And the coaches must do network interviews during selected timeouts, though the comments will be taped and presented later in the games.

Also, as the NBA — and other pro sports like baseball and football, which have already tried similar tactics — tries to draw more attention to its product, there will be remote-controlled cameras turned on in locker rooms before and at halftime and after the TNT/ESPN-broadcasted games.

The panning cameras are not supposed to focus on strategic things like a coach's Xs-and-Os dry-erase board but will allow the viewing public to be peeping toms into locker-room activity.

"What do you do about it? You just do it. That's the rules," said Sloan. "It's like three seconds — what do you do about it? You get out of the lane."

Some players may also wear mics, but, unionized, they have the option to say no. Coaches do not.

"As an athlete, it's just not part of your soul," players' union president and former Jazzman Derek Fisher told the Los Angeles Times. "It's just not a part of who you were growing up, for everything that you did as part of your preparation for games, or during competition, to be public consumption."

"It's going to be real hard on us coaches," Jackson told the Times. "We do things in a private zone. For people to be in the inner sanctum, where emotions are high and things are happening, it is threatening to us. We're going to have to get over it at some level. It's 'Big Brother,' though. It's very 'Big Brother'-ish. Those things are difficult to absorb."

Jackson artfully suggested he'd use the opportunity to speak well of opponents and talk about how his players should be helpful to those they knock down on screens and the like.

Skiles told the Chicago-area Daily Herald that the intrusions are "unnecessary. I'm told to do it, so I do it."

Popovich wondered to the Express-News if "it would give pause" to Stern and his staff if a camera and microphone showed up "all of a sudden in their next important meeting."

Popovich added, "I trust the league will do everything it can to keep it in-house and all that. But we live in the world. And most of us see that is pretty impossible to do."

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E-mail: lham@desnews.com