Shaq Says He's Ready For Foster

Shaq Fu II

No matter who starts at center for the Utah Jazz, he somehow manages to anger the Los Angeles Lakers. First there was the trash-talking that led Shaquille O'Neal to slap Greg Ostertag at a shoot-around. Then, after a dunk March 28, Greg Foster ran past the Laker bench and ran his finger across his throat.

Laker Coach Del Harris screamed so vehemently for a technical against Foster, he earned one himself.

"Greg Foster hasn't earned the right to be anything in this league," Harris said. "He's lucky that he's just been able to stick with a team."

His Dieselness had his two cents, too.

"He's a bum," O'Neal said of Foster. "He's just hiding behind (Jeff) Hornacek, (John) Stockton. He's a bum, period."

Foster said he had just gotten caught up in the moment.

"Greg is an emotional guy," teammate Karl Malone said. "He got caught up in the game, but hey, we've got somebody who wants to play. As a teammate, that's all I want, a guy at that spot who wants to play. If he sometimes gets carried away a little bit, so be it."

Thing is, the teams go at it again on the last day of the regular season, April 19 at Los Angeles.

"When he goes up, he'd better go up strong," His Dieselness warned. "There'll be a couple guys trying to take his head off."

O'Neal ruled out the possibility of settling the matter at, say, the shoot-around that day.

"Nah," he said. "I don't do that anymore."

Super Chicken

In basketball, as in many sports played by men, testosterone is the breakfast of champions. But some guys just overdose on the stuff.

Witness, Reggie Miller, of whom Michael Jordan recently said playing against is like "chicken-fighting with a woman." Shortly after refusing to refute Jordan's point, Miller illustrated it. In retaliation for Vlade Divac plowing through one of his picks, Miller stalked the Charlotte center, then laid him out by swinging for his chin.

Acknowledging the misdeed, avoiding the menacing Anthony Mason, as well as living up to the Jordan criticism, Miller backed away and immediately walked off the court.

Such violence and premeditation would easily have earned the likes of Charles Barkley or Dennis Rodman at least five games off. Miller got just one. Which, in our minds, puts the league in the same category Jordan put Miller.

Freedom of screech

The next time UpChuck Charles Barkley returns to a court of law, he wants to do so willingly - as a complainant. What does UpChuck have to complain about? Plenty, as we all know, but specifically freedom of speech, which he claims was encroached by a recent $10,000 fine by the NBA.

The league didn't take kindly to UpChuck's tirade against referee Jack Nies, whom the Rocket star called "gutless" and accused of harboring a grudge. Barkley sliced open the bridge of Nies' nose last season with an inadvertent fingernail (earning him the nickname "Ginsu"), and UpChuck believes Nies has been swallowing his whistle ever since and allowing him to get beat up.

"I'm thinking about filing a lawsuit against the NBA," Barkley said. "I want to know why I can't voice my opinion under the First Amendment. I talked to my lawyer about it and it will only cost me $150 to file a lawsuit against them. I asked my lawyer if the NBA could keep me from talking about something like that and he said he didn't know, but he'd be willing to take the case."

It's something we'd like to see. The league's position is that criticism of referees compromises their authority. We'd concede the point if officials managed to remain above the very thing of which UpChuck accuses Nies - holding grudges.

But they don't. The way Mike Mathis did Clyde Drexler is only the most public illustration of that. Some game officials are just as arrogant and spoiled as some players, and do just as poorly a game of hiding it.

R.I.P. City

The Buzzer hates to do it, but the Jail Blazers had to be dropped out of the top 10 this week. Not because the amount J.R. Rider has lost due to suspensions this season - $359,387 - could put someone in the top tax bracket. It's just the way the J-Bs set him up for his latest slip.

We mean, let him stay an extra day in Oakland and expect him to be on time for practice the next day? Puh-leez. Like Shawn Kemp isn't going to throw too many ball fakes in the post?

The game LowRider missed was against Utah, which he routinely busts and against whom Portland was 3-0. That is, until, LowRider-less, the Jail Blazers lost 98-89.

That's the price Coach Mike Dunleavy apparently is willing to pay to get Rider and the rest of the J-Bs straightened up for the postseason. After he and Rider had several angry exchanges during a March 20 loss at Orlando, Dunleavy told the team he would not take any more from his imbalanced shooting guard.

"I told our guys I wanted them to have more of a professional attitude," Dunleavy said. "I said that from that point on, I wanted us to tighten up the ship and get ready for the playoffs, and that things weren't going to be tolerated that could affect our chances."

Please, Michael, stay

The week before last, the NBA received 130,000 more reasons to want Michael Jordan to stay. That's the number of fans who watched him play. A sellout crowd of 18,717 at Milwaukee's Bradley Center put the total live attendance of Jordan's regular-season and playoff games over 20 million.

That total got a significant boost, of course, when 62,046 packed the Georgia Dome for Jordan's presumed last visit to Atlanta on March 27. A crowd of 38,067 at the Kingdome on Nov. 22, 1992, ranks fifth among the all-time best-attended Jordan games.

Why we call them the Woe-rriors

Donyell Marshall is a leading candidate for the league's Most Improved Player award, but only because some of us who follow the sport have been paying attention. Those who have been listening to the Buzzer also know that Marshall, for whom the Warriors surrendered Tom Gugliotta, has transformed himself from bust to more-than-serviceable pro.

But that's just us. To the rest of the world, Marshall is Claude Rains playing the Invisible Man. No one writes about the Woe-rriors, of course, other than in the context of Latrell Sprewell (or, in Seattle, in the context of the Sonics blowing a shot at home-court advantage against the Bulls in the NBA Finals).

The worst transgressions are being committed in Marshall's backyard. For most of the season, you haven't been able to buy a jersey with his name on it at the arena or local stores. Furthermore, the Woe-rriors have done next to nothing to promote the only bright spot in an otherwise depressing season.

So things aren't just falling apart on the court. Golden State took a big blow when Julie Marvel, long one of the gems among the NBA's public-relations directors, moved to Seattle where husband John, a former Bay Area columnist, is an editor for Starwave.

Outraged, Marshall felt compelled to hire an outside public-relations firm to promote him for the Most Improved award.

We (still) like Ike

The good news for the Heat is that Alonzo Mourning's caved-in cheekbone required only 17 minutes of surgery to repair and Mourning will return shortly with a protective mask - but to protect us or him? The slightly bad news is that he misses games against San Antonio and Charlotte, two teams against whom his presence is needed.

The further bad news is that Miami's 911 center, Isaac Austin, is now in Clipper-land, providing the 411 for prospective free-agent customers. No, as brash as he is, Brent Barry won't be playing center in Mourning's place. The past two seasons, the Heat managed a 27-11 record while Mourning was sidelined, and that was because of Austin.

Spitting image

They've just about seen the last of former Sonic Olden Polynice in Sacramento, where he's become an expectorating whiner after losing his starter job to rookie Michael Stewart. After being suspended for spitting at Coach Eddie Jordan, Polynice almost certainly won't have the $4.18 million option year exercised on his contract next season.

Polynice admits he launched a loogey at the feet of Jordan during a timeout in a game at Inglewood on March 25. Polynice and rookie point guard Anthony Johnson had exchanged words during a 20-second timeout in the second quarter. Jordan interceded and replaced Polynice with Otis Thorpe.

"E.J. took me out of the game because me and somebody else argued about passing the ball," Polynice said. "A rookie should not be speaking to me like that. I don't appreciate that, but then I got more upset because E.J. took me out just because I went back at (Johnson)."

This is how we know Polynice is out in Sacto: Kings vice president Geoff Petrie compared the 7-footer's transgression to those committed by Sprewell and Robert Horry.

"Choking a coach, throwing a towel in the face of a coach or spitting on a coach," Petrie said. "Which is the more egregious? I think Eddie showed a lot of restraint. "This was disrespectful and detrimental to the performance of the team. Now, it can be argued that the performance of the team cannot get much worse, but this is not acceptable behavior and it won't be tolerated."

Speaks of the week

Miami's Mark Strickland on Celtic Antoine Walker: "He ain't Michael Jordan. He's just on a team where he gets all the shots. If I got all those shots, I'd have 20 a game, too."

Detroit's Brian Williams on the Pistons' all-but-dead playoff hopes: "We have a window, but there is so much frost on it now, we can't even see through it." ------------------------------- TOP 10

Straight-shooting rankings (with last week's ranking): 1. Bulls (2) 2. Sonics (3) 3. Jazz (1) 4. Lakers (4) 5. Suns (6) 6. Heat (8) 7. Spurs (7) 8. Hornets (5) 9. Pacers (9) 10. Cavaliers (nr)

BOTTOM 10

Looking at things topsy-turvy (with last week's ranking): 29. NBA owners (29) 28. Jerry Krause (28) 27. Reggie Miller (nr) 26. Rockettes (20) 25. Noogies (25) 24. Woe-rriors (28) 23. '72-73 Sixers (26) 22. '92-93 Mav-nots (24) 21. Raptors (23) 20. Mavwrecks (22)