Kenyon Martin is running into things, knocking them over, making a lot of noise. This is, by recent accounts, fairly normal behavior for him. His father doesn't know what to do with him.

	Martin follows through after swinging at Orlando's Tracy McGrady. Both were ejected.

Kenyon doesn't care. He shouldn't. He just turned one.

His father, the basketball playing Kenyon Martin, just shrugs in that helpless parent way. Again, by recent accounts, this is unusual. Over the last month, Martin has twice been suspended for flagrant fouls -- and is quickly getting a reputation as a dirty player. He says it isn't so. In his modest-by-NBA-player standards digs in suburban Jersey, Martin is reevaluating himself as his two-game suspension ends.

"It's been a little rough just trying to figure out how I'm going to play," Martin said. "I'm a physical player -- even though I know my physique doesn't look like that -- but I'm a physical player. So I've got to figure out ways to get around what I do. I don't want to make the wrong move and have people take it like I'm trying to hurt somebody, which I'm not."

It looked like he was trying to hurt Karl Malone a couple of weeks ago, though, and Tracy McGrady last Saturday, and Martin knows it. He insists that he was just trying to block McGrady's shot, the same way he's blocked shots since he was in high school -- swatting down, hard. Only this time, he missed, and clocked McGrady on the noggin. T-Mac took exception, and came up shoving.

"I thought it was over," Martin says. "It was my sixth foul, and I'm walking off. I thought everything was over and done with, and the next thing I know, he's running up on me. So the kind of person I am, I'm going to protect myself, first and foremost ... I was coming down, and he was going up. That's all it was. And they took it a lot worse than it really was."

But it doesn't really matter how the players take it. It does matter how Stu Jackson takes it. And with four points already assessed for the two flagrants, Martin is one more Flagrant Two foul away from an automatic suspension. That means players will try to goad him, and every official will look at every hard foul in the paint with a skeptical eye. Reputations are tough to shake once you get them.

"That's why I've gotta make a conscious effort ... just go out of my way, I guess, like to talk to the refs or do whatever's possible for them not to look at me like that," Martin says. "I talked to Byron (Scott, the Nets' coach) the other day on the phone. He just told me I've gotta be careful. I don't need to get a bad reputation, 'cause I'm not that type of person. He just told me to be careful in what I do -- he wants me still to be aggressive at the same time -- but just ... let some things go."

Martin, though, says he isn't the only one committing flagrant fouls on occasion. So why has he been the only player suspended for one? Thorn was livid after the league suspended Martin one game following the flagrant against Malone, because Charles Oakley had collared Vince Carter in much the same way a few days before. He got a flagrant foul, but no suspension. And Martin was angered that when the Suns came to town a few weeks ago, he got shoved in the back on a fast break by Rodney Rogers and tumbled under the basket. But both he and Rogers received technicals.

ALDRIDGE'S RANKINGS

THE TOP 10 1. Sacramento 2. L.A. Lakers 3. San Antonio 4. Dallas 5. Minnesota 6. New Jersey 7. Milwaukee 8. Boston 9. Indiana 10. Phoenix THE BOTTOM FIVE 25. Golden State 26. Denver 27. Memphis 28. Miami 29. Chicago THE MIDDLE FOURTEEN 11. Detroit 12. Philadelphia 13. Washington 14. Charlotte 15. Orlando 16. Toronto 17. Seattle 18. L.A. Clippers 19. Utah 20. Portland 21. New York 22. Cleveland 23. Houston 24. Atlanta

Martin says he hit Dikembe Mutombo in the face last season from behind after going for a pump fake. "They called a foul," he says. "They didn't call a flagrant, nothing like that. I've been doing that since I've been playing basketball. That's what I do. But I gotta change something, probably."

Try definitely.

Martin apologized to his teammates at practice Tuesday. He watched both of the games for which he was suspended (the Nets have won all three of the suspended games) and said he felt "awkward" for letting his teammates down. But it's a fine line between being careful and letting teams walk down the lane. The Nets have had their own team reputation for years: for being soft and easy to push around. Big Kenyon Martin was drafted to try and change that.

"Every team has someone who's not having that," he says. "I think I'm the guy on my team to take a hard foul or block a shot or do anything that's necessary to keep a guy from scoring. But in that sense, I've just gotta go out and still do it, but in the right way."

After last week's incident, McGrady said Martin was mad because McGrady had scored 35 against the Nets -- many of those over Martin. He said Martin should "be a man" and take the punishment without resorting to cheap shots. The schedule maker, as always, has complied. Saturday night is the rematch, in Orlando. And Martin expects to guard McGrady a lot.

"People are gonna hype it up," Martin says. "I' know I'm gonna have to guard him again. I'm going down there with the attitude that I'm going to stop him ... I'm gonna play hard, but I'm pretty sure I'll be out there thinking about it. You know, I got a foul, what are they gonna say about this? But I can't let it become a conscious thing that I think about every time I step on the court."

Coaches, coaches, more coaches
Bill Cartwright opens up his mouth, and broken air comes out.

When he's towering over you, but just two feet away, you can hear everything he says. But add 18,000 persons to the mix, in a building designed to hold in noise, with the incessant thumping of hip-hop flavored music, and the call of the hot dog vendor (nowadays, in many arenas, the nicoise salad vendor), and it's harder.

The new head coach of the Chicago Bulls is doing the job with a throat that is holding on for dear life. In 1994, Cartwright's last season as a player, his larynx was damaged when he got an elbow to the throat. Several surgeries have preserved Cartwright's already-gravelly voice. Now, it's pure croak. It works. But the demands on the voice box of a head coach dwarf those of your garden-variety anonymous assistant coach. There are dealings with the press every day, and public appearances, and more attention overall. Not to mention having to scream instructions at young players who need to hear your every word.

Cartwright says his voice is holding up so far. But there may be the need for additional procedures later.

"It's really up to me and what I want to go through," he says. "We're going to kind of wait for that and reevaluate it. But certainly in this setting (a pregame shootaround), and in practice settings, where of course you're hoping you can get a lot of your work done, I should be fine. I'm not concerned about it ... it hasn't been a real strain. I don't feel any strain at all. It may sound like it, but it's not."

Players acknowledge that it's hard to hear Cartwright when they're at the opposite end of the floor from the Bulls' bench. But they adjust.

"He's extremely vocal the way he is," forward Marcus Fizer says. "We understand the terrible accident he had when he was playing and we understand we have to get a little closer to him now to find out what's going on. It helps us more than others because the opposing teams can't pick up our calls."

More importantly, Cartwright has cleared the air of the remnants of the Tim Floyd era. Nothing against Floyd, but his desire to move away from the triangle and put in more and more sets only confused his young charges. Some of his plays were literally out of the college playbook. Nor was he very receptive to suggestions from his pro assistants. Cartwright has put the triangle back in -- which no doubt pleases Jerry Krause -- and he's simplified the team's defensive approach. The Bulls are no longer guarding the screen and roll a dozen different ways, depending on the opponent. And his standing and bearing is an immediate upgrade in the respect for teacher department. The Bulls aren't winning any more regular. But they're playing a lot harder.

"If anything, we're trying to do less, and just trying to become better by doing less," Cartwright says. "If we can identify what we're going to do defensively, we're not going to change it and this is how we're going to play, I think it's easier for our guys to learn. I'd like to think that I kind of know the players. I kind of know how they feel, particularly on a back-to-back, and maybe how hard to push them, and how hard not to. Just to try to get the best out of them. If I can do that, then that's the game."

If there's one thing Bill Cartwright has proven over the years, it's that he knows the game. Now he has to say it. Softly, of course.

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