TAKING THE DUNK TO NEW HEIGHTS.

Byline: TOM HOFFARTH Media

There's no debunking the glamour of the dunk.

For a clip on ``SportsCenter'' or ``Best Damn Sports Show,'' it's gold - even in the middle of summer when the first practice sessions for NBA and college basketball teams aren't even on the radar.

Lisa Leslie does it Tuesday and the sports world gasps. It's the first WNBA highlight they've shown on a national sportscast since ... ever. The video is run forward and backward like the Zapruder film.

And, oh, by the way, the Sparks lost the game, but that's lost almost everybody. She was 0 for 7 shooting before her breakaway one-hander and the team was getting whipped at home, but the reaction on the court might have been bigger than when the Sparks actually won the league title.

Now take it one more extreme step.

Imagine the reaction to a whole TV league that rewards above-the-rim posterizing play with guys flying off trampolines and into Plexiglas boards. The surprise is that it took this long to get on.

Something called SlamBall starts with Saturday night's debut at 8 p.m. on TNN, and before it has even hit the airwaves, it's getting a reaction. A Sports Illustrated blurb this week already calls it ``a cross between the XFL and the NBA Slam Dunk contest'' that's ``strangely compelling.''

Reggie Theus, the former NBA All-Star recruited to become the league's first analyst, knows exactly what to compare it to.

``I played my son (7-year-old Reggie Jr.) in the 'NBA 2000,' (video game) and that's what it's like,'' explained Theus, who was allowed to scream out some otherwise bleepable adjectives on this cable presentation. ``It's a live video game. I brought him and some friends down for the taping and they were into it.''

It's something you must watch to understand, although going in, just know that it's something not to be tried at home. But someone who already has a backyard wrestling ring set around a mosh pit probably will.

It's basketball at the heart - four players a side, two eight-minute halves - with hockey checking at the essence and plenty of gymnastics thrown in for show. To emphasize what it's about, three points are given for all slam dunks; two points for most others. And goaltending is legal.

``If I was in my 20s, I'd probably try it out,'' said Theus, who enjoyed a 13-year NBA career. ``But I was crazy back then.''

Mason Gordon is credited as the creator, the show's executive producer and a willing participant - the 6-foot-4, 200-pounder plays for the Diablos, one of six teams in the league.

Gordon was a lowly entry-level employee at Tollin/Robbins Productions, a Hollywood film and TV company that has done numerous sports-related projects like ``Varsity Blues,'' ``Summer Catch'' and ``Hardball.''

Gordon's goal was to fetch coffee and run errands long enough to get invited to a movie premiere before he'd get serious and go to law school. By the end of his first year, this idea he first developed on a napkin and then turned into an 11-page prospectus found its way to Mike Tollin, and the project found legs.

Although this is more of a sport than a TV show in Gordon's eyes, he knew the importance of finding a TV home for it quickly.

``Most sports have to languish in obscurity for decades before they get a spot on Fox Sports at 3 a.m., but we felt that even with an unproven track record, we could establish it as a TV entity and get a broadcast deal prior to the establishment of the sport,'' said the 27-year-old Gordon. ``TV is a key to the survival of any sport, so in a way, we were reversing the process and trying to sell the merits of it and circumvent a lot of league infrastructure and costs and team travel.''

Gordon, born in Los Angeles and living in Burbank, wants this to be more than a six-episode, made-for-TV experiment whose future is based on ratings. He's currently working with partners to form the United SlamBall Unlimited professional league and establishing new venues for courts around the city to be used for recreational leagues. The court used for the TNN production was set up in a movie studio in downtown L.A.

``In my mind, it's far more sport than television because it's all real,'' Gordon said. ``It looks like the evolution of a sport, the first generation of a hybrid athlete. There's no roof to this development.''

Two quick thoughts on that: Let's hope Gordon never saw the Trey Park and Matt Stone flick ``BASEketball,'' and consider expanding this beyond an all-men's league. Girls on trampolines seem to work for the success of Comedy Central's ``The Man Show.''

--Slam-bam, thank you ma'am: Ann Meyers Drysdale says she doesn't remember her exact call when Leslie performed the history-making slam this week on a game carried by Fox Sports Net.

``I probably yelled 'Whoopee!' or something,'' she said Thursday.

For someone who follows the John Wooden philosophy of outlawing the dunk on the high school and college level, that's kind of an unusual reaction from Meyers, the Basketball Hall of Famer out of UCLA.

``That's for the men's game,'' she said, clarifying. ``I compare it in the men's game to giving a kid too much candy. We've all gotten toothaches from watching men dunk. Even at the All-Star Game, they're all bored of the dunk contest.

``But for the women, I'm happy for Lisa. The anticipation was so much sweeter. Will it be a common thing in the women's game, give some players extra incentive now? I doubt it because the women have a different mentality. Men play above the basket. The women are more afraid of getting undercut. And they're more afraid of being embarrassed by missing one.''

SOUND BYTES

WHAT SMOKES

--ESPN's Pam Ward, who broke ground as the first female to do network college football play-by-play when she was on Mid-American Conference games last year, has been moved to Big Ten contests this fall and will be paired with analyst Chris Speilman.

WHAT CHOKES

--Fox might be in the market for another NFL Sunday morning studio analyst, having moved Cris Collinsworth to the booth, but Bill Parcells was never part of that equation. The former NFL coach and general manager said as much when he accepted a role with ESPN's ``Sunday NFL Countdown'' extravaganza. In fact, Parcells didn't sound all that complimentary toward Fox's show with Terry Bradshaw, Howie Long and James Brown. ``I didn't consider anything else,'' said Parcells, who once worked on NBC's Sunday NFL snoozefest. ``This keeps me on the East Coast on a weekly basis and with minimal travel. More, it's an opportunity to do a show with more appeal to the football fan, with greater detail to where my expertise is in. I'm not in show business.''

--Pat Summerall, 71, in L.A. for Fox's annual preseason NFL seminar, was hospitalized with internal bleeding but should be released this weekend and ready to go back into the booth for the Sept. 8 season-opening assignment of covering the Redskins and Cardinals. Summerall recently signed to do regional games for Fox after splitting with longtime partner John Madden. Summerall is working with new analyst Brian Baldinger this season.

CAPTION(S):

photo, 2 boxes

Photo:

Mason Gordon: Creator of SlamBall

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SOUND BYTES (see text)