NEW ORLEANS – In the Big Easy two things reign supreme: booze and snookering tourists into dropping dollars.

This is a city with no open container law, no early-morning cutoff for alcohol sales and less than no shame. A quick jaunt through the French Quarter will yield scores of human statues, musicians and fortunetellers all looking to part slack-jawed yokels from their cheese. What I soon found out is that I am just that kind of slack-jawed yokel.

With a pocket full of currency and Syracuse University basketball on my mind, I couldn’t resist the urge to utilize the spirit world in my quest for answers about the future of SU hoops. For only a nominal fee to the mediator of course.

Enter Guy Whitney, a 12-year tarot card-reading veteran from California’s sunny San Bernardino Valley. Dressed in a hodge-podge of what looked like medieval garb and wielding a floppy deck of cards that was given to him when he started in this noble profession, Guy agreed to reveal the past, present and future for $17. What a deal!

He prefaced our journey into the unknown by noting that although he knows nothing about SU basketball or sports in general, it has not stopped him from predicting past athletic outcomes in the Louisiana Superdome with dead-on accuracy. Before last year’s Super Bowl, the cards didn’t bother to clue him in on something trivial like a score or how the game would end. Instead, they gave him the far more valuable tip that one team would have to play poorly while the other would have to give 110 percent. His gift is uncanny.

As he laid out my first nine cards, Guy explained the rules of the tarot. Each set of three cards represented either the past, present or future of the team with both the past and present stretching two years in both directions.

Guy flipped the cards. I trembled in anticipation.

In the past, he calmly explained to me, things haven’t always gone according to plan for SU, but the Orangemen haven’t cried over spilled milk – an obvious allusion to the NCAA’s harsh sentence for SU guard Billy Edelin at the beginning of the season. The present has been an exhibition of excellent leadership but has lacked the consistency that some would have hoped, which is just the tarot’s way of saying that SU shouldn’t have dropped those games to Connecticut.

At this point, I am a total believer, but then while pointing to the future cards, Guy dropped the bomb on me.

‘There is going to be a lot of crying over what hasn’t been accomplished,’ he said.

Does this mean that it will be Kansas coach Roy Williams and not SU’s Jim Boeheim cutting down the nets on Monday night? Have the fates foreseen Carmelo Anthony buying new Hummers with his buddy LeBron James next August instead of sharing slices of Sbarro with Gerry McNamara?

That is unclear, Guy said. I guess sometimes the spirits skirt specifics.

Finally, I was prompted to pull one last card from the deck to get a clearer look into the next 12 months. I settled on one slightly left of center, and I placed on the table a folded and worn King of Swords. I can tell by the look on Guy’s face that this is not a positive choice.

This means a lot of conflict, Guy explained, there are just going to be too many egos.

You read it here first. Tell Otto to stay out of Konrad’s and ready your road stops, because DeShaun Williams is on his way back to Syracuse.

GUY SEZMore French Quarter revelations from a tarot-card reader:

Carmelo Anthony’s rookie year in the NBA:’He may not accomplish all of his goals.’Final prognosis: With solid support, he will be fine. But the NBA won’t be as easy as the Big East.

Gerry McNamara’s career in public service:’Nothing jazzes him more than the hugs and cuddles of his comfort zone.’Final prognosis: Although ‘Mayor of Scranton’ may be a nickname now, McNamara better get used to City Hall, because that’s where he is headed.

Billy Edelin steering clear of trouble:’He is defiantly heading in the wrong direction.’Final prognosis: The temptation of playing against white guys in a 40-and-over league may again prove too much.

Justin Young is a sophomore newspaper major. E-mail him at justin@maynestream.com.

Published on April 6, 2003 at 12:00 pm