Season’s Greetings

A new NBA season opens tonight, with two women referees. Women have put up with men whistling at them. Now, they can whistle at men.

This has been a difficult year for NBA officials, with as many as 15 refs accused of selling first-class airplane tickets, flying coach and pocketing the difference.

It is the NBA’s first traveling violation in years.

Out here in the Land Without Pro Football, the pro basketball season is beginning just in time. (The men’s pro basketball season, I mean.)

I still don’t know when we will get an NFL team, but I do know L.A. City Councilman Mike Hernandez is pretty upset about it. He must be. He keeps sniffling.

A couple of years from now, the Lakers will play their home opener in a new arena downtown, wherever downtown is.

Apparently, the arena will be known as Staples Arena, the NBA having run out of airlines.

Staples is a company that sells office supplies. I guess each Laker can get a free beeper to wear on his uniform and a free cellular phone to call his agent from the bench.

I have a feeling when the Lakers use a point guard, Staples will have him announced as the “No. 2 pencil point guard.”

Well, at least Radio Shack didn’t offer to fund the arena and change the spelling of “Shack” to a q.

In tonight’s NBA openers, the Lakers (unfortunately, minus Shaquille O’Neal) meet the Utah Jazz (unfortunately, minus John Stockton) at the Forum, while the Clippers (unfortunately, minus nobody) travel to Phoenix to play the Clipper-caliber Suns.

The league’s 1997 openers feature no Shaq, no Stockton, no Scottie Pippen, no Alonzo Mourning, no Shawn Kemp, even no Keith Van Horn. I don’t know about Charles Barkley. It depends how he did in this week’s NBA All-Star fan-throw contest.

One more injury or suspension, and the “NBA on NBC” will be billed as the “CBA on NBC.”

When we last left the Lakers, they were being eliminated by the Jazz from the playoffs. I don’t remember much of that series, except that Nick Van Exel got hacked on the last shot of Game 2, but no call was made. That’s what happens when you get stuck with male referees.

After that game, the Lakers locked their locker-room door and, to my knowledge, never came out. I believe some of them are still in there. The TV guys from L.A. flew all the way to Salt Lake City, to film an empty hallway. Trust me, it isn’t easy to get a sound bite from a door.

I have seen many people pick the Lakers to win the Western Conference and go to the 1998 NBA finals.

I have seen other people pick the Lakers as low as fourth in their own division.

They haven’t changed much. Rick Fox is the new body, Robert Horry is the new buffed body, Kobe Bryant is the old vet of 19 and Nick Van Exel claims he is the New Nick Van Exel. I don’t know how Shaq is. He has a strained abdominal muscle, probably from making bad movies.

No big trades were made . . . but that’s what Cedric Ceballos thought, when last season began.

I thought the Lakers had everything they needed last season, with Horry joining Van Exel and Eddie Jones to do the outside shooting. Unfortunately, during the playoffs in particular, Horry, Van Exel and Jones each demonstrated the outside-shooting touch of Benoit Benjamin. I have seen better shooting in a YMCA. (And I mean the one sung by the Village People.)

For several seasons, I watched Jones score points for the Lakers in bunches, only to have Del Harris tell us during last year’s playoffs that Eddie’s offense is irrelevant, as long as he plays defense. A guy averaging 17 points a game throws single-singles at the Portland Trail Blazers, and we’re not supposed to notice?

As for the Clippers . . .

(Excuse me. As for YOUR . . . NBA! . . . PLAYOFF! . . . MAKING! . . . LOS ANGELES CLIPPPPP-ERRRRRS!)

Things are looking up. For one thing, they got rid of Stanley Roberts, the center who never met a game he couldn’t miss. Stanley’s seven-year NBA career has included six or seven excellent quarters.

The Clippers probably will finish far behind the Lakers in the standings, unless something horrible happens to the Lakers, like running into Charles Barkley in a bar.