You Didn’t Need to Be Kreskin to Predict This

Imagine that, Dennis Rodman acts up.

Yeah, and the sun rises each morning.

Let’s cut to the chase. This is not a “fairness” issue. It isn’t about the league’s sanctions or Rodman’s due process. Despite the million-dollar implications and impending involvement of 10,000 or so lawyers, it would be a travesty to burden our legal system with it.

It’s about one sick pup who’s demonstrably out of control, the NBA’s, the Bulls’, Dwight Manley’s, Madonna’s, whoever’s.

For all the sensation he causes, he’s an unfortunate man who had a stark childhood and lives a fractured present none of the tattooing, piercing, pranks and photo-ops-in-drag can redress. He’s defensive to the point of delusionary and a multimillionaire megastar, which makes him, of course, not mad but eccentric.

It would be great if the league shrink could help him, but the sad truth is psychiatry ain’t far enough along to crack this nut or we’d have a lot more happy people around.

Disciplinary measures pale before a spirit so strong. The best Commissioner David Stern and the Pistons, Spurs and Bulls have been able to manage in the ‘90s is to put Rodman on the defensive for a month or two, after which the jack is out of the box again.

It isn’t about whether cameramen should be on the baseline. They shouldn’t, but it’s for TV, which pays the freight.

All players hate metal lenses they can run into and legs they can trip over, but the guys on the baseline are working stiffs doing their jobs, not targets for displaced aggression. Last March, Rodman dived over the baseline at the United Center, collided with a Chicago Tribune photographer, seized the man’s camera and smashed it into the floor.

After that, Coach Phil Jackson said he told Rodman, “We don’t need that.”

That was lame, but Jackson has a use for Rodman. Stern, on the other hand, does not. The league doesn’t like Dennis, feels embarrassed by him, considers him a tawdry pro wrestler in its graceful ballet, even as it reaps a publicity and ratings windfall from having him on the Bulls.

Nevertheless, I’m not worried that Stern was too tough. A man who makes $9 million to play a game has an obligation to it, not to mention the little people who are part of the process, and if he gets pared down to $8 million, big deal.

Stern has an entire league veering toward Whackoville and if he wants to do a suspension a week--let’s start with the entire Jail Blazer franchise!--here’s to you, Commish.

STAY IN SCHOOL FROM SOMEONE WHO KNOWS

In an important development in the game’s unfettered youth rebellion, Jermaine O’Neal says he made a mistake.

O’Neal is the 18-year-old, 6-foot-10 forward from Eau Claire, S.C., chosen in the first round by the Portland Trail Blazers. He has gotten some playing time and, contrary to what skeptics (hello) predicted, has looked very good.

“If I had it to do over again, I would have thought about it a lot more and I would have gone to college,” O’Neal told the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. “There’s a lot of other things than basketball you have to deal with. Mentally, I think the NBA is a little too much for 17- and 18-year-olds to deal with. . . .

“I miss the college experience. In high school, I was able to do whatever I wanted to do. There weren’t that many big bodies or guys bigger than me to play against. Now I’m up against a lot of bigger, stronger guys, and I’m lacking that experience of playing against guys like that. . . .

“Sometimes, you have to sit and watch some games. Some nights you play 24 minutes, the next game you might not play at all. That’s what I have to deal with. . . .

“[Kevin Garnett] kind of opened the doors for guys like Kobe [Bryant] and me. I just thought I would be able to do it. Now that three people have done it, everybody thinks they can do it. It’s going to take one person to fail for everybody to realize that everybody’s not ready for the NBA. . . .

“If you have a chance to go to college, then go to college first and get at least a couple of years in.”

YOU CAN TOO GO HOME AGAIN

It was nice of the Lakers to give Cedric Ceballos a swell send-off, like Eddie Jones saying, “Nobody is this locker room didn’t not like Cedric. Everybody was cool with him.”

Of course “didn’t not like” isn’t the same thing as “like,” is it? We prefer Nick Van Exel’s eloquent “No comment,” as the defining organizational posture.

If there was a team in position to take someone who had obviously been a pain in the rear, it was the Suns. They had already had Ceballos and knew there was an OK guy in there, even if he lost his bearings for a while and went stark, raving star struck.

It’s not that he was never in trouble as a Sun. He was arrested for carrying a gun in a Tempe nightclub, and hosted a party so wild, Oliver Miller wound up getting shipped out over his part in it.

On the other hand, Ceballos showed up, played and got better. Today, a guy who can average 20 points looks pretty good in Phoenix. Ceballos got a warmer welcome in America West Arena than Jason Kidd and scored 49 points in his first two outings, both wins.

Meanwhile, everyone is trying to get beyond things like the famous boating trip.

“At least he can get to Lake Havasu quicker now so he’ll be able to get to practice the next day,” Coach Danny Ainge said.

As a Laker, Ceballos never quite saw the humor in it, but upon arrival in Phoenix, mused, “I hear that the boat show is in town.”

Maturity, it’s so . . . expensive.

NAMES AND NUMBERS

Toronto’s Isiah Thomas, noting the NFL expansion teams’ success, finally went off about the NBA rules that bar the new Canadian teams from a salary cap the size of everyone else’s until next season, and from the top pick in the draft until 1999. “Give me their [NFL’s] rules of free agency and I would have gone right after Shaq [O’Neal],” Thomas said. “I think we would have had a real good shot at getting him too. Here’s Tim Duncan coming out of college, and we need a center like him. You know he’s going to be the first pick and you don’t have a shot at him.”

Charles Barkley, upset at the Knicks’ Charles Oakley after their preseason rumble, held a night of torture for him in Houston, scoring 29 points on him, taunting him, once blowing a bubble in his face. After the Rockets had won by 20, Barkley dismissed the entire team, sneering at their competition (“They’ll go back to the East Coast soon. They’ll get another winning streak.”) and acquisitions (“Well, their best two-guard is sitting on the bench, that’s a good place to start, John Starks. Allan Houston’s a pretty good player, but he’s not as good as John Starks.”).

Got a light, Red? (cont.): The NBA staged another nostalgia deal as part of its 50th anniversary commemoration, scheduling the Knicks and Celtics home and home, with old players from each riding from Boston to New York by train in between. Just like the old days, get it? The Knicks led the first night in the FleetCenter when team President Red Auerbach made a halftime speech to the crowd: “Standing here now, all I can say is, we’ll be back. These guys over there did it and these kids will do it too.” You guessed it. These kids didn’t that night or the next, losing two by a combined 26 points.

Obligatory note: Having had all that fun with Yinka Dare’s two-year assist total--0--I’m compelled to report that he got not one but two last week. . . . After the Dallas Mavericks scored 66 points against the Orlando Magic, Jamal Mashburn and Jim Jackson obliquely criticized Coach Jim Cleamons’ offense. “We’ve got guys on this team who can score and have proven they can score,” Jackson said. “But we’re not allowed to use that to our ability. In the past, this team never had trouble scoring.” Co-owner Frank Zacanelli called both players in, bawled them out, told them there would be no more trades this season and they’re here for the duration.

Coach Larry Brown, asked about the Indiana Pacers’ chartered plane, last used by Bob Dole: “Are you kidding me? I ask myself that every day. I’m superstitious as hell. We’re all thinking this is a bad omen.”