DATE: Wednesday, October 1, 1997            TAG: 9710010640
SECTION: SPORTS                  PAGE: C1   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BOB MOLINARO

                                            LENGTH:   62 lines

NBA HOME OF DUNKS AND DOUGH

For those of you who continue to believe that the salary market for pro athletes will flatten out one of these days, I offer this suggestion: Give it up.

And while you're at it, get a load of some of the money America's young, unfulfilled basketball talent is pulling down.

Last week, an athletically-challenged center by the name of Greg Ostertag signed a six-year deal with the Utah Jazz that will pay him $6.5 million a season.

You probably saw the earthbound Ostertag play against the Chicago Bulls in the NBA Finals. He takes up a lot of space. So does a double-wide mobile home. You don't see anybody paying $6.5 million for a mobile home.

In any case, that's chump change compared with the $80 million, six-year contract extension Rasheed Wallace just signed with the Portland Trailblazers.

At $13 million a season, Wallace will make twice as much as Ostertag. You can see why. Wallace, a youngster with more 'tude than game, averaged a robust 15.1 points and 6.8 rebounds per game last season.

You read about these astronomical salaries and you figure that there is only one explanation: Ostertag is being paid by the pound, Wallace by the pout.

From her home in North Carolina, Jackie Wallace, Rasheed's mother, expressed her feelings about her son's new contract: ``Fantastic, shocked, happy, proud, all of that.''

To which the rest of us can only add, ``Stunned, numb,'' and ``Huh?''

Also falling into the ``huh?'' category is Blazers free-agent forward Brian Grant. Portland lured Grant away from Sacramento for a mere $56 million over seven years.

Let me say this about Brian Grant: Never heard of him.

Used to be, only superstars made superstar money. Now, superstars make Bill Gates money, and players you never heard of are worth the gross national product of Bolivia.

Meanwhile, Cleveland's Bob Sura re-signs with the Cavaliers for between $32 and $36 million over six years and people just shrug.

Sura - who averaged 9.2 points per game last season - will be making somewhere between $5 million and $6 million a season. A million here, a million there. Pretty soon, you're talking real money.

Sura is a great story. As a high school kid in Wilkes-Barre, Pa., he went virtually unrecruited by the big schools until Florida State took a chance on him. Now he could buy Bobby Bowden.

By the way, did I mention that Sura averaged 9.2 points per game. And that he is a ``shooting'' guard without much of an outside shot. Matters not in the age of basketball's Instant Lottery Winners.

Closer to home, people ponder the future of Hampton High hero Ronald Curry. Should he play college quarterback or point guard or both? Does his destiny lie in the NFL or NBA?

Now think about it. Do the math. How many NFL quarterbacks will make $6 million after three seasons? Maybe none. Not even the All-Pros. But we now have evidence to suggest - come on down, Bobby Sura - that NBA teams are willing to pay $6 million a season to guards averaging 9.2 points. And this doesn't include sneaker endorsement money that flows so generously in the direction of basketball players.

From a financial point of view, has Curry's decision already been made for him?

Que Su-ra, Su-ra, whatever will be will be.

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