At This Point, Everyone Can Talk the Talk

Point, Counterpoint: It’s a confusing time, with teams breaking off for what seems like weeks on end and everyone killing time by trading charges.

Now we get even more agenda-setting and self-congratulating, with everyone taking themselves even more seriously and a doting press publishing it all as if it were Churchill’s Iron Curtain speech.

In order to make sense of this 16-team Tower of Babble, I have compiled a glossary of common playoff usage:

Joke--Something funny I say about someone.

Insult--Something funny someone says about me.

Analysis--Breakdown of a game to point out how the referees cheated us this time. (See Dallas owner Mark Cuban.)

Crybaby--Analyst on the other side, who points out how the referees cheated them. See also: Whiner.

Religious freedom--Constitutionally protected right to share my beliefs with you.

Proselytizing--Wasting my time by telling me what you believe in.

Respect--What I give everyone.

Disrespect--What everyone gives me and everything I touch. (See Milwaukee Coach George Karl).

OK, now we’re ready to review some of the first-round series:

MILWAUKEE vs. ORLANDO

This series needed some comic relief and Karl was up to it.

George mewed about being ignored by NBC (“I think that’s a slap at us. No question in my mind, the respect isn’t there yet. . . . To be maligned and dissed, there’s a moment of anger there . . . “) and zinged by Orlando’s Doc Rivers (“I’ve seen George’s first-round playoff history and we kind of like his first-round mishaps.”)

For a capper, Karl decided he was taking the Magic’s staying in Chicago, because of a beer distributors’ convention in Milwaukee, personally too.

“We could have found them some hotels,” Karl said. “I’m disappointed. I think the league should have stood up to them and made them stay here. I think we’ll stay in Miami when we go down there to play.”

As far as Orlando was concerned, Karl started it last spring, criticizing the Magic for planning to unload players to pursue free agents.

“George Karl must have taken something I said personal,” Rivers said, “but he didn’t want us to take personal what he said last year. You can’t have it both ways. . . .

“I have never questioned George Karl’s ability to coach. He’s been coaching in the playoffs for 11 years. In 10 years, I hope they say I can coach as good as George Karl. I just hope I’m not that insecure.”

Here’s the scary thing: Karl just signed a $7-million-a-year extension.

Imagine being that rich and unhappy at the same time.

NEW YORK vs. TORONTO

This had it all: Vince Carter’s annual playoff struggle (Kobe Bryant wants to be Michael Jordan, but Vince just wants to be Vince), a holy war and a hostage crisis involving Marcus Camby’s mother and sisters.

It all ran together in the New York tabloids. Someone asked Kurt Thomas if Camby’s tragedy might help the team by unifying it behind Marcus.

“I didn’t want them to talk about it in light terms, like it’s a distraction,” Coach Jeff Van Gundy said, supplying needed perspective. “Basketball is inconsequential when you’re talking about a young woman and a family who’s had their life changed forever. I just hate when the two are brought up at the same time.”

The New York Post’s Wallace Matthews blasted “a network idiot” for minimizing the impact of Charlie Ward’s remarks and joking Ward had tickets to “Fiddler on the Roof.”

That wasn’t just any network idiot, either. It was NBC’s Peter Vecsey, who also writes for Matthews’ paper.

Offended Knick fans booed Ward . . . until he scored seven points in the fourth quarter of the

Game 1 victory and they decided the statute of limitations had run out.

Knick fans, of course, are delusional anyway, still paying large on the assumption their team is a legitimate contender, which it’s not.

Carter, who shot 30% in last spring’s sweep by the Knicks, went five for 22 in Game 1, and had everyone, including teammates, rolling their eyes, explaining afterward he’s just one of the guys.

Vince bounced back for 22 in a Raptor victory, suggesting 1) he’s not hopeless, he just hates pressure, and 2) the Knicks’ run of miracles that carried them to the last two Eastern finals, is in trouble.

CHARLOTTE vs. MIAMI

The Heat no-showed against the long-lame Hornets. Alonzo Mourning averaged 12 points and 5.3 rebounds. Anthony Mason, their most valuable player until Mourning came back, averaged three points while getting the ball on almost every play. Old Tim Hardaway was outscored by young Baron Davis, 40-5.

Of course, the Hornets now had . . . Headband Power?

Yes! Talk about your tiresome angles, they had all decided to wear headbands, which, they said, enabled them to turn their long underachieving history around.

“It gives us a feeling like we’re Superman or something,” P.J. Brown said. “Take it off, we’re Clark Kent.”

DALLAS vs. UTAH

After a season of taking the credit for Don Nelson’s renaissance, and paying $505,000 in fines, Cuban was still vowing to remain his own madman, er, man.

“It’s like they want me to be a Stepford owner, or somebody’s Stepford’s wife,” he said. “ . . . I didn’t get this far to try to go to the David Stern School of Behavioral Modification.”

He and his team then proceeded to blow up right on schedule.

How’s this for a coincidence? After a season of hearing their owner blast the refs, his players had developed a massive persecution complex.

They lost Game 1 in the Delta Center by two points--after drawing six technical fouls--and drew four more Ts in Game 2.

After Game 1, Nelson said the Jazz “manipulate referees so well with their flops” and “abuse the rules.”

Nellie, a great manipulator in his own right, might have meant it as a compliment. Once when coaching Golden State, he fined players in training camp if they failed to yell at any contact with an opposing player, which was designed to make the officials think they’d been fouled.

The Jazz, of course, remains the Jazz.

Karl Malone, asked about Nelson’s comments, snickered: “I hate soaps. I don’t watch soap operas and I don’t have any desire to be part of one.”

Love that Mailman.

PORTLAND vs. LAKERS

So much for the Dysfunction Bowl.

We thought the Lakers had problems until Nurse Ratched’s ward showed up.

After getting bombed in Game 1, the Trail Blazer gangstas resolved to empty the clip, as one put it, in Game 2. Even so, he undoubtedly meant in the game, not by elbowing Robert Horry (what did he ever do to anyone?), as Dale Davis did, or getting tossed out on technical fouls long after the game was decided, as Rasheed Wallace did.

The Trail Blazers returned home to see themselves billed as “an abomination” in the Oregonian, and be asked by local reporters if they were embarrassed.

Why now? This has been going on all season.

“Yeah, I think we were a little bit,” a somber Damon Stoudamire said, “but I think it’s something that’s over. We can’t really get it back, so . . . Can’t do anything about it, just try and look forward to tomorrow.”

Of course, Stoudamire hadn’t done anything. Davis and Wallace, who had, waved the press away.

Have a nice summer and get some therapy, OK guys?

FACES AND FIGURES

No, Jordan’s not coming to the Lakers, although his confidants keep mentioning it as a possibility. NBC’s Ahmad Rashad, toasted by critics for throwing it out in the usual softball interview, told USA Today’s Rudy Martzke: “People keep seeing me as Michael’s shill. I’m not a shill. He’s a grown man. He makes his own decisions. Look, Dick Schaap had Wilt [Chamberlain], Howard Cosell had Muhammad Ali and they never had to take the stuff I take about Michael.” Of course, Howard and Muhammad didn’t go to dinner together, nor did Cosell drive Ali around.

The odds are looking better and better that Jordan will return with the Wizards. Charles Barkley is now working out twice a day with Jordan’s trainer and says he’ll come back if Jordan does.

Frugal Boston owner Paul Gaston, who crashed and burned with Rick Pitino, is going back to his cheap ways. Instead of bringing in a big name, like Danny Ainge, to run the organization, he’s rehiring interim Coach Jim O’Brien and Pitino’s front-office staff. With Pitino gone, Gaston will save $6 million annually.

John Stockton, asked if experience made the difference between the Jazz and Mavericks: “It pretty much has to be the whole thing because we don’t have anything else.”