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Resounding with the familiarity of recent sports-page headlines, Lupica's (Limited Partner) saga of a Michael Jordan-like basketball player accused of rape crackles with tension, excitement and hip authenticity right from the opening tipoff. Ellis ``Fresh'' Adair has it all, his most significant asset being an above-the-rim game that elevates the fortunes of the New York Knicks. But Adair's hoop dream turns nightmarish when he and his right-hand man, white Knicks point guard Richie Collins, are accused of rape a year after the fact by struggling N.Y.C. actress Hannah Carey. Threatened by the loss of their cash cow, the Knicks hire Mike DiMaggio, a former athlete and lawyer turned ``sports snoop,'' to get the inside skinny. DiMaggio must make sense of Hannah's bizarre manipulations, Collins's brutal sexuality, Adair's falsely innocent facade and a ruthless sports columnist bent on sleazing up an already tawdry story. When the plot's rape angle begins to flag, the introduction of a murder, a suicide and a character's startling revelation maintains the fast-break pace. Though the novel is not without flaws (the similarity of many characters' voices, a stereotypical female protagonist), Lupica backs up his wiseass, street-smart storytelling with credible basketball details. His amalgam of tightly written sports story and crime fiction sinks a winning basket. (Mar.)