By Percy Allen
Seattle Times NBA reporter
AUBURN HILLS, Mich. — Will everyone in the NBA who's not playing a basketball game tomorrow do us all one big favor and just SHUT UP!
Please. Zip it. Shhhhhh. Silence. Hold your tongue. Talk to the hand. Close your trap. And. Be. Quiet!
Can you do that? Just for a little while. Can you wait until after the NBA Finals, the signature event in your sport, to say whatever you feel you need to say?
That goes for you Dan Gilbert, the Cleveland Cavaliers owner who has become something of an ambulance chaser while waiting for the Detroit Pistons to expire before claiming coach Larry Brown.
And as one NBA executive told me yesterday, "Phil Jackson knew exactly what he was doing when he chose now of all times to return to the Lakers."
Bad timing? You bet.
And what's with Will Smith rapping before games? Stevie Wonder on the harmonica is one thing, but Will Smith? Save it for the All-Star Game.
Even David Stern is guilty of sabotaging the Finals with illogical news conferences about European training camps in 2006, updates on the collective-bargaining talks and silly doomsday threats directed at the players' union.
Said the Commish: "They [the union] are making a tragic mistake in their calculation, given the coalition that has been put together amongst NBA owners to make this deal, to be this conciliatory. If July 1 comes and there's a lockout, the union will have made a mistake of epic proportions that I don't think the average member of the rank and file understands is taking place."
I mean really, who talks like this — "a mistake of epic proportions"?
That kind of rhetoric predictably pushed players' union director Billy Hunter to summon the assembled media at the Finals to Troy, Mich., where he responded to Stern's allegations at a news conference.
So when we should be marveling at the exploits of Ben Wallace, pondering the plight of Tim Duncan and enjoying this chess match in basketball shoes, we get Jackson in prime-time interviews and Stern and Hunter trading verbal jabs.
Enough!
Focus, people. Remember what's important. The game is the thing. If you're not talking about Xs and Os, then you're hurting the NBA.
It might be blasphemous for a person in my position to make such an audacious suggestion. We media types do enjoy a juicy scoop and loose lips, but it seems as if the NBA relishes soap operas more than anyone else.
Here's an idea for the league office. You want to know why the series seems certain to finish with the second-lowest television ratings in Finals history? It's because on most days the big story in the NBA has nothing to do with the Finals.
I asked a league official why the NBA doesn't institute a moratorium on major announcements — no hirings or firings — during the Finals the way Major League Baseball does at the start of the World Series. I was told league executives had never really considered that idea.
Well, they should think about it.
But maybe it's time to acknowledge an uglier truth that we purists don't want to admit. I'm tired of browbeating those who believe this Finals matchup is boring. Perhaps they're right. Maybe what NBA fans simply want are big names, 360-degree slam dunks and controversy.
Maybe that explains the increasing popularity of streetballers and the And 1 Mix Tape Tour, which nabbed the cover of Sports Illustrated this week. Maybe it's why the WNBA, which plays below the rim, has more of a cult than continental appeal.
And if all of that is true, then no amount of single-minded devotion can save these Finals, because it's just not sexy enough. Ben and Rasheed Wallace or Duncan and Manu Ginobili just don't carry the same weight as Kobe and Shaq.
"We don't really do drama in San Antonio, so if that's what fans want, then they're not going to find it here," Spurs general manager R.C. Buford said. "I'd like to think that good basketball will always be enough."
It never has been. Not for the NBA, which has always marketed its stars while the NFL promotes the game, MLB leans on its tradition and heritage, and the NHL promises violence and mayhem.
Still, there are a few of us riveted to the defensive matchups.
With remote control in hand and the TiVo humming, Nate McMillan held a 45-minute basketball tutorial with his 13-year-old daughter and reviewed the first quarter of Game 3.
"Watch the footwork," he said. "Watch how they're never out of position. Your feet follow where your head takes you."
McMillan is not only the Sonics' coach, he's an NBA fan.
"I understand where most people are coming from when they say they don't like this kind of basketball," he said. "It's like going to a boxing match and nobody throws a punch. Just 12 rounds of the rope-a-dope.
"My little girl could appreciate what was going on, but I had to use the TiVo and slow things down. ... There's a lot of subtleties going on here. Larry has Detroit playing at a high level, better than almost anything defensively I've seen in a long time."
Few have been a bigger advocate for playing the game the right way than Brown, but he, too, needs to just shut up at times.
One day, he has clandestine meetings with the Cavaliers, and the next he blasts the NBA for its pregame concerts and rightly states that "the game is the thing." Brown, like the league he represents, is sending mixed messages about his priorities.
Is it the game or the drama?
In large and disturbing numbers, many fans are turning their backs to both.
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Sometimes I do wish they would just shut the _ up. Especially when my team is losing.
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