Lockouts

A look at the NBA lockout through Tuesday: * Games lost Tuesday: 9. * Total games lost: 350. * Earliest estimated date season can start: Jan. 22. * Negotiations: None scheduled. * Quote of the day: "When it gets cold out, it's time to play basketball. . . . Sometimes we get to talking and I think, 'What's this got to do with winning or losing basketball games?' " --LARRY BIRD, coach of the Indiana Pacers

Dominick Jaramillo stared out at the parking lot at the Arrowhead Pond. Inside, a trade show was in progress, one of those events that can help fill out an arena's schedule and requires only a skeleton event staff. "Cost certainty" and "salary cap," the buzzwords hovering over the NHL lockout, mean nothing to Jaramillo, a parking director at the Pond. He looked out at the mostly empty parking lot and saw money for college flying away.

Right now the NBA is playing into the hands of its harshest critics, the people who say the sport is full of wealthy babies and think there's no reason to watch the games, since all of the action takes place in the last two minutes anyway. Only this time, it's the owners who are looking like schoolchildren. And the players are content to milk the clock, waiting until the legal system weighs in during what will be the fourth quarter of this lockout.

The health and stability of baseball can be measured in dollars--but not a lot of sense. On one side are the owners, with 1990 revenues anticipated to be $1.2 to $1.5 billion for a full season. On the other are the players, with a 1990 average salary of more than $600,000. But they have managed to blow most of spring training and, apparently, the start of the season in a face-saving, pride-saving squabble over what the Major League Players Assn.