THESE CHARACTERS EVOLVE POORLY.

Byline: KAREN CROUSE

In ``A Tale of Two Cities,'' Sydney Carton sacrifices his life so his friend Charles Darnay might live. You'd probably have a dickens of a time explaining to today's generation of professional athletes the motivation of a man who would sooner go to the guillotine than see the lovely daughter of Dr. Alexander Manette widowed.

Forget the French Revolution, set Charles Dickens' morality tale against the backdrop of the ongoing ``Me'' Revolution more than a century later and what you have is ``A Tale of Three Athletes,'' featuring Artie Ulmer, Chris Webber and Allen Iverson.

The 1998 remake finds Ulmer, a reserve linebacker for the Minnesota Vikings, acting on his love for Lucie Manette Darnay not by spiriting her husband - his friend - out of prison and taking his place but by slipping gamma hydroxybutyric acid (GHB) into her ginger ale.

Then, when she doth dare to protest, he backpedals faster than the quarterbacks he chases for a living and scurries for cover behind a friend. James Walter Kilpatrick was a passenger in Ulmer's pickup truck the night in January he was pulled over by police in Valdosta, Ga.

The police found GHB, commonly referred to as the ``date-rape'' drug or liquid ecstasy, in a bottle of cold medicine on the console. A female friend of Ulmer recently testified before a grand jury that the player gave her ginger ale laced with GHB to drink outside a dance club the night before he was stopped and arrested.

Ulmer, a second-year pro out of Valdosta State, was indicted last month on three felony charges.

He entered an innocent plea. Ulmer isn't disputing the existence of the drug-laced medicine, just its owner. The bottle, he claims, was Kilpatrick's, not his.

Even if he is telling the truth, you feel like Ulmer is guilty by association. Somewhere in the fine print of the social contract among chums, doesn't it say friends don't let friends drive drunk or drug women?

But then you remember, this is the '90s. People today develop Teflon characters early, the better to allow such things as blame to bounce right off them. It's a moral sickness, with responsibility passed on like the germs that cause the common cold.

Chivalry? It's definitely as dead as Dickens. In another story line in this remake, a carry-on bag containing, among other things, 11 grams of marijuana concealed in a sock is discovered in the transit lounge of the San Juan, Puerto Rico airport. A couple of modern-day aristocrats - you know them as NBA players - are sitting there with their entourage awaiting a flight to Barbados.

U.S. custom officials initially identified the bag, which was recovered last week, as belonging to Philadelphia guard Jerry Stackhouse. He was questioned before Webber came forward and claimed ownership, in a roundabout way.

Webber explained the bag really belonged to a female companion (one with very large feet, judging by the size 16 sneakers that were among the bag's contents).

Imagine: in Dickens' day, you took off your topcoat and draped it over a mud puddle so your lady wouldn't get dirty. Now it's OK to drag her name through the mud to keep yourself clean.

Even if you believe Webber's story, you have to shake your head at his poor judgment. You'd expect a guy who is awaiting trial on charges of marijuana possession stemming from a traffic arrest in January to be vigilant to the point of paranoia.

Nobody would jump all over Webber if he took a timeout now. After all, this is not an NCAA Tournament semifinal game hanging in the balance. It's his life.

But who's going to level with Webber, the sycophants who call themselves his friends? The sooner Webber learns to tell a loyalist from a lackey, the better.

Devotion helped dig Carton's grave in ``A Tale of Two Cities,'' but it was by no means blind. The updated version finds Iverson, Philadelphia's star guard, being more discriminating about the cars he buys than the friends he lets use them.

Last month authorities in Norfolk, Va., arrested two men after they drove away from an alleged drug deal in a $138,000 Mercedes-Benz that they had borrowed from Iverson. One of the men was charged with possession of marijuana and the other with possession of cocaine and intent to distribute.

Iverson is standing by the friends. He says they keep him real. A sense of honor, however misplaced, won't allow him to sever his childhood ties even if they're strangling him.

You want this remake to end neatly, but you're worried loyalty will once again get in the way of a happy ending.