to Pete Rozelle and Kenesaw Mountain Landis on the Mount Rushmore of sports commissioners. These days, though, it's starting to look like Gary Bettman is the smart one. We can all recite the NBA's problems by heart. Too many games in the regular season to eliminate too few teams, and guaranteed contracts that practically guarantee lackluster effort until the playoffs. My question is why no one has tried to bring this paper tiger down? New football leagues pop up every few years, either as off-season alternatives to the NFL, like Arena ball, or as rivals like the AFL, USFL, or XFL. In basketball, nada. We've had an alphabet soup of underfunded minor leagues and/or alternatives like the CBA , IBL, and USBL go bust in this decade, and no serious challenge to the NBA's preeminence since the merger with the ABA. Isn't it about time there was one? And can they please bring back those sweet, sweet ABA red, white, and blue balls?