BASKETBALL NOTEBOOK: IBL HAS 8 TEAMS FOR '99.

Byline: Daily News Wire Services

The new International Basketball League outlined plans Tuesday to start play in November 1999 in eight U.S. cities. They are Cincinnati, San Diego, Baltimore, Albuquerque, Jacksonville, Las Vegas, Richmond and the Tampa Bay area.

Although all of the initial eight cities are within the United States, management said the league hopes to expand to a total of 20 cities worldwide during the next five years. A 64-game schedule is planned.

Players would be employed by the league rather than individual teams, to allow large-market and small-market teams to compete equally, said Paul Martha, who will serve as the league's vice president and general counsel. That will also allow centralized management and marketing for the teams, said Martha, a former general counsel to the Pittsburgh Penguins and San Francisco 49ers.

Management of the new league immediately tried to dispel notions that it would be a minor league for players who couldn't make it in the big time.

``The International Basketball League is simply a new men's professional basketball league,'' CEO Art Cipriani said at a news conference in Baltimore, where the league is to operate its headquarters by year's end. ``We aren't trying to be a minor league.''

IBL organizers said basketball's popularity is high, and 65 percent of Americans have watched the sport on television.

Organizers spent four years identifying the initial eight cities as communities that would support pro basketball. Some of the cities have been host to pro basketball before or have pro franchises in other sports.

Baltimore lost its NBA Bullets team to Washington. Cincinnati's onetime NBA team, the Royals, moved to Kansas City in 1972.

The IBL's Cincinnati team will play in the Crown, the former Riverfront Coliseum, which has been host for NCAA basketball regional tournaments and NBA exhibition games.

Still in the works, and yet to be announced, are IBL team names and logos, television and sponsorship deals, and the league's commissioner and investors.

The announcement came as the NBA is having labor troubles. On Monday, the NBA announced that its lockout of players could last for months and that season-ticket payments will be refunded with interest if games must be canceled this fall.

The NBA isn't worrying about the new IBL, NBA spokesman Brian McIntyre said Tuesday.

``We don't really look at the International Basketball League as serious competition,'' McIntyre said. ``We feel that anything that brings more attention to the game of basketball is a good thing. We wish them luck.''

Cipriani refused to say how big the IBL's staff or its budget would be.

A draft is planned next summer. With 10,000 student-athletes playing basketball and relatively few of those heading to the NBA each year, there will be abundant talent for the league, Cipriani said.

Court date set: Clippers forward Lamond Murray, who was arrested on suspicion of spousal abuse, was given an Aug. 31 court date, a Los Angeles Police Department spokesman said.

Murray, 25, was arrested early Monday morning and released after posting $50,000 bond, LAPD detective Joseph Aparicio said.

Aparicio said he didn't know details of the alleged assault. Fred Slaughter, the player's agent, said Murray and his wife, Carmen, had ``some differences,'' and that they're ``trying to work it out.'' The Murrays have two children.

If convicted of the misdemeanor, Murray could spend up to a year in jail, although Aparicio said it's unlikely he would receive the maximum sentence.

Probe nearing end, report says: National Labor Relations Board officials by Thursday will conclude their investigation into the NBA Players Association's claim that the league's lockout is illegal, Daniel Silverman, regional director of the NLRB's New York office, told Bloomberg News.

The players association last month filed an unfair-labor-practice charge with the NLRB, alleging that the NBA illegally imposed a lockout before negotiating to an impasse.

Silverman, who already has submitted his preliminary findings to NLRB officials in Washington, said the final report will be forwarded to acting general counsel Fred Feinstein by Thursday.

Women's tourney planned: Arkansas, Connecticut, Duke and Stanford will square off in a women's college basketball preseason tournament Nov. 13-14.

The tournament, called the ``Nike Four in the Fall'' will be played at the San Jose Arena.

In the opening game Nov. 13, Duke, coming off an Atlantic Coast Conference title and a trip to the NCAA Tournament West Regional Final, will take on defending Big East Conference champion Connecticut.

Arkansas, which went to the NCAA Tournament Final Four for the first time in school history last season, will take on Pacific-10 Conference champion Stanford in the second game.