A Lot of Exhibitionists Out There Now

This column hasn’t started in the exhibition season before, but it sure is a fascinating time!

There are 29 teams out there feeling great about their chances! Out of 29! Including the Clippers!

Everyone who has a new coach loves him. Anyone who got traded is Overjoyed To Be There, even if he’s in a Rust Belt backwater, like Chris Gatling, whose eighth move in six years has taken him to picturesque Cleveland.

And if Gatling arrived three days late, although he’s under contract (at $5.5 million), he had a Perfectly Legitimate Excuse: “I just had to get some time to get myself set, try to talk to management, get things ironed out. I had to take some time to get my head straight, the traveling, man, being all over the place. It was time for me to get back. I didn’t want to get too much out of shape.”

Talk about professionalism!

Everyone who’s with a new team says It’s Better Than Where I Was, such as Orlando’s Grant Hill, who noted the Detroit Pistons never had as many players in off-season workouts.

And no matter who left, We Don’t Miss Him, even if he was propping up the franchise, as Hill was in Detroit.

“He’s soft and I just look at those comments as soft,” said Jerry Stackhouse, disputing Hill’s head count. “He just wants to pacify whoever he is speaking with. That’s why a lot of people I meet in the city never could relate to him. He’s not a straight shooter.”

Replied Hill, “Life is too short to hold a grudge. I enjoyed playing with him in Detroit. He’ll get a chance to prove how well he can do now without me around. God bless him.”

In such upbeat times, what’s there for a skeptic to write about?

Well, maybe we can find something:

* Lakers--Fortunately for billionaires Paul Allen and Mark Cuban, who were getting daily lectures on fiscal responsibility from Phil Jackson, the Laker coach turned his attention to Isaiah Rider, who, while Overjoyed to Be Here, was out of shape and as mystified by the triangle offense as Glen “When’s It My Turn, Phil?” Rice.

First, Jackson said Rick Fox would start in the exhibitions, seeming to send a message to Rider: We won’t just hand you anything here.

Then Jackson noted Rider had been late, posting another bulletin on the Isaiah board: 10 a.m. on the floor, ready to go, doesn’t mean you drive up at 9:59, park in Andy Murray’s space and run in with your shoes untied. Oh, and we won’t be covering anything up for you here.

Laker officials say Rider has actually been fine, which is good, or Jackson might have put him in timeout.

* Clippers--Jackson would have it made if he had Shaquille O’Neal, Kobe Bryant and five of the Clippers’ bright young prospects. Lamar Odom? You know about him. Darius Miles? Big-time talent. Corey Maggette? Promising. Quentin Richardson? Tough guy. Their future’s so bright, the Clippers have to wear shades.

Says one ecstatic team official: “No way we can mess this up.”

Want to bet?

* Atlanta--Against all logic, the bedraggled Hawks insist they won’t trade Dikembe Mutombo to the Knicks, Pacers or Trail Blazers. Mutombo, 34, will be a free agent and you can bet a dollar to a doughnut that next summer, his representative, super-agent (ask him) David Falk, will think of a way to move Mutombo to some team where he can relieve the pressure on another embattled Falk client (New York?).

For his part, the amiable Mutombo says he likes Atlanta but could play in New York or wherever. However, he has no idea what he wants to do.

“My kids ask me, ‘What’s going on?’ ” he said. “My wife asks me. I have no answers.”

Translation: “David hasn’t told me yet.”

* Philadelphia--It was a typical summer, with Coach Larry Brown ripping Allen Iverson for being irresponsible and Iverson proving his point by making a rap record with violent, anti-woman and anti-gay lyrics, prompting an even bigger furor than usual, with black groups picketing 76er exhibitions.

Iverson, who’s actually an engaging young man, if a hard-core street survivor, issued an apology: “If individuals of the gay community and women of the world are offended by any of the material in my upcoming album, let the record show that I wish to extend a profound apology.”

This would have been more convincing if it hadn’t been written for him--when was the last time you heard him say, “Let the record show I wish to extend a profound apology?”--and if he hadn’t subsequently refused to record a new version or pull the album, although a recent conversation with Commissioner David Stern apparently changed his mind on that.

Said Brown, “If anybody took the time to read his apology, I thought that was appropriate.”

Maybe Brown wrote it? At any rate, what Larry means is, “I can say it but you can’t.”

* New York--Guess what? Rice wasn’t treated fairly by the Lakers, some feel.

“I’ve been forgotten and that’s all right with me,” Rice said. “In due time, it will be a rude awakening for everyone. . . . I hear a lot of things and that’s OK. It comes along with the game. Everyone needs that added edge to get going once again. I just roll with the punches. I know what I have to do here and given the opportunity, people are going to say, ‘Hey, he still has it.’

“Like, I know I can play defense. And the biggest question in the last two years is, ‘Is he too old? Has he lost it?’

“No, I haven’t lost it. If you’re true to the game and you look back at the circumstance I was in, you’ll know why my role on the offensive end has diminished a little bit. . . . But that’s OK, I realize how important I was to the team and that’s all that matters to me.”

The Knicks continue to work on how to put Rice, Allan Houston and Latrell Sprewell on the floor and still get the occasional rebound.

“Who pouts over shots/minutes?” wrote the New York Daily News’ Mitch Lawrence. “Whoever does, we’ve got ourselves a nice, juicy back page [story].”

* Indiana--Not that this isn’t going the way he thought but before camp, new Coach Isiah Thomas talked about all the things he’d do to try to put the Pacers over the top.

Since, Rik Smits retired and Jalen Rose was hurt. With Mark Jackson and Dale Davis gone, the only starter from last spring who’ll open this season will be Reggie Miller.

* Houston--Leslie Alexander, whose Rockets won two titles in the first 15 months as owner, even if he didn’t know if a basketball was stuffed or blown up, just suffered his first and, he hopes, last lottery finish.

“I don’t want to put pressure on people,” Alexander says. “I really think this team is very talented at every position and has depth at every position. . . . This team can really shoot and when you can shoot the ball that way and are athletic, I think we can go very far.”

Maybe even as high as 10th in the West. Unfortunately, only eight make the playoffs.

Not that Hakeem Olajuwon, 37 and starting his last season, is an afterthought, but in camp a reporter asked him how to spell his name.

* Milwaukee--Last season, when the Warriors tried to trade him to the Bucks, Jason Caffey said his wife burst into tears at the news and he vowed to quit before going there.

Guess where he was traded over the summer?

“Once I accepted leaving California, period, I was comfortable from that point on,” Caffey said in the Bucks’ camp. “I don’t see myself having any problems here. The area is nice and I’m going to get along just fine.”

* Dallas--Cuban had fun over the summer, handing out tens of millions of dollars, announcing grandiose schemes to put high-tech chairs on his bench, debating Jackson. However, an actual season and reality loom.

Projected starter Gary Trent, who missed 71 games last season, trimmed 40 pounds from his zenith of 284 in an effort to stay in the lineup.

Said Trent, “I’m healthy, I look healthy and I look sexy, still.”

He then pulled a groin muscle in the exhibition opener and had to come out.

So much for his health. As to whether he still looks sexy, that’s in the eye of the beholder.