All-Star Players Score Points, Make Points : Basketball: Magic Johnson charity event features no-shows and no defense, but plenty of talk about decertification issue.

Magic Johnson’s floating Mid-Summer Night’s All-Star Game, driven from its Forum home by the NBA lockout, alighted in the Pond of Anaheim where the Teal team, led by Cedric Ceballos’ 43 points, beat the White team, 203-195, Sunday night.

Several stars like Grant Hill, Chris Webber, Tim Hardaway and Shawn Kemp dropped out because of insurance problems. The players who participated did so after getting letters from their teams advising them that in case of injury, they were on their own.

“I received a letter from the Mavericks,” said Jason Kidd, “saying that if I played in this game and I got hurt, they didn’t have to pay my contract. But this is a workout for me and it’s a great charity.”

Talk of the upcoming players union decertification vote dominated discussion. Of four players polled before the game, none knew how he’d vote.

However, Adam Keefe of the Jazz criticized the tactics of the insurgent agents and players.

“I completely disagree with the way they went about it,” Keefe said.

“I think they make some good points but don’t think the deal is so bad, it needs to be killed. I think it needs to be worked on. . . . It seems to me, the players are making money and the owners are making so much money, all they have to do is to control players’ salaries and match them to team revenue. It seems so easy to me to negotiate it. Instead, it’s turned into a nightmare. You’ve got egos involved and it’s not pretty.

“I went to the decertification meeting here last week. I had heard it was a players’ meeting. It wasn’t. It was more an agents’ meeting. I was the victim of a temper tantrum by one of the agents. He cussed me out and he cussed out some others who were asking questions.”

Keefe refused to identify the angry agent but another player who attended the meeting said it was Santa Monica-based Arn Tellem, who has been a leader in the agents’ decertification movement.

In keeping with the times on Sunday night, even less defense was played than usual. The first quarter score was Teal 61, White 45.

Promoters said they distributed 13,385 tickets and the event netted $550,000 for the American Negro College Fund.

And despite NBA orders because of the lockout, Earvin Johnson did show up. It was Earvin III, Magic’s 3-year-old son.