IT STRUCK us, watching Game 3 of Nets-Knicks, that Kenyon Martin is a lot like ESPN. Too much like ESPN.

Martin, like ESPN, is loaded with talent, he’s highly energetic and he’s always in the middle of things. He should be very, very easy to root for.

But, like ESPN, he spends so much time celebrating himself that he becomes tough to watch and increasingly difficult to root for. You want to shake him and demand to know why he’s working off such a plan, why he’s so eager to turn off so many who would otherwise constitute a greater fan base.

ESPN, this September, will launch a lengthy and ambitious celebration of itself on the occasion of its 25th anniversary. Fair enough. For better and worse, ESPN has had an impact on sports and television and radio and commerce that could not be foreseen, 25 years ago.

But therein lies the problem. ESPN has forced up so many celebrations of itself – the 10,000th “SportsCenter,” Sunday Night Football anniversaries, The ESPYs, Chris Berman’s first kiss – that viewers might be disinclined to distinguish them from the one that should most count.

Consider Kenny Mayne, a clever fellow who nonetheless has allowed himself to be locked into the role of ESPN’s detached, down-beat and now highly predictable presence. He’s ESPN’s Tommy Smothers, a wait-for-the-punchline fellow who has conditioned us to not ever take seriously.

Last year at this time, ESPN assigned Mayne to one of its mindlessly self-celebratory endeavors. Because ESPN would televise four major league events in one day – the NFL Draft, an NBA playoff game, a baseball game and an NHL playoff game – he would travel the continent in an attempt to appear live from all four events.

It didn’t work, not because Mayne arrived in Vancouver after the hockey game had ended, but because the notion trumped the reality, because the promotion made for intrusive and annoying self-promotional viewing.

It came off for what it was: A scene-stealing stunt from some FM “Zoo” morning-drive playbook. It was the guy on the cellphone, seated behind the backstop, waving to the TV camera. Few, if any, tuned to an NBA playoff game or NHL playoff game on a spring weekend to check Mayne’s progress, thus it became what it had to become: An institutionalized backfire.

But ESPN has too often allowed the sports it televises to become props in service to the sell of ESPN. And so ESPN, older but not necessarily wiser, yesterday sent Mayne to try it again. Too bad that ESPN, like Kenyon Martin, is so ceaselessly driven to foolish self-indulgences. By the time ESPN’s 25th anniversary programming begins – a formal, as opposed to a toga party in the frat-house basement – people might be partied out on ESPN.

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Because Mike Tyson, three parts freak show, one part bankrupt boxer, remains an attraction in the tradition of train wrecks and two-headed salamanders, there are hot rumors afloat that HBO is ready to underwrite his next bout.

I wouldn’t blame the folks at HBO, at least not much. But his rumored opponent is Joe Mesi, a fellow who on March 13 in Vegas narrowly won a decision over Vas Jirov despite three times being flattened in the late rounds. And it’s Mesi, not Tyson, who seems to be the problem.

There are boxing people, including journalist Thomas Hauser (see: secondsout.com) who have it on good authority that Mesi suffered a brain clot on March 13, thus shouldn’t fight for a long time, if ever again. Mesi’s father/handler flatly denies it.

There are also rumors that a Tyson-Mesi fight will be held at an Indian casino in Canada to circumvent boxing commission authorities, no matter how feckless they may be.

And there are boxing people who are convinced that Mesi, more than most, is one Tyson punch to the head away from leaving the arena in a body bag.

But there’s a preemptive solution: Regardless of where, Tyson isn’t going to fight without TV and TV money in the mix. And whether that network is HBO or QVC, the TV underwriters of that fight must insist upon thorough, independent neurological examinations of both fighters, the results of which are to be publicly disclosed, before the fight is allowed to proceed.

Anything less would be criminal.