Mike Gminski

Modern marriage, Scene I: a drizzly Friday on Sixth Avenue, Smith Barney brokerage house, almost 6 p.m. Vice president Stacy Ellen Anderson's last glance around her office lands on the picture of her husband, Mike Gminski, which she uses as a bookmark for her executive planner. (Stacy, 5 feet, 8 inches, and Mike, 7 feet tall, 275 pounds, according to his wife - a mere 6-11, 260, according to his employer, the Philadelphia 76ers - are photographed lying down in pastels and tans and smiles, elbow-to-elbow, cheek-to-cheek.

Mike Gminski, a former 76ers center who spent 14 seasons in the NBA, has been contacted by Comcast SportsNet as a possible successor to Steve Mix as the analyst on Sixers telecasts. "This was really preliminary," Gminski confirmed by telephone from his home in Charlotte, N.C. "They asked if I were interested, and I said I'd love to talk. I'm waiting to hear back from them. I'm wide open. " Gminski recently completed his third 2-year contract as a college basketball analyst for Fox Sports, primarily covering Atlantic Coast Conference games.

The advent of true free agency in the NBA has added another dimension to the building of a winning team. Not only does a club have to concern itself with the possibility of acquiring key players from other organizations in trades, it now must pay a lot of attention to holding onto its own key players when their contracts run out. Take the 76ers and Mike Gminski, for example. Harold Katz, owner of the Sixers, made it clear yesterday that, in his view, rumors concerning the imminent departure of Gminski were nothing more than that.

The news of Mike Gminski's new contract did not alter Charles Barkley's outlook on his financial future with the 76ers. For more than a year, Barkley, who is in the third year of an eight-year, $13 million contract, has said he deserved a bigger paycheck. Now that center Gminski has signed a four-year deal worth $7 million, Barkley has the same stance. "I'm going to get the (money)," Barkley said. "I don't worry about it. I know I'm going to get what I deserve. " When Barkley's contract was extended in the fall of 1986, there was no such thing as an unrestricted free agent in the NBA. The fact that Gminski would have been free to negotiate with any team as of July 1 without the Sixers' having the right of first refusal certainly played a part in the agreement between the team and the 29-year-old center.

The hardest part is the losing. Mike Gminski has been there before, and now, playing for one of the NBA's expansion franchises, he's there again. "It's a big adjustment," Gminski said before the Sixers played the Charlotte Hornets last night. "We won the division championship in Philly last year, and you get used to that kind of thing. " Whatever dreams Mike Gminski may have harbored of playing for a championship team before his career is finished may have disappeared when the Sixers traded him to Charlotte for Armon Gilliam and Dave Hoppen on Jan. 4. Gminski has played 10 games for Charlotte now. Before last night, his team had won just twice in that span.

The 76ers' logjam of bodies at the forward position was eased dramatically yesterday, although not entirely by design. Ben Coleman, whose 101 games with the Sixers would qualify as a disappointment, was placed on waivers yesterday for the purpose of giving him his unconditional release. Bob Thornton, meanwhile, was lost for at least a month because of recurring pain in a troublesome right ankle. The 6-foot-9 Coleman came to the Sixers as part of the 1988 trade that also brought Mike Gminski from New Jersey for Roy Hinson and Tim McCormick.

Jim Lynam says it doesn't take a G-Man to find a G-Man. Jim Lynam says it doesn't even take an investigation, doesn't even merit one. Not even when the 76ers' resident G-Man, starting center Mike Gminski, shoots 3-for-14 from the floor, plays a season-low 24 minutes and sits out the last 15:55? Not even when that comes on the heels of a 2-for-10 glitch in Monday night's loss to the Los Angeles Lakers? Not even. "It's two games," said Lynam, the Sixers' coach, after last night's Barkleyville Bonanza, a 114-106 victory over the Portland Trail Blazers.

There must be people in the Boston Garden who can't handle losing. But one of them apparently went a step too far after the 76ers came from 30 points down to stun the Celtics, 97-93, last night. As the Sixers filed into their locker room, someone seemed to say something to the Sixers' Charles Barkley from behind a protective curtain. Barkley stopped in his tracks, turned and seemed to take a swipe at the source. At that point, the Sixers' Cliff Robinson came out of the locker room and pushed Barkley inside.

Mike Gminski knows the proper cure for the four bruised knuckles on his left hand. "Ice and rest," the Sixers' center said as he showed off the ice bag protecting his injury. "Or, in this case, ice and no rest. " Gminski, who injured his hand in Friday's loss to Portland, struggled yesterday as the Sixers fell to Boston, 107-105. Though he managed seven rebounds in 24 minutes, he shot just 2-for-10 and scored only four points before leaving the game for good with 4:36 to go in the third quarter.

It would have been the perfect ending for an absurd game. But the referees had no sense of humor. They stuck to the rule book. With the score tied at 100 and 1.1 seconds left in regulation against the Washington Bullets in the Baltimore Arena, Mike Gminski, standing a few feet inside midcourt, was poised to throw a lob pass from out of bounds to Charles Barkley. The idea was to get the ball to Barkley and have him put it in the basket. Well, the ball went in the basket, but it never got to Barkley.

Mike Gminski, a former 76ers center who spent 14 seasons in the NBA, has been contacted by Comcast SportsNet as a possible successor to Steve Mix as the analyst on Sixers telecasts. "This was really preliminary," Gminski confirmed by telephone from his home in Charlotte, N.C. "They asked if I were interested, and I said I'd love to talk. I'm waiting to hear back from them. I'm wide open. " Gminski recently completed his third 2-year contract as a college basketball analyst for Fox Sports, primarily covering Atlantic Coast Conference games.

When you consider that his nickname is "G-Man," it probably shouldn't come as a surprise that Mike Gminski is considering a career in politics or government service when his NBA playing days are over. The Charlotte Hornets backup center and former 76er met with his political role model, former President Richard Nixon, in Nixon's Woodcliff Lakes, N.J., office for 45 minutes on Jan. 20, the day Bill Clinton was inaugurated as president. Richard Nixon? "When I first started forming my political beliefs, (Nixon)

Rick Mahorn says some of the current 76ers either don't want to win or don't know how. He says that some of them "are lucky to have jobs. " Mahorn was the Sixers' power forward in 1989-90, their center last season. Now, he's playing for Il Messaggero, a professional team in Rome. The Sixers jettisoned him at the end of last season, when they decided not to exercise what would have been a $1.6 million option on him for this season. His contract in Italy is believed to be worth more than $3.6 million over two seasons.

At the frustrating end with the 76ers, Mike Gminski was viewed by management as part of the problem. With the Charlotte Hornets, he's looked at as part of the solution. It doesn't take a G-Man to figure out why. "I might not necessarily have been the (Sixers) scapegoat, but because of the way I played early last season, I might have been the recipient of a carryover of feelings that they had had with some other players, such as Andrew Toney and Derek Smith," Gminski said. His new team, the Hornets, had just turned back his old team, 128-120, in a preseason game last night at the Charlotte Coliseum.

The 76ers gathered in a locker room for the season's final time on Tuesday night. They trudged slowly off the floor of Chicago Stadium, while the Bulls frolicked the other way with arms raised, future still bright. "You just don't want the season to end," said 36-year-old Rickey Green, who has played 13 seasons in the NBA and never finished the playoffs with a win. "You want to keep going. " Instead, it is the Bulls who kept going by virtue of their 4-1 domination of the best-of-seven Eastern Conference semifinal series.

Mike Gminski walked the familiar corridors of the Spectrum last night and had to remind himself to take a sharp left at the visitors' locker room. He had been there before, during seven seasons of toil for the New Jersey Nets. And now, after going from the 76ers to the Charlotte Hornets in a January trade, he was once again a stranger in a familiar land. The poor shooting that had caused the Sixers to trade Gminski had turned around, just as Gminski had predicted it would. And the Sixers, without a frontcourt player who could shoot effectively from the perimeter, had struggled in his absence.

The hardest part is the losing. Mike Gminski has been there before, and now, playing for one of the NBA's expansion franchises, he's there again. "It's a big adjustment," Gminski said before the Sixers played the Charlotte Hornets last night. "We won the division championship in Philly last year, and you get used to that kind of thing. " Whatever dreams Mike Gminski may have harbored of playing for a championship team before his career is finished may have disappeared when the Sixers traded him to Charlotte for Armon Gilliam and Dave Hoppen on Jan. 4. Gminski has played 10 games for Charlotte now. Before last night, his team had won just twice in that span.

The new G-Man sets up low, lays his body against whatever tree is planted defensively in the post. The G-Man turns on his defender now, sometimes goes left, other times goes right, sometimes rolls inside for a layup, other times lofts a soft jumper or a jump-hook. The G-Man wears jersey No. 43 now, one digit up from Mike Gminski. That's G, as in Gilliam, rather than as in Gminski. Armon Gilliam won't really inherit the nickname, but he has already inherited the minutes the 76ers desperately need from their new man in the post.

Mike Gminski saw it coming. He just didn't know when, didn't know where. When one of the swirling rumors finally came true, it deposited him in Charlotte, the 76ers' pawn in a trade that brought them power forward Armon Gilliam and backup center Dave Hoppen. And when rumors involving the Los Angeles Lakers and Golden State turned up barren, the Hornets' deal stung him. Friday morning, Sixers general manager Gene Shue said "absolutely nothing" was going on. In Salt Lake City, where the Sixers were preparing to play the Utah Jazz that night, coach Jim Lynam told Gminski things seemed quiet.

The 76ers entered the current season with a starting lineup that seemed stable and promising. It was a versatile array: Dawkins, the rapier point guard; Hawkins, the cold-eyed scorer; Barkley, the enraging, inspiring superstar; Mahorn, the proud enforcer, and Gminski, the deft-shooting center. That group came together well enough to provide the Sixers with a division championship last season. The task this season was to build a strong bench around that starting unit. That attempt brought Manute Bol, Rickey Green, Jayson Williams and Brian Oliver to the team to shore up a reserve unit that had long been Ron Anderson and little more.