Does nature abhor a vacuum? Apparently not, judging by the sorry state of the NBA and NHL BY CHIP YOUNG

Hey, guess who’s watching NBA basketball?!?!

No one.

Guess who’s watching NHL hockey?!?!

Fewer than no one, since the owners have locked out the players. The chances of a sport that is on life support even having a season are becoming slim and none. League executives boosted this optimistic outlook by canceling the NHL All-Star Game already scheduled for midseason. Will the last rat leaving the ship please turn off the lights?

With New England sports fan still abuzz over the Boston Red Sox winning the World Series for the first time since a stegosaurus took a dump on Boston Common, the beginning of the NBA season and the virtual cancellation of the NHL campaign have attracted virtually no attention. You could see this coming from miles away. Does the nature of the Sweaty Sciences abhor a vacuum? Not in the case of these two bloated leagues full of blowhards, both on the playing field and in the front office.

What will slide into this vacuum is the attention now attracted on a year-round basis by the Red Sox and New England Patriots. The Pats are good for a run through January, and they will barely have taken off the pads before the Olde Towne Team’s pitchers and catchers head to Florida for spring training. Until that time, the fans will be proudly sporting the " Elvis as a Minuteman " logo, looking for their third Soopah Bowl win in four years.

This will lead to dissection of the Patriots’ season for at least a month, either parceling out praise to the champions or hunting furiously for scapegoats. Meanwhile, the familiar combination of angst and exhilaration will creep in again for members of Red Sox Nation. Can we repeat? What if Curt Schilling’s ankle can’t fully recover? How will the loss of Pedro/D-Lowe/Jason Varitek/Orlando Cabrera (choose a name among the club’s premier, possibly outbound free agents) affect the Sox? How will picking up Edgar Renteria/Omar Vizquel/Brad Radke (your choice of possible free agent additions) help the team?

This combination of contrasting emotions was well seen in the post-World Series celebrations. The cheers and howling of 3.5 million fans along the Red Sox victory parade route in the Hub were well-deserved and inspiring. But the predominant emotion I witnessed elsewhere was that of long-suffering fans solemnly shaking hands, telling each other mutedly, " Congratulations, " while slightly smiling and nodding as if to say, " Thank God, we got that King Kong-sized gorilla off our backs. " As the many signs at Busch Stadium and along the parade route echoed: " Now I can die in peace. "

Personally, I am looking forward to Opening Day at Fenway Park, where the American League pennant and World Series championship flags will be run up the pole. There to witness it will be not just 36,000-plus delirious fans, but our old pals, the New York Yankees. If the event planners get it right, they will force the members of the Evil Empire to stand along the third base line for about 45 minutes. During this time speeches will be made extolling Red Sox Nation, and every Boston-based musical act from James Taylor to Aerosmith will play an extended version of some appropriately stirring tune, wrapping up with the J. Geils Band doing " Dirty Water, " while Air Force jets scream overhead. Take that, Boss Steinbrenner and Ronan Tynan.

But to return to the present, the Boston Celtics may as well play in Delaware as at the Fleet Center, such is the interest in the NBA these days. The atrocious performance of our US mercenaries during the Olympics this summer was the dagger in the heart of a league going downhill at warp speed. Basically, the preening egotists we sent to Athens were lacking just that — basics. It is always nice to know we are being represented by a team captain such as Allen Iverson, with his idiotic tattoos and sideways hat, chewing gum during the opening ceremonies of the 2004 Games. " The Answer, " as Iverson is known, had about as many correct responses on the court as he did on his SATs.

There is simply nothing at all likable about this Celtics team. Paul Pierce can play, but the headband and histrionics have to go. Pierce’s modern day kind of posturing is only exacerbated by how the NBA is full of morons who can’t read, write, consistently play " D, " or hit an outside jumper. Please show me your customized Escalade with its stadium sound system and your assorted bling-bling. You fah-scinate me. Be like Mike? Not any more, thanks.

In this current bell jar, at least New Englanders have the Patriots, although most locals are as antsy about expecting success from them as from the BoSox.

One need only look at the aftermath of the loss to Pittsburgh to see hand-wringing and wailing along the likes of Butterfly McQueen’s Prissy in Gone with the Wind — " I don’t know nuthin’ ‘bout birthin’ babies, Miz Scarlett! " — to see how Pats’ fans are as fatalistic as their baseball counterparts. Fortunately, for a team that just set an NFL record for consecutive wins and whose supporters have instant amnesia, head coach Bill Belichick and Company provided fans with an injection of Valium directly into the temple by coming back to knock off the Rams in St. Looee, no easy task. Very fitting that the purported bleeding was stanched in the same city where the Red Sox popped the corks two weeks earlier.

The ride doesn’t figure to get much easier for the Patriots with the injuries in the secondary. (Although any event that gets a player whose first name is " Earthwind " into the game has its upside.) But as many of the defensive players noted, that just makes Romeo Crennel’s game plan lean more on pressuring the quarterback to take the heat off the new boys at safety and the corners.

This kind of intelligence has marked New England’s play for the last three years, a product of " Genius " Belichick, " Kinda Genius " Crennel and " Sub-Genius " offensive coordinator Charlie Weis. As long as they are running the show, anything can happen.

Do you think the execs with the empty suits and empty heads in the NHL and NBA offices can take a hint?