
                  then, in the same month that the Celtics broke
ground for a new
                  training facility in Waltham, passersby in the North
End saw the
                  empty Boston Garden falling to earth before their
eyes. 

                  In the building next to the demolished Garden, the
Celtics often
                  played to sellouts and excited fans with their
pressing style. But
                  they were too young and too small to make the
playoffs, finishing
                  with 36 wins. The good thing about those wins? They
allowed the
                  Celtics to have prime draft position. They took
Kansas's Paul
                  Pierce with the 10th pick, a selection that had
people psyched
                  about the 1998-99 season. Except, well, there would
be no
                  1998-99 season. At least not the '98 part of it. 

                  Unsure of how they can split $2 billion, the NBA
players and
                  owners shut down their league. Before the lockout
began, Pitino
                  had mentioned that a 5-foot-10-inch (maybe) guard
named Tyus
                  Edney was his best point man. Edney should have
known about the
                  trend and packed up then. On the day before the
lockout, Edney
                  was waived. 

                  During the summer and fall and winter, there was
finger-pointing
                  and posturing from all sides. Players blaming owners
and owners
                  blaming players. But the Celtics' offices on
Merrimac Street were
                  basically quiet. Not good. Which means, if you are
following the
                  trend, that we must be on the verge of something
good. 




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------------------------------

Date: Sun, 27 Dec 1998 08:09:26 -0500
From: Way Of The Ray <wayray@ix.netcom.com>
Subject: Matt Steinmetz: Season, But No Inter-Conference Play

[Hot CoCo]

   Published on December 27, 1998                         
                                                         
   NBA: MATT STEINMETZ                                      

   Stern is too image-conscious to let season be canceled

   FACT: THERE WILL BE an NBA season this year.

   It's going to begin in late January or early February. It's going to
   be about 45 games long with teams playing only teams from their own
   conference, and when the playoffs begin, fans are going to be
   interested.

   Bottom line.

   Why? Because commissioner David Stern wouldn't have it any other way.

   Despite his fatalistic rhetoric -- nothing more than a transparent
   strategy -- the last thing he wants to do is cancel the season
   because it would jeopardize his lasting legacy as commissioner. What
   needs to be remembered about Stern is he is as image-conscious as
   Michael Jordan and just as competitive, though in a far more subtle
   and controlled way.

   Stern knows in many circles he is considered the most successful and
   competent commissioner any sport has ever known. It is a description
   that drives him; he's too shrewd to let it slip away.

   Regardless how history would judge the possible cancellation of the
   season, whether it goes down as primarily the responsibility of the
   players or owners, it will fall at the feet of Stern, the man who
   presided over it.

   There's no way he'll let that happen. He can talk all he wants about
   sacrificing this season for the long-term success of the league, but
   who can buy that? Stern isn't about to sabotage his presently
   untarnished reputation and wind up in the overfilled ash heap of
   nondescript pro sports commissioners.

   Instead, sometime in the next two weeks, Stern will stand at a
   podium, with union director Billy Hunter close by, and announce the
   owners and players have agreed to a new collective bargaining
   agreement.

   At that point the NBA public relations super-machine will start its
   fastbreak and in no time it will be business as usual. And guess
   what? Here comes Jordan back for one more year.

   After all, Stern wouldn't have it any other way.

   KING FOR MORE THAN A DAY: Kings forward Chris Webber said last
   weekend he's turning over a new leaf and he's prepared to play for
   Sacramento. But give him credit; he doesn't expect anyone to believe
   him.

   "I look at this as a fresh start for me, personally," Webber said.
   "This is a chance to prove to myself the type of things I can do and
   who I am as a person. I don't expect you all to believe me. I expect
   to prove myself. I am 25 years old. The way I look at it, who I am
   hasn't been defined yet. That's what I am looking forward to doing
   from this point on."

   Webber's reputation has taken a beating since his 1994 feud with
   then-Warriors coach Don Nelson. Their doomed relationship led to the
   6-foot-9 forward getting traded to Washington. Since then, Webber has
   had some legal run-ins, but he has managed to extricate himself from
   them.

   This past summer he was cleared of a drug possession charge and a
   complaint of sexual misconduct.

   "Right now I am a King," said Webber, who has yet to visit Sacramento
   or look for a place to live. "Don't take the fact that I haven't gone
   there or been introduced to their media as meaning I don't want to be
   there. When it's time for business, and that's where I'm at, I will
   be there."

   Webber, whose contract runs through 2001, was devastated by the trade
   that brought Mitch Richmond to the Wizards.

   "I reacted poorly, I admit," he said. "But time heals all wounds and
   there came a point where I had to be a man about it."

   ANOTHER VIEW: Hawks center backup Ivano Newbill, one of the class of
   NBA's middle- to lower-end players whose voice is seldom heard during
   the dispute, probably represents most of them. Newbill's take is
   simple: He wants the lockout to be over.

   "We should have been playing by the first of December," he said. "If
   it had been up to me they would have chosen 10 guys from each side,
   put them in a room with 10 cots, food and water and a toilet. Paper
   and pencils. No deodorant, no shaving gear, no telephone or TV, no
   calculators. Then I'd have locked the door, left them in there 'til
   they made a deal. Let them fight over the cots. I'd bet we'd get a
   deal."

   THE BONUS: Raptors forward Charles Oakley's biggest hobby is driving
   a car. He'll often get into one and drive for 12 to 15 hours a day,
   visiting friends all over the country. Said Oakley: "I just kind of
   go. I don't sit around after the season ends. When I'm traveling, I'm
   traveling. I don't wait for no one. When I'm gone, I'm gone. And when
   I come back, I come back." ... Trail Blazers center Kelvin Cato had a
   questionable reputation when he came into the league from Iowa State.
   Perhaps that reputation was wrong. If the season is canceled, Cato
   said he'll return to Iowa State to get his degree. He's also close to
   finishing work on a series of children's books that could be ready
   for publication next month. ... In an interview last week, free-agent
   guard Brent Barry indicated he wanted to come to a West Coast team
   and said the Warriors would be one of them.

   Edition: LD,  Section: B,  Page: 13


                         ) 1998 Contra Costa Times

------------------------------

Date: Sun, 27 Dec 1998 08:29:40 -0500
From: Way Of The Ray <wayray@ix.netcom.com>
Subject: Bill Reynolds: Sports Produces Flowers Of Hope

        12.27.98 00:25:21
        BILL REYNOLDS
        Despite grasp for dollars, sports produces
        flowers of hope

The past few years I sometimes wonder how much longer I
can keep writing about sports, how much longer I can
continue to care about a world that seems more and more
to be about money and greed, hypocrisy and
exploitation.

There is much not to like about sports in America, as
we head toward the end of the century. The ongoing NBA
lockout is the most visible example, tall millionaires
feuding with short millionaires about how to split up
billions. But it's not the only example. Not on your
life.

The signs are everywhere, constant reminders that money
is the fuel that drives the engine, the business side
of sports always in your face, slapping you upside the
head.

This is the landscape, and it can wear you down.

But just when I'm about ready to say it's all nonsense,
something always happens. Some reaffirmation that
sports are indeed worthwhile, always some flowers that
grow up through the pavement.

This year was no exception.

And it's more than what happened on the national stage,
with Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa again showing us that
sports can be transcendent, can make us all feel better
about ourselves. Not only did McGwire and Sosa combine
to give us a memorable baseball sumemr, they also did
it with grace, dignity, and sportsmanship. And McGwire
even added the Maris family, too, a homage to history
and baseball's tangible link to its storied past.

And it's more than Michael Jordan nailing a jumper to
give the Bulls another NBA title, and John Elway
finally winning a Super Bowl after all these years, two
freeze-frame moments from athletes in their twilight
who we've watched their entire careers.

This year is full of people and moments to remember,
from Doug Flutie's comeback, to Drew Bledsoe's two
last-minute heroics that saved the Pats' season, to the
quiet efficiency of the Yankees. From URI's great run
through the NCAA tournament; to Sara DeCosta, the
Warwick kid who went to Japan as a goalie on the U.S.
Women's Olympic hockey team and came home with a gold
medal; to Mike Cloud, the former Portsmouth All-Stater
who recently was named an All-American running back.

But it's more than all that.

For me, it was another reminder that when you take away
all the money and all the commercialism, all the the
things that seem to drain so much of the joy out of
sports in America, the essence of sports is still there
all around us. You just have to look a little harder
for it.

The past few years I have done that by going to high
school games. It's usually an instant antidote, a
reminder of what I liked about sports in the first
place. Sometimes I'll write about some kid, and
invariably they thank me. But they've got it all wrong.
I should thank them. It's them, and their stories, that
keep me writing about sports.

For there always are new kids.

New kids with the potential to take us along in pursuit
of their dreams.

That is one of the great things about sports; just when
you start to think you have everything figured out,
that you have seen and heard it all, along comes some
new kid to break the stereotype.

In 1995, Tyson Wheeler was a freshman from New London,
Conn., on a bad URI basketball team, a kid who
essentially had been overlooked by bigger schools, just
another freshmen in a college world full of them. Last
March he led the Rams to the upset of Kansas, the
biggest win in the school's history.

Four years ago Jamel Thomas was a freshman at
Providence College and, on the surface, he seemed
locked inside some personal prison, withdrawn, wary, as
though the baggage he'd brought to PC from the Coney
Island streets was so very heavy. Last March, on the
night of PC's basketball dinner, he gave an emotional
talk about Pete Gillen's leaving that can only be
described as eloquent.

Sometimes you never know.

Isn't that one of the reasons we keep watching?

Isn't that one of the great restorative aspects of
sports?

There have been countless times through the years that
I've gone to some interview feeling jaded and worn out,
beaten down by the sameness of it all, the sense that
sports is all one big season that simply goes round and
round, a season that I've already seen to many times
before, only to have someone tell me their story and
hook me all over again.

So I suppose sports are a little like the human spirit.
Just when you think it's been stifled, it comes out
again, inextinguishable. Or you can cover sports with a
patina of money and greed, you can do everything to
cheapen them and make them ugly, but somehow,
somewhere, they will find a way to survive.

For there're always new kids with their dreams.

Always someone else coming along that gives us a reason
to care, always a few flowers that keep growing through
the pavement.