The WNBA wants attention, but not this kind.

The WNBA wants equality. Now we’ll find out just how equal it is.

Malice in the Palace II – otherwise know as a friendly brawl between two of the league’s marquee teams and featuring certainly its two biggest stars – only failed to replicate its ugly predecessor because none of the mess spilled into the stands. Otherwise, it was just as ugly and just as dumb and unnecessary.

With just seconds left in the Los Angeles Sparks‘ game against the Detroit Shock, star rookie Candace Parker became entangled with Detroit’s Plenette Pierson as both women attempted to block out on the free-throw line. Parker fell to the floor whereupon, it was on.

Parker bounced up but was tackled by Deanna Nolan, and in the madness Shock assistant coach Rick Mahorn (known as McNasty during his days with the Pistons; or was he McFilthy?) appeared to shove Sparks center Lisa Leslie, the league’s other shining star, to the court in an effort to be peacemaker. Moments later, the Sparks’ DeLisha Milton-Jones whacked Mahorn in the back.

The Sparks won the game 84-81, but this was a big L for a league that champions itself as role models for young women and a haven for pro athletes who would otherwise have to play overseas.

Only because the fight did not spill into the stands will the penalties not be equal to Malice I. No one will be suspended for the remainder of the season, as was Ron Artest. No one will likely receive the 30- and 25-game suspensions tagged on Stephen Jackson and Jermaine O’Neal, respectively.

The severity of their penalties was due, in part, to prior incidents and the insidiousness of the brawl. But don’t be surprised if WNBA commissioner Donna Orender, in her most challenging moment yet, hammers down in a way reminiscent of the sanctions levied in the wake of the Fight Night at The Garden two years ago when the Nuggets and Knicks went at it.

In that incident, Nuggets forward Carmelo Anthony was suspended 15 games, while six other players were suspended between one and 10 games. The franchises were also fined $500,000 each.

Multiple-game suspensions may be levied against Parker and perhaps Mahorn, and the teams could be fined heavily as well.

All things being equal.

The timing of the incident also stings because the Sparks will make their only New York-area appearance this season on Friday night at Madison Square Garden. Chances are the penalties will be announced and levied prior to that game, meaning Parker will not be in uniform.

Not exactly how the NBA’s sister league was hoping to showcase its brightest new light.

I should have known about Sherman “Jocko” Maxwell. I should have known about him, but I didn’t. And it saddens me.

You should have known about him, too.

We all should have known about him before he died last week, at the age of 100, in West Chester, Pa. Cause of death was complications from, well, the man was 100 years old.

We should have known about him because Maxwell was America’s first black sportscaster. Actually, back in 1929, when he read scores for five minutes every Saturday on WNJR in Newark, he was was a Negro. At best, as far as much of America was concern.

But like millions of other black men in his age and beyond, he was a man of class and dignity, I learned today as I read through the clips that accompanied his obits. He was a baseball fan who, through the grace of WNJR’s owner, was given an opportunity to read Negro League scores each week for the sation’s audience.

That was the beginning. Maxwell, I also learned today, ultimately did play-by-play for the Newark Eagles over the public address system, and was there when they won the Negro League World Series in 1946.

He was a baseball fan but in his career interviewed the greats of the day, including Sugar Ray Robinson and others.

Maxwell reported games for the Baltimore Afro-American and even chronicled Negro League games for the Newark Star-Ledger at a time when few non-black newspapers were reporting about those wondrous games. In fact, he kept such records at Negro League games that it seems folks believe much of its history would have been lost. “We, the old Afro-American players (the ones whom baseball’s social retardation kept out of their closed, lily white society for so long) owe him one hell of a debt,” Monte Irvin, 87, the former Newark Eagles/New York Giants superstar, said over the telephone yesterday. “So do the fans we had before they broke down racial barriers. So does baseball itself.”

In a sense, he was my Jackie Robinson. He was Bryant and Greg Gumble’s Jackie Robinson. Mike Tirico’s Jackie Robinson. Stephen A. Smith’s Jackie Robinson. James Brown’s Jackie Robinson. He was Jackie Robinson for the myriad black sportswriters who dot the cable and broadcast television and radio airwaves every day now.

And I should have known about him.

But I didn’t.

Oh and I learned that he was on the radio until his retirement in 1967. And that he never was paid a dime for a single moment he was on the air. “No salary ever in any sports, put that down,” he told the Star-Ledger’s Christine V. Baird in a wondrous profile published a decade ago. “Never asked. They never gave me any.

Maxwell earned his living as a postal worker.

Others have championed this, so I am only joining the chorus: Sherman “Jocko” Maxwell should be in the Baseball Hall of Fame.

The Star-Ledger’s Jerry Izenberg reported last week that there are 32 baseball broadcasters in Cooperstown, and yet Maxwell isn’t among them.

I didn’t know that, either. And I should have.

It was all about the Jug. Not You Know Who.

Tiger might as well have been here. For all the great golf that was – or more correctly, was not – played, the most fearsome force in the game might as well have been battling the elements at Royal Birkdale like everyone else.

Ernie Els? An 80 on day one essentially knocked him out of contention.

Sergio Garcia?  The pre-tournament favorite got progressively worse and finished with a sore wrist and a 78 on Sunday to finish at 17-over.

And Phil Mickelson? Please. He bumbled about so much, especially on the greens, it was as if he thought Tiger was there. Lefty finished at 14-over

None of these Tiger rivals took advantage of Woods’ absence. Thank goodness for Greg Norman.

Norman and his America’s Sweetheart Bride – a.k.a. Chrissie Evert – were the compelling story line, all the way through early afternoon Sunday when it became clear that the man widely known as “golf greatest victim” would not become the oldest golfer to win a major.

For who are not particularly golf fans, he was the only story line. But that does not  diminish the stature of this event.

Nor did Tiger’s absence.

In almost every way, this was a true major golf championship. It wasn’t quite, as one ABC announcer breathless described it at the start of the telecast, “one of the greatest days in sports.” But it was a major. It was a a brutal test of skill and mental fortitude. It was as if without Tiger, the golf gods chose to remind us that they are in charge and that anyone who thought the field would open like the Red Sea without Tiger was doomed to be swallowed.

No asterisk needed.

Not only because Padraig Harrington defended his title. (Okay, so this is likely the only major he can win.)

But also because during the first two days of the tournament, K. J. Choi played like he can’t wait for Tiger to return.

Because a Wood – a twig of an amateur named Chris, a former soccer player from Britain – was a hometown hero, finishing tied for 5th at 10-over. (He just missed tying the best amateur finish here ever, 4-under by countryman Justin Rose a decade ago.)

But mostly because almost everyone looked like they were almost clueless in the 40 m.p.h winds that traversed the course and made even long putts an adventure.

Golf showed it can still matter, at least to those who care about the game. And as long as guys like Norman step up where the wannabees just can’t.

To those who don’t, to those who only care about Tiger, see you in ‘09.

Wie was wronged.

I play golf by the rules. (Or at least I try to. Have you ever seen The Rules of Golf?!) I count all my strokes and take all my penalties.

Rules are part of the game’s charm. That it’s self-policing makes it a game that tests one in ways no other sport does.

But this time, golf got stupid. On Saturday, struggling yet still popular prodigy Michelle Wie was eliminated from the LPGA’s State Farm Classic when officials informed her that she failed to sign the previous day’s scorecard in a timely fashion.

The highlighted phrase is key. Seems the 18-year-old had a brain freeze following her second round Friday and walked out of the scorer’s tent without signing her card. Once volunteers in the tent realized her mistake, they chased down Wie, who had walked not far from the tent.

Wie returned and signed the card. No harm, no foul, right?

Nope. Tournament officials didn’t learn of the incident until Saturday. After investigating, it was determined that Wie had walked past a roped-off area surrounding the tent known as the “scoring area.” If she’d been caught before passing the rope, Wie, who was playing well for a change, would still be in the hunt for her first LPGA victory ever.

Instead, Wie, who was trailing the leader by a stroke, is done.

Too bad. Rules are rules, and signing your scorecard is one of the simplest. But some rules are nuts. This is one of them.

It’s nuts because not signing a card isn’t cheating. It’s a mistake - one that happens after the final putt is made. Most of the rules of golf are created to prevent cheating, to provide a uniform means of dealing with the myriad of things that can happen to a golf ball during a round.

Such a simple mistake should be dealt with by penalizing players with additional strokes, not sending them home.

Wie is not the first golfer to be eliminated for not signing a card. But like all the others, she should still be playing.

Riccardo Ricco

The Tour de France is, without question, one of the most grueling sporting events in the world. It requires strength, stamina and perseverance, nearly beyond measure.

But right now, it’s in dire need of a timeout. In fact, if the 21-stage bike race over more than 2,000 miles were an NCAA program, it would probably be given the death penalty.

Which is exactly what it needs.

And that’s too bad.

It’s too bad because cycling is a wonderful sport and the Tour epitomizes it at its peak. But in a sports era racked by the tsunami known as performance-enhancing drugs, the sport has also come to represent “cheating” at its most sophisticated.

This was supposed to be the sport’s watershed season, the year when doping officials said “Fini!” and put a system in place that would rid the sport of dopers and other scalawags.

But then Thursday, one of the sport’s biggest stars — Italy’s Riccardo Ricco — became the sports latest doper. He was expelled from the race for failing blood tests. A local prosecutor said he may face charges of “use of poisonous substances.” Ricco had won the sixth and ninth stages and was ninth overall.

This is now the third consecutive Tour marred by drugs, seemingly the gazillionth overall.

To their credit, cycling officials have been headstrong in their efforts to clean up the sport and had made progress. “May the cheaters get caught. May they go away,” Tour president Christian Prudomme has been widely quoted as saying. But even one of his colleagues, Patrice Clerc, who heads Tour organizer ASO, acknowledges that the mess will require more than a few sponges. “You can’t believe that a wave of a magic wand can change the world of cycling.”

Maybe a break will.

Put the race on hiatus for, say, two or three years, during which time cyclists are tested, tested and re-tested, and the cheaters are weeded out until all that’s left are, well, cyclists.

Last week, three-time champion Greg LeMond told The New York Times he was more optimistic about the sport than he’d been in decades. “I believe there are ways that you can eliminate 98 percent of the advantages of drugs, and I think the Tour de France realizes it,” he said.

But they may not truly realize how long it will take, or how drastic the measure might need to be.

Perhaps they do now.

Clark Kellogg was always about patience. Well, maybe not always.

Before the knee injury that hanged his life, Clark was just another pogo-stick baller. A very good pogo-stick baller (Big Ten Player of the Year, a 20/10 guy or three seasons in the NBA), he was one of the premier power forwards of the pre-Barkley Era.

Then early during the 85-86 season, he shattered his knee. That’s when Kellogg began to learn patience. That’s when he began to reshape his life beyond ball.

Perhaps grudgingly, of course. But he played only 19 games that season and foux the next, before retiring for good.

Without patience, we might not ever heard of Clark Kellogg again. He might have been just another had-been limping around his hometown.

Instead, Kellogg, nearly 20 years after his “retirement,” has achieved a coup: He is replacing Billy Packer as the lead analyst fro CBS Sports college basketball coverage. In 27 years as CBS acerbic voice of college hoops, Packer had called every Final Four since 1975.

The 2009 Final Four will be called by Special K, who for 16 years had been a studio analyst for the network.

Patience.

Patience and hard work that allowed Kellogg to earn the chair alongside Jim Nantz. Even Packer admitted to today, the day he got the boot, that Kellogg “worked his trade” (meaning TV). And Packer called him a “smart guy” and wished him “nothing but the best.”

Wow, if Packer had been that glowing as an analyst he might still have the gig.

Matt Strikes the Perp Pose

This’ll be fun. Or at least it will be curious to see how Roger Goodell handles this one.

Another well-known NFL player has run afoul (allegedly) of our nation’s laws. Our drug laws, no less.

And this time, it’s not a braided, blinged-out cat “makin’ it rain” at a strip club and causing such a ruckus that someone gets shot.

It’s Matt Jones, a clean-cut All-American (read: white) wide receiver from the heartland (or Arkansas, at least) who plays for the Jacksonville Jaguars.

He’s no Pacman. Not on the field (a former first-round pick, he’s pretty much been a dud for Jack Del Rio). Nor off it (no long record of behavioral misdeeds).

But what he’s accused of doing is a doozy: He was arrested in Fayetteville early Thursday morning (along with two buddies) when police approached his car and found him “cutting” with a credit card what turned out to be cocaine.

According to the police report, an officer pulled out his gun when Jones did not immediately show his hands.

Police said a search turned up a plastic bag filed with coke and a jar with what may be weed residue.

Jones faces felony drug possession, and will be arraigned Aug. 11 – two days after the Jags’ preseason opener against (you can’t make this up) Atlanta.

Last April, Adam - formerly known as Pacman - Jones was suspended by Goodell for the entire 2007 season, essentially because the incident at the Las Vegas strip club where someone was subsequently paralyzed was the final straw in a haystack of bad behavior by the then-Tennessee Titans D-back. Jones originally faced two felony charges stemming from the Vegas matter but eventually pleaded no contest to a misdemeanor charge of conspiracy to commit disorderly conduct. He was given a one-year suspended prison sentence, put on probation, and ordered to do the community-service thing (200 hours).

He still, however, has not been completely reinstated.

Now, with another Jones behind bars, well, Mr. Goodell, you are officially on the clock.

He’s out there. Somewhere.

Baseball’s Bigfoot - unseen but we just know he’s for real - is lurking about, and someone’s going to bag him.

Some GM, unable to resist the lure, is going to sign Barry Bonds.

And I cannot wait until it happens.

Until now, baseball’s home run king and not long ago the game’s most feared hitter has been The Player Who Shall Not Be Named. With perjury and obstruction of justice charges stemming from the feds’ obsession with BALCO hanging over his head, Bonds was essentially blacklisted.

Whether conspiratorial or not, everyone in the game seemed to come to the same conclusion: Not on my team.

Until now.

Now the smoke is starting to come into view.

Teams with needs and desperation are suddenly, if not quietly, entertaining the thought of signing Bonds for the second half of the season. (Oh, somewhere Bud Selig is startin’ to fidget.)

And two of those teams are in sports most visible markets: New York and Boston.

Boston may be in need of a big bat if Big Papi Ortiz, trying to return from a wrist injury, isn’t able to come back at full strength. Nick Cafardo of the Boston Globe recently wrote that Red Sox GM Theo Epstein said there was “nothing to speculation” that the Sox might sign Bonds if Ortiz was not due back for a while. This followed musings from ESPN’s Peter Gammons that the Sox had had “internal discussions” about Bonds.

In New York it gets even better. The Mets are in dire need of something to lift them out of mediocrity. They may be in need of a viable replacement for outfielder Ryan Church, who’s still fighting off dizzy spells and headaches from a concussion suffered during spring training. Yesterday, interim manager Jerry Manuel almost gushed at the prospect of having Bonds.

“Oooh, Barry Bonds,” he said. “That would be interesting. That would make [reporters] jobs easy. You’d have something every day to do.”

He added: “I don’t know Barry as personal as everyone knows him,” Manuel said. “But the talent . . . he’s a very special player.”

GM Omar Minaya was coy, but he never said no to the idea of making Bonds a Met.

And in New York, not saying no is an emphatic maybe.

Let’s be truthful here. There’s no “baseball” reason for not signing Bonds.

In 126 games last season, he hit 28 homers and drove in 66 runs. He walked 132 times, and in an indication that he’s still a feared hitter, 43 of those walks were intentional.

Is there anyone playing today who’s walked intentionally just because?

His .480 on-base percentage last season was above his career average. And overall .276 BA was respectable.

He’s 43. So what.

He’ll be booed. Yeah, until the first ball sails over the Green Monster or into the construction site for the Mets’ new stadium being built hard by Shea.

He’ll be a negative locker-room presence. Not for a team in the hunt.

Not for a team with guts.

This is why tennis is not dead. Yet.

This is why two guys with racquets can still captivate even those who’ve long dismissed the sport. At least for now.

This is why America’s men may never reign again in this sport. Never. And it’s a shame.

I’m not sure who’s next on the tennis stage. Or more accurately, I’m not sure if heir apparent Novak Djokovic will ever achieve Roger Federer’s greatness.

And Djokovic will certainly never have Rafael Nadal’s guns.

So for now, let’s just enjoy what we’ve got. Or what we got Sunday - 4 hours and 48 minutes of athletic brilliance.

Nadal’s five-set wonder over Federer will be measured mostly by numbers. It prevented the world’s No. 1 player - at least for now - from setting a modern-era record of six consecutive Wimbledon titles. It also snapped Federer’s Wimbledon match win streak at 40, just one game-set-match shy of matching Bjorn Borg’s magnificent mark.

Nadal won by surviving 25 aces and saving all but one of 13 break points. The Spaniard also broke Federer four times, including once in the for-the-ages fifth set, in the 15th game. In his previous six matches in this tournament, Federer had been broken just twice.

Nadal also won after dropping the first two sets. No man has done that at Wimbledon in more than 80 years.

But forget the numbers and remember this: American men could never do this.

I’m not sure what we lack. It’s certainly not for want of athleticism or passion or heart.

We still produce once-in-a-generation stars in nearly every other sport. But in tennis we can’t seem to produce squat.

Andy Roddick? Good not great.

James Blake? Easy to root for but not so great.

No one else possesses more than an occasional rocket serve or a once-every-millennium upset win that makes us think, maybe. But then they return to tennis oblivion.

Our last great American men - Pete Sampras and Andre Agassi - are aging gracefully alongside their predecessors, Jimmy Connors and John McEnroe.

The game doesn’t matter to enough of us any more.

The solitude of it goes against our social nature. (Besides why do all that running around sweating by yourself when you could be playing golf?)

The work it requires seems to outweigh the payoff.

And the travel is a beast.

More than anything, though, our kids have more options - the same options that are changing the face of baseball and causing the much-discussed dearth of black players.

Quite simply, we don’t want it enough.

We don’t want it enough to be great. Or be great for more than a minute.

Athlete Gets Speeding Ticket!

Athlete Runs Red Light!!

Athlete Caught Drinking and Cavorting with Wild Women!!!!

Athlete’s wife leaves him!!!!

ATHLETE BITES DOG!!!!!

Enough already! I’ve hit the wall on the coverage of athletes’ misbehavior. I don’t care about most of their travails and I’m certain most sports fans don’t either.

If they did, they’d stop attending games, watching games on television, listening to games on the radio, checking sports websites a bazillion times a day and commenting on sports blog posts. And that has not not happened. Thankfully.

My crash wasn’t sudden. I wasn’t blind-sided while minding my own business while watching the Mets game last night. But the proverbial straw may have come yesterday when ESPN.com touted on its front page: “Bulls’ Rose heads to court due to speeding ticket.” Of course I clicked on it and discovered that Derrick Rose, the No. 1 pick in the NBA draft, had been caught going 106 in a 65-mph zone back in April.

Of course the story touted that Rose “could get” a year in prison, the maximum sentence, for the offense, a misdemeanor. But also noted that first-time lead-footers like Rose typically get fined and sent to traffic school.

Zzzzzzzz.

Then this morning, my beloved New York Post greets me with “Out at Home,” headlining their story that C-Rod (A-Rod’s wife, Cynthia) was leaving the Yankee Bomber for rocker Lenny Kravitz, he of the very tight leather pants. She was said to be “shacking up” with Kravitz  at his Paris digs. (This afternoon Kravitz denied that there is an affair, saying he and Cynthia are friends and he allowed her and the godfather of her child, who is also Alex’s trainer, to stay with him while she was trying to get away from the madness of the coverage of her husband’s stud-life in New York. “I opened my home to her as a friend and I find it extremely hurtful that I am now being referred to as an adulterer,” he says.)

Zzzzzzzzz.

Now I’m not trying to hark back to the days when jocks and the men who cover them were practically in cahoots regarding the athlete’s off-hours dalliances. Nor am I condoning illegal behavior of any sort. (Rose needs to slow his butt down! He’s been driving for eight minutes?!).

Especially any Pacman-like foolishness.

But every misstep by an athlete is not worthy of exhaustive coverage and holier-than-thou ranting by talking sports bobble-heads (such as myself).

I just don’t care. Does anyone else?