THE NBA / MARK HEISLER : Stopping Jordan Off the Court Even More Difficult

Michael & Us: It ain’t ever going to be the same again.

As Winston Churchill said after the final battle of El-Alamein: “This is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.” This is one of those, a landmark in the basketball-commercial career of Michael Jordan.

If you want to know how it could have happened, check the reaction to the allegations that Jordan lost $1.252 million in golfing bets in a 10-day spree.

His agent, David Falk, scrambled for cover, refusing all comment.

Falk gets a percentage of that $35 million a year Jordan earns. Think he’s going to offend Mike?

A spokesman for Jordan’s shoe company, Nike, said if Jordan wants to bet millions, “that’s up to him.”

Nike earns hundreds of millions off Jordan. Think it’s going to offend Mike?

Bull General Manager Jerry Krause said he didn’t know anything about it, hadn’t asked Jordan about it, didn’t plan to ask him about it and was worried only about beating the New York Knicks.

Jordan has taken the wretched Bulls to paradise and turned their rat-infested mausoleum into a shining palace. Think they’re going to offend Mike?

These days, the Bulls try to hide Jordan even from sight. If it wasn’t for the games, we wouldn’t be sure he still existed. Reporters aren’t allowed into the dressing room until he’s gone. The curtain in front of their practice court is kept down until he’s gone. He walks to his car after games, parked in the bowels of Chicago Stadium, surrounded by a phalanx of security men in yellow jackets.

The NBA office tiptoed in with a cautious statement: “We’re looking into it.” Jordan is the league’s marketing vehicle from here to Ulan Bator. Think it wants to mess with Mike?

Jordan’s father, James, happy to defend his son (“He doesn’t have a gambling problem. He has a competition problem”) when the issue was only an excursion to Atlantic City, dropped out of sight.

Does James know Michael’s competitive instincts extend to $626,000 bets on a round of golf?

Because the father goes out gambling with his high-rolling son, the question arises, is Dad part of the solution or the problem?

Get it?

Nobody says boo about Mike, nobody says boo to Mike.

Jordan represents dollars and sales and victories and pride. If he has become bewildered and lost his way, nobody wants to be the one to tell him.

In the end, he isn’t an asset or a competitor or a role model, or a story, he’s a person.

For a change, let someone dare to acknowledge a concern, not about his privacy, image or professional task at hand, but about him.

MAGIC: THE WEEK THAT WASN’T

In 25 years in the business, Magic Johnson is one of the great people I’ve covered, along with Julius Erving, Nolan Ryan and Matt Millen. His candor has always been his charm, but now it has overflowed.

His comments about his interest in coaching-owning the Clippers cost them Lenny Wilkens, who high-tailed it to Atlanta.

Maybe the Clippers should have nailed down their verbal agreement with Wilkens before he left town. Maybe they should have called up to cool him out after the story of Johnson’s interest broke. But they lost a credible coach who offered them a new quality--stability--and they aren’t singing Johnson’s praises in the Sports Arena.

Johnson then acknowledged that Jerry Buss almost hired him as Laker coach, reconfirming Randy Pfund’s status as coach on a banana peel.

Johnson had sat on that since the story broke two months ago. It would have been nice for Pfund, who has enough problems, if it had stayed that way.

LOTTERY BLUES

It’s broken, so fix it.

In four years, using the present weighted system, the worst team has drafted 1-4-3-4.

The league has been divided into two classes: the lucky and the unlucky.

The unfortunate Miami Heat, a study in intelligent management, has fallen by the wayside.

The lucky Orlando Magic and Charlotte Hornets spent their early years tripping over their shoestrings but became ‘90s powers.

Orlando is still trying to disentangle itself from all the long-term contracts General Manager Pat Williams lavished on journeymen. Hornet owner George Shinn drafted Rex Chapman over Rony Seikaly, nabbed J.R. Reid and had to be talked out of trading for Ralph Sampson.

Before the last lottery, Harvey Ratner, an owner of the Minnesota Timberwolves, who have been both inept and unlucky, asked Commissioner David Stern: “What if Orlando wins the No. 1 pick?”

Ratner says Stern replied, “It would be a disaster.”

Minutes later, Orlando’s one Ping-Pong ball in 66 sneaked to the top.

Stern says the owners will review the system but don’t expect any changes soon.

For one thing, there’s no agreement on an alternative.

One would be to continue drawing for the first pick, but then draft in inverse order of finish, rather than the present system of drawing the first three places and then drafting in inverse order.

Or simply draft in inverse order as the NFL still does, with no hue and cry.

THE MIGHTY (QUIET) QUINN

Dean Smith’s players are charm-school graduates.

John Thompson’s players are regimented but formally polite.

Bob Knight’s players are from another planet.

A couple of months ago, Quinn Buckner, former Indiana star, NBC analyst and future coach of the Dallas Mavericks, told colleague Peter Vecsey on the air, “If you ask me next year the day after we make the pick who we drafted, I still won’t tell you.”

This was weird TV even for star-struck NBC, but you figured Buckner was kidding.

Not exactly, it turns out.

Buckner is serving notice in Dallas that despite his years in “journalism,” he regards even the most routine questions as suspect.

He vowed never to talk again to a Dallas Morning News writer who included the names of Buckner’s children in an otherwise glowing profile.

He wouldn’t talk about what he was looking for in assistant coaches, on the theory that applicants would read the paper and tell him what he wanted to hear.

Asked what he hoped to see in the Mavericks in the last half of the season, he replied it was “an internal matter.”

Good luck.

DESPITE WHAT YOU READ, SUNS STILL RISE

Having written off the Suns two rounds ago, I feel obliged to account for their continued presence:

--Oliver Miller. Trimmed down to the 280s, he’s averaging 3.2 shot blocks in the playoffs. Before, they had only one man--Dan Majerle--who could play defense. Now they’re up to two. --Kevin Johnson. Sometimes he goes back to being Kevin Johnson. --Matchups. A tall, half-court team would have been tough for them since the Lakers, a mediocre, tall, half-court team, almost did them in, but there were none on the horizon. The Spurs were up-tempo. The SuperSonics scramble the game, which is fine for the Suns. They like it scrambled. --Charles Barkley. Just in case anyone was wondering who the best player in the West was.

I still expect the Bulls to squash them.

FACES AND FIGURES

Celebrities by the dozen descended upon Madison Square Garden for the Eastern finals, realizing the dream of the Knicks, who want to turn it into a replica of the Forum in the Lakers’ heyday, even listing the stars present on the postgame note sheet. . . . “With the Lakers, it’s much worse because Jerry Buss makes you go to his brunch before the game,” said comedian Richard Lewis. “What a pain. I have to get up at 4 a.m. to start getting ready. But here, you don’t always sit next to jocks who know what they’re talking about. Sometimes you get stuck with some Lamb Chop, some puppeteer with influence.” . . . Great timing: Just as Charles Smith was having those four layups handed back to him at the end of Game 5, it was learned that he has signed a seven-year $26.6-million contract with the Knicks.

Of the 70 previous lottery picks, 14 have become All-Stars--and 23 have been traded. Eight have played for three teams: Benoit Benjamin, Reggie Williams, Xavier McDaniel, William Bedford, Armon Gilliam, Kenny Smith, Dennis Hopson and Tom Hammonds. . . . Friends of Rick Pitino say you can expect the Kentucky coach back in the NBA in a year or so, that he and his wife have lasted about as long as they can in the small-town atmosphere of Lexington. . . . Big-time college and pro coaches are eyeing two plum NBA jobs: Charlotte and Orlando. The Hornets and Magic are coached by Allan Bristow and Matt Guokas, respectively, but that’s not slowing anyone down.