The Cincinnati Enquirer from Cincinnati, Ohio • Page 46

"tnr D4 Thursday, October 31. 1996 SPORTS The Cincinnati Enquirer oard OKs financial aid plan for small-market teams him to miss most of last season. Toronto on Nov. 8, and at home NBA with Los Angeles won't come before the team's third game of the season at the earliest, and he might be placed on the injured list. Bryant, making the transition from high school to the NBA, will miss the season-opener against Phoenix on Friday night and the second game against Minnesota on Sunday night because of a strained left hip flexor, team spokesman John Black said.

Both games will be played at the Forum. The Lakers' next four games are at New York on Tuesday; at Charlotte on Wednesday; at point. With the salary cap due to rise above $30 million in the next few years, and with teams required to spend at least three-quarters of that amount on player salaries, some owners have been worried that they won't be able to turn a profit without assistance. "You have to be a relatively small market and have revenues that don't go beyond a certain level, and you have to meet certain criteria to establish that your team is being run properly," deputy commissioner Russ Granik said. LAKERS: Kobe Bryant's debut against Atlanta on Nov.

10. Bryant, who turned 18 on Aug. 23, was injured in the Lakers' preseason game against Philadelphia on Oct. 18. Black also said that forward Jerome Kersey, who suffered a fractured left foot during the preseason, would be placed on the injured list today.

MAVERICKS: Dallas forward Jamal Mashburn will suit up for Friday night's season opener and could play, depending on his recovery from knee surgery that caused Huggins' coaching still entertaining BY JOHN FAY The Cincinnati Enquirer Kevin O'Neill, Bob Huggins' good buddy and Tennessee coach, was at the University of Cincinnati men's basketball practice Wednesday. He showed up on a day Huggins was on the warpath. "It's great entertainment," said O'Neill, who also is a former Marquette coach. So are the Bearcats all they're ranked to be? Too early to tell, O'Neill said. "I don't think you'll know until they start playing games," he said.

"They have a good team, they're well-coached, and they play hard. But you can't put a lot of stock in ratings right now." Huggins isn't. "Bob's not coaching them like they're No. 1," O'Neill said. "He's coaching them like he always coaches them." NO UC ON TV: UC's opener in Puerto Rico will not be televised the only UC game not on TV.

If the Bearcats win, their second game will be on ESPN, as will be the championship. The starting times of two other games on the UC schedule have ftv Ira yyil -T I 1 I y- ii -f i Enquirer wire services NEW YORK The NBA Board of Governors approved a plan Wednesday to provide up to $3 million a year of financial assistance to low-revenue teams. Between five and eight teams are expected to qualify for the payments, which will come from a special account the league has been building for four years. "We've been leaving it there for what we'd call a rainy day, and it's 1 just begun drizzling," commissioner David Stern said last week. The fund, which has grown to Rockets high on Barkley Los Angeles Times SAN DIEGO First he takes over your locker room, then your team, then your town.

Oops! There goes the first frontier. "I need two tickets!" bare-chested Charles Barkley announces to his new Houston Rocket teammates in the San Diego Sports Arena's tiny visitors' dressing room before an exhibition. "I'll pay you back in Sacramento!" The other Houston players duck their heads. This used to be such a quiet team: mild-mannered Hakeem Olajuwon, soft-spoken Clyde Drexler and about eight guys out of the CBA happy to be anywhere. Who parked this sound truck in here? 'Bill!" Barkley yells to assistant coach Bill Berry, who is foolish enough to flash his two complimentary tickets.

"Who those for? If they're not for your wife, can I have them?" IThey're for my wife's friend," says Berry, looking unhappy, a moth hoping this forest fire leaves him alone. "That's not important," Barkley says. "What's your wife going to leave you?" They might as well get used to it. Everywhere they go, Mr. Sociability needs tickets.

Everywhere he goes, he makes more friends. In New York the week before, he went to the China Club with Cecil Fielder and Derek Jeter. Here he took in Junior Seau's restaurant. He 1 drinks with the athletes he identifies with, the sportswriters he-reviles and the general public; if he-gets into trouble, it's because hers out where trouble can find him and because he's Charles. As usual, he is surrounded by reporters.

Not only do his teammates have to listen to him, they have to watch him monopolize their press. If anyone wants to ask them anything these days, it's something about Barkley. Dressing net to him is even worse, with the overflow around him stepping on their toes and Barkley using them for props in his jokes. of all, Clyde should take that personal," Barkley booms to the inevitable question about the team's advanced age, making sure Drexler, 34, dressing next to him, can hear. "Man, that stuff don't bother me.

ain't no big deal! We do have an old team! We got Clyde Drexlej! We're not sure how old Dream is!" Olajuwon is 33, but tlie Rockets still picture him ridinglions in the The Associated Press against Chicago's Dennis Rodman, is already stirring things up in Cleveland among 8 original franchises "I don't know if I'll even play or how much, but I'll be suited up and ready to go," said Mashburn, who last week expected to start the year on the injured list. Dallas has 14 players on its roster and likely will put two players on the injured list to get down to the 12. Those two probably will be rookie Samaki Walker and Greg Dreiling. Mashburn, who played only 18 games last season before experiencing pain in his knee, had been headed for a minimum absence of five games. UC BASKETBALL changed.

The home games with North Carolina Charlotte Qan. 21) and Saint Louis (Feb. 13) have been moved from 7:30 to 8:05 p.m. ELSEWHERE: The Rutgers basketball program is close to getting an official visit from its No. 1 recruiting target, Jersey City St.

Anthony guard Anthony Perry. The NCAA allows high school prospects five paid recruiting St. Anthony coach Bob Hurley Sr. confirmed Wednesday that Perry will take his first this weekend. "He's going to Syracuse," Hurley said.

"Then I think the following weekend he's tentatively scheduled to go to Georgetown and then Connecticut the weekend after that. "That's three weekends in a row.and we're going to try to get the other two in early in the basketball season." Hurley said Rutgers, Seton Hall and St. John's are the three schools vying for Perry's last two visits, but said a school will probably be cut from the recruiting battle when it signs another shooting guard in the coming weeks. WOMEN'S NBA WNBA and will not allow its players to compete in the rival league. The WNBA teams will be sponsored by the NBA franchises in each city and will play in NBA arenas, but they will not be known as the Lady Knicks, Lady Hornets, etc.

The Los. Angeles franchise will be operated by the Lakers. Team names will be announced in February. "For the league to succeed, it eventually will have to stand on its own two feet," WNBA president Val Ackerman said. "As time goes on, we'll want to create as much of a stand-alone identity as we can." NBC will broadcast a game every Saturday afternoon, and ESPN (Monday or Tuesday night) and Lifetime (Friday night) will each televise one game per week.

The semifinals will be played Aug. 28, and NBC will televise the championship game Aug. 30. FIGURE SKATING wrist injuries suffered in a collision with another skater. Russia's Anjelika Krylova and Oleg Ovsiannikov, world silver medalists, are favorites in dance with France's Sophie Moniotte and Pascal Lavanchy.

Elizabeth Punsa-lan and Jerod Swallow are the reigning U.S. champions. Skate America International winners will receive $30,000 and points toward the Champions Series Finals on Feb. 28-March 2. This event is one of six competitions in the series and the only one in the United States.

Eldredge spent the summer perfecting the quad jump, something just a few skaters in the world Canada's Elvis Stojko and Russia's Alexei Urmanov have mastered. He said Wednesday afternoon after practice that the earliest he would attempt the quad in competition would be December. ABC will televise the competition Sunday (2-4 p.m.) and Nov. 17 (4-6 p.m.). about $50 million, came from market extension fees money paid into a central fund by teams that broadcast their games beyond a 75-mile radius.

The NBA Planning Committee recommended that it be redistributed to needy teams at an economic disadvantage because of their market size. At least three NBA teams lost money last season, and several others were at the break-even Charles Barkley, shown last season Houston. jungle rather than buses in Lagos, Nigeria, and joke about his age. Until Barkley came, they didn't often do it to his face, but it's a new, funnier day. They may have won titles in 1994 and 1995, but they've laughed more in a month with Barkley than they had in the '90s.

"Charlie's a unique personality but a very nice guy," Drexler says, amiably. "He's very loud and boisterous in the locker room, but when it comes time to play, he's right there." Then, he takes over your heart. In a league with Dennis Rodman and Isaiah Rider, with Jason Kidd and Jim Jackson feuding over a woman, et al it's hard to remember when Barkley was the reigning Bad Boy, when his forays into stands and misadventures in bars seemed to result in monthly invitations to the NBA office. After four seasons in Phoenix, which started so well and ended so typically, it's a different Barkley a mellowed (for him, anyway), appreciated, establishment Barkley. At 33, he's a sure Hall of Famer and the last invariably accessible NBA superstar.

Michael Jordan often doesn't talk before games, station VH-1 three years ago, when it launched its Fairway to Heaven golf tournament. "It was becoming apparent that golf was hip," said Joshua Katz, VH-l's senior vice president of marketing. "Since we first aired the tournament three years ago it has become a marquee franchise for our network. It's golf with a rock'n'roll edge." This year's tournament was taped in Las Vegas in October and will air on VH-1 on Nov. 16.

Katz said there was a noticeable difference in this year's gallery from those of the first two years. "It was definitely a younger crowd," he said. "I think Tiger Woods has a lot to do with it as does the exposure the sport gets from rock stars playing it." Diamond, who is starting a golf magazine, said Hollywood is helping the surge with golf-themed films such as Happy Gilmore and Tin Cup. Those two films alone grossed nearly $100 million combined in box office receipts. Once only a passion of an older generation, golf is chic among the young.

"They don't see the sport anymore as something their fathers play," Diamond said. "It's something they play." jr 9 I i a he even Magic Johnson took an occasional day off in his comeback, and forget the young players. But here it is, 1996, and Barkley still holds court every night before and after. Of course, he's still a force on the court. His 23.2 points and 11.6 rebounds last season match his career averages.

With him, the Rockets, swept by Seattle in the Western Conference semifinals last season, are embarking on a last hurrah. The price was four players Sam Cassell, Robert Horry, Chucky Brown and Mark Bryant or half of last season's eight-man rotation who accounted for almost 34 points and more than 19 rebounds a game. But Coach Rudy Tomjanovich, who made the deal, considered himself fortunate to get it. "You look at the age of our remaining superstars," Tomjanovich says, "and there's a window. "I just thought it was the right philosophy or the right reasoning to try to go out and get back in the championship run again." More than a hurrah is at stake.

Rocket owner Les Alexander wants a new luxury box-lined arena and needs the negotiating leverage The Associated Press NEW YORK Eight months from its opening tip-off, the women's professional league sponsored by the NBA awarded eight franchises Wednesday, with hopes of adding more once it establishes an identity. The four teams in the Eastern Conference are New York, Charlotte, Cleveland and Houston. Phoenix, Utah, Sacramento and Los Angeles make up the Western Conference. "We are very excited that the NBA has selected Cleveland as one of the original franchises in the Women's National Basketball Association," said Cavs owner Gordon Gund. "We are looking forward to bringing the best in women's professional basketball to Gund Arena this summer." The WNBA will play a 28-game schedule beginning June 21.

The two conferences will have a single-elimination playoff format. Another women's league, the American Basketball League, started play this fall. It is not affiliated with the Xavier: Lumpkin strives for balance Golf: Chic with teens as Woods, rockers play of a winning team. If Barkley keeps the Rockets among the elite teams, his effect in Houston could be worth hundreds of millions of dollars. There is a convention in sport that says an athlete is unfulfilled if he hasn't won a championship.

Except for this athlete. "You know," Barkley says, "I've been reading about how much a championship means to me. Hey, it'd be great to win a championship, don't get me wrong. But God, c'mon! I have to look at the big picture. "I mean, I'm a little kid from Leeds, Alabama, and I have to look at everything I've accomplished in my life.

My life is an accomplishment. Me winning another few games and getting a ring, that won't be an accomplishment to me. That will be a team accomplishment, but I have to look at my individual accomplishment as my life. Your life is your accomplishment, not trophies and rings and money and things like that. "I mean, you think about this: I'm a little kid from a town with a couple hundred people, and I grew up to be Charles Barkley." While he certainly made his share of mistakes, they made it clear they felt he could make the transition.

"Each game he was getting more and more confidence, and I think some of that had to do with us showing we believed in him and saying he was the guy and going with him," Battle says. Lumpkin is still learning the position, though. Battle, who works with Xavier guards, wants Lumpkin to become less predictable, to be able to do more than pull up and shoot three-pointers. The coaches want him to distribute the ball and create havoc on the defensive end. At the same time, they don't want him thinking too much.

Generally speaking, they trust his instincts. "We want him to feel free to play," Battle says. "If you start thinking, you starting making mistakes sometimes." Says Lumpkin: "I feel like a veteran. I've got one year under my belt. There are no excuses now.

I know the system. I know what coach wants. I know what the A-10 is basically about. I should come in and be productive" Eldredge begins first season as a champion CONTINUED FROM PAGE Dl golf industry analyst at Hambrecht Quist. "His impact is certain to be felt by the sport." Woods' major corporate sponsor, Nike could also play a significant role in maintaining the positive momentum among the young.

The company is known for its' cutting-edge advertising campaigns which target young people. Avenue's involvement is really very important," Thompson said. "Advertising helps shape the image of this sport." Teen-agers aren't the only young people taking to the course. According to Thompson, people in their 20s are also taking to the links in brisk numbers. The reasons? Fashion and rock-and-roll.

jj Designers like Armani, Liz Claiborne, Ralph Lauren, Tommy Hilfi-gier and Mossimo Giannulli have all launched lines of golf clothing, lgpking to drive those traditional loud plaids into the closet forever. Meanwhile, rockers like Hootie ffld the Blowfish, Alice Cooper, Don Henley, Richie Sambora and EJvis Costello have embraced the sgort with a passion and are often seen on the links. The connection between rock rfluc and golf waj; recognized by exeeutives at caMo music video CONTINUED FROM PAGE Dl the bench. Lumpkin went on to lead the team in assists (3.2 a game), average 11.2 points a game and make the Atlantic 10 All-Rookie Team. He was third in the conference in three-point percentage, and scored career-high 27 points against Dayton.

Assessments, please. Prosser: "I thought he had a terrific first year. I thought he played real big in some big games for us." Assistant coach Jeff Battle: "I spend a lot of time with Gary working on the mental aspect of the game, teaching him little things that I think are going to make him not only a successful point guard on the floor but a leader. I think last year he struggled with that a little bit because was young. He really didn't know what was going on himself half the time so he couldn't lead." Lumpkin himself: "I definitely underachieved.

I feel the whole team underachieved." Because of his ball-handling skills and his knowledge of the game, Prosser and the staff were confident Lumpkin could handle becoming a full-fledged point guard. USA Today SPRINGFIELD, Mass. It took 20 years for Todd Eldredge to become a world champion. Now comes the hard part staying there. "There will be a little bit higher expectations whenever I enter a competition or event," says Eldredge, 25.

"People look at me a bit differently. They'll say: 'He's the world champion. Let's see if he lives up to I'm ready for that." The figure skating season kicks off tonight with the first major international event of the year, Skate America International. Eldredge, a three-time U.S. champion, leads the men.

World champion Michelle Kwan, 16, is favored in the women's competition. The Russian team of Oksana Kazakova and Artur Dmitriev, defending world silver medalists, leads the pairs competition. The field includes three U.S. teams: Shelby Lyons and Brian Wells, Stephanie Stiegler and John Zimmerman and Sara Ward and Lance Travis. U.S.

champions Jenni Meno and Todd Sand withdrew because of injuries. Both are recovei ing from.