David Stern is trying to get Michael Jordan back into the NBA as an owner, but it doesn't look as if Jordan will be buying the Nets, even though he has been approached about doing so.
"It's something that I'm involved in," Stern said yesterday on a conference call when asked about Jordan's future. "I continue to think that he will be back in the league. It's fair to say that it's something that's being worked on and thought about on a continuing basis."

According to a league source familiar with the sale of the Nets, Jordan and his business manager were contacted several days ago about buying the team when the "book" laying out the team's complete financial picture went out to prospective buyers.

"If Jordan was interested, he would have been all over this," the source said. "But it's not very probable that he's going to get involved. There's a lot of heavy lifting involved here."

No more CEO role for Byron Scott this season. As he opens his fourth training camp this morning as Nets' coach, Scott expects to take a more "hands-on" approach than the last two seasons in particular, when his teams reached the NBA Finals.

These Nets will bear more of his brand in part out of necessity, with assistants Eddie Jordan and Mike O'Koren gone. The Princeton offense that Jordan served as caretaker now belongs to Scott and his lone holdover assistant, Lawrence Frank, as new assistants Larry Drew and Don Newman learn it.

In another way, it's a matter of circumstance. Scott finds himself without a contract extension, in the final season of his initial deal, and with the shadow of his reported rift with Jason Kidd still lingering from the off-season.

Scott insists their relationship is fine and that walking the lame-duck tightrope does not matter to him. Still, he expects to spend far more time in the trenches with his team, at least initially.

"I have to change obviously because I have two new guys [Drew and Newman] who don't know exactly everything that we do," said Scott, who opens camp today for players with four years or less experience before the rest of the roster reports Friday.

"It's going to take them a little bit of time. So obviously for me it's going to be much more hands-on the first two or three months until those guys get acclimated to how we're doing things."

Although the man certainly will be missed at the start of Heat camp, some of the moments will not. Too much heartbreak these past few Octobers. Too little hope these past three years.

Already last week, Nets coach Byron Scott was dealing with questions regarding Alonzo Mourning's health, about how much could be expected from the veteran center in light of his ongoing kidney illness.

"Twenty, 25 minutes a game is what I'm looking for right now and nothing else besides that," said Scott, whose front office gambled $22 million over four seasons on Mourning on this summer's free-agent market. "I think we would all be kind of crazy to think that Zo's going to play every single game.

"If we can get him where he's playing 50, 60 games and he's in unbelievable shape getting to the playoffs, that's what I'm looking for."

By the end of his Heat tenure, inquiries into his health began to wear on Mourning. It is a lesson Scott already has learned.

"He came in here right after Labor Day, on Sept. 2, and we started working with him," Scott said to a group of reporters last week at the Nets' practice facility in East Rutherford, N.J. "And I found myself asking him, `How do you feel?' And what I found out the next day is that he didn't like that. He'd give me a look like, `I'm fine.'

"He's heard that question for three or four years. He's to the point where he's sick of it. It's almost like showing him pity, and he doesn't want pity."

Nice, quiet summer the Nets just spent, wasn't it? They could have spent it in hiding after blowing a nine-point lead with less than nine minutes to play in Game 6 of the NBA Finals - less than nine minutes from a roll-of-the-dice Game 7 - replaying the tape over and over in their minds, if not on their televisions.

"But," to quote the late John Belushi, "Nooooo!" They spiced their already frenzied quest to re-sign Jason Kidd by picking up Alonzo Mourning along the way, then extinguished a last-minute firestorm and made a shoestring catch to keep Kidd after reports of a Kidd-Byron Scott rift surfaced.

Assistant coaches Eddie Jordan and Mike O'Koren departed for Washington. A less-than-maxed-out, contract-extension offer got Kenyon Martin's dander up - and then he was mentioned in trade rumors. After coaching the Nets to two straight Finals appearances, Scott didn't even get a contract extension offer and now enters this season a lame duck.

And, oh yeah, the team is for sale and could eventually leave New Jersey.

Not exactly the NBA's equivalent of "a quiet week in Lake Woebegon," as public radio storyteller-author Garrison Keilor would put it.

UNLESS Dikembe Mutombo agrees to decrease the $37 million guarantee remaining on his Nets contract over the next two years by roughly $10M, he's not going anywhere, stipulates a team source. The only other option remains the Blazers, who refuse to assume Mutombo's salary along with Kenyon Martin unless New Jersey takes disgruntled Ruben Patterson along with Rasheed Wallace.

Should Mutombo and agent David Falk relent, there's almost definitely a mid-level, multi-year deal with his name on it in Toronto. Not long ago, the Clippers were seriously considering a similar offer, but have decided against it, reveals a club official. At $4.9M per, you'd have to believe the Knicks, who backed off acquiring the 7-2 center just before the 76ers peddled him to the Nets, would have to find Mutombo relatively attractive.

FOR whatever it's worth, Dave Checketts and Bruce Ratner are seriously talking about going into business together after meeting several times regarding the prospective purchase of the Nets and their relocatation from East Rutherford to Brooklyn.

According to an especially scented source, the ex-gaudy Garden president and the billionaire real estate developer became fast friends within the last month or two following an introduction by current co-chairman Lewis Katz. Computer entrepreneur Charles Wang and real estate tycoon Charles Kushner have also surfaced as potential buyers. Wang's dream is to return the Nets to Nassau Coliseum and ultimately house them in a state-of-the-art arena, whereas Kushner's aim is to keep them in The (refurbished, of course) Meadowlands.

Meanwhile, in the final analysis, perhaps the most important player of them all - in what amounts to an auction of the NBA repeat runner-ups - is David Gerstein, whose say and sway all but evaporated since the franchise was sold to Katz' group. From what I'm told, the minority owner (of between three and seven percent) commands a right of first refusal and he fully intends to manipulate it in order to regain lost power and respect.

Four into five won't go. That was among coach Byron Scott's decrees yesterday for the high-expectation Nets, who plan to enter training camp next week with four centers. And in a league where most teams don't have one legit five man, the embarrassment of riches carries Scott to one conclusion.
"It's going to be pretty simple," Scott said. "Two guys are going to play, basically. Maybe 21/2. Somebody's not going to play at all and that's the bottom line when you have four centers."

With Alonzo Mourning, Dikembe Mutombo, Jason Collins and Aaron Williams, there are not enough minutes to go around. Yes, some minutes can be found at power forward or in garbage time. But there is no way that four guys will play and be happy. So expect the phone to start ringing.

"It's going to ring more and more as we get closer to the season because we have four legitimate centers," said Ed Stefanski, who formally has been elevated to senior VP of Basketball Operations from director of scouting. "It would have to be a very, very good offer for us to get rid of any of the centers."

The Nets must be careful in any deal at center. Mourning, because of his history with kidney illness - he did not play last season - must be viewed as a question mark. Mutombo's age, listed at 37, is a legit concern, almost as much as his salary, $37.5 mil for two years (the Nets have tried to re-work the deal). So trading a Williams or Collins without seeing how it all unfolds is risky.

"Right now, no, it doesn't [need to change]. Will it need to be altered a month from now or two months? We don't know," said Scott, who enters this season with one year on his contract despite two Finals trips and who claimed ownership questions have complicated the situation. "There hasn't been anything new and I don't think there will be until they figure out who is going to own the team."

It would change the entire outlook of the coming N.B.A. season, deliver the finals from the land of the lopsided and perhaps even draw a few fans to Continental Arena. The return of the intimidating, sneering Alonzo Mourning is just what is needed by the Nets, the two-time runner-up to the league champion, and by the N.B.A., which could use a feel-good story or two.

But no one - not Mourning, not his doctors, not the Nets - will predict that Mourning will finish even the first month of the season, let alone return to dominance for 82 games. All they can do is hope that he stages a stirring comeback from the kidney disorder that nearly ended his career three years ago.

"Nobody can predict the future," said Gerald Appel, Mourning's doctor. "He's in partial remission. He's never been in complete remission. It's always been partial. At any point, his kidney disease could get bad. Alonzo and I have always had a deal that we will take this one month at a time, one day at a time. We won't look too far down the road.

"So when people say, 'Can he play?' I say: 'Well, he can play today. I can't tell you about next week.' "

THE best thing about the NFL season is the NBA season is just around the gully, and over the ridge to Grandpa Stern's house we go.

With training camps scheduled to open for business as unusual Sept. 29, the configuration of numerous rosters - the pool's in but the patio ain't dry - remain exceptionally uncompleted.

The Nets' aversion to assuming Ruben Patterson's rack of baggage, as well as his $25 million, four-year guarantee, coupled with the Blazers' unwillingness to take on Dikembe Mutombo's full ($37.6M) two-year guarantee, appears to have terminated talk of a Kenyon Martin-Rasheed Wallace exchange.

A last-ditch offer by Jersey to accept Jeff McInnis ($3.3M/$3.6M) in the package instead of Patterson was rejected by Portland, divulges a source. McInnis may be a knucklehead but the Blazers can ill afford to surrender him in light of Damon Stoudamire's enduring marijuana issues that may very well earn him starter's minutes in the slammer. Without Stoudamire - as well as free-agent defectors Scottie Pippen and Antonio Daniels - McInnis would be the last point guard standing; unless you think walk-on Robert Pack can make a difference.

The three-way proposition involving Antonio Davis also seems to have shattered in mid-dialogue. Again, Blazer boss Paul Allen is disinclined to take on a three-year guarantee (especially the final payment of $13M), which doesn't include Davis' 71/2 percent - not 15 percent as I initially reported - trade kicker. Apparently, our economy is so bad that even billionaires are being intimidated by the league's luxury tax.

At the same time, Raptors GM Glen Grunwald has withdrawn his support of coach Kevin O'Neill's interest in acquiring Mutombo at his current income. If Mutombo were to become a free agent - which won't happen unless he agrees to relieve the Nets of roughly a third of their obligation - the Raptors would be all over him.

In the meantime, I'm informed Grunwald and Danny Ainge are discussing a swap of Davis for Tony Battie and free agent-in-waiting Eric Williams. Considering Boston's cap already is sky high ($60M this season, $59M next) it's doubtful that deal will go down. That is, unless Ainge can figure out a way to "capsize" Vin Baker.

Lawyers representing former NBA star Jayson Williams can have a judge review the personnel and employment records of five white state troopers involved in the manslaughter case against him, a judge ruled Tuesday.

Williams' lawyers said they were inquiring about the troopers' records to reserve the right to challenge their credibility should they be called to testify against Williams. The lawyers contend that three of the troopers' records will indicate they stopped a disproportionate number of minorities while assigned to the New Jersey Turnpike, that one was involved with a bias complaint, and the other was said to have coached another trooper about racial profiling.

Prosecutors opposed the defense request, arguing that the troopers did not target Williams but were summoned to his New Jersey estate the night of the shooting.

Superior Court Judge Edward Coleman also ordered the prosecution to review the personnel files of any member of the state police that is on its witness list and alert the defense to anything in the officers' records that could become a credibility issue.

Defense lawyers declined to comment on the racial makeup of the state police on the witness list. Prosecutors would not comment about those officers.

Williams, who is black, is accused of recklessly handling the shotgun that killed Costas Christofi on Feb. 14, 2002. Williams could face nearly 55 years in prison if convicted of all charges, the most serious of which is aggravated manslaughter.