Chicago ? With 9 minutes 54 seconds left in the third quarter of the Chicago Bulls’ 103-94 playoff victory Sunday over the Washington Wizards, Jared Jeffries went up for a transition layup as an airborne Andres Nocioni fouled him on the wrist.

Somewhere, Bill Laimbeer grimaced at the lost opportunity.

Jeffries did not hit the floor with a thud, officials didn’t have to separate any players, and the paramedics stayed in their seats. This was to hard fouls what a hangnail is to pain.

Nocioni, an Argentine who previously had played in Spain, finished with 25 points, 18 rebounds, one blocked shot, four assists and four rather polite fouls.

A few minutes after Nocioni passed on pummeling Jeffries, the United Center crowd gasped when the two were tangled and Nocioni flopped to the floor. Fan reaction aside, it looked more like bad balance rather than bad blood had caused Nocioni’s fall.

The anticlimactic moments made the pregame debate over whether Nocioni was a dirty player, as the Wizards’ Gilbert Arenas has implied, ring even more hollow to veteran NBA observers such as Norm Van Lier.

The former Bulls guard, a product of the days when hand checks were part of the game and not the subject of league meetings, scoffed at the concept of Nocioni or any other player on the Bulls being called dirty.

“Guys in my day used to get knocked on their rear all the time, but now with the multi-, multimillion-dollar contracts, when you knock somebody over or get up in their face, people want to say he’s dirty,” Van Lier said. “Come on, that’s not dirty. It’s called being physical.”

As Van Lier can attest, the league’s definition of physical has changed over the years almost as dramatically as the length of uniform shorts.

Forearm shivers in the lower back that used to be interpreted as messages sent by players like Dennis Rodman now are called fouls. Hand-checks and push-offs that used to create space for crafty players like John Stockton now create reputations.

Nocioni incurred the wrath of Arenas for throwing an elbow at Detroit’s Tayshaun Prince earlier this month, which drew a suspension, and shoving Miami’s Dwyane Wade out of bounds, which did not.

But because Nocioni routinely has played defense his rookie season like a gnat on caffeine, word spread that he was the NBA version of safety Donovan Darius, a cheap-shot artist on the NFL office’s radar.

Othella Harrington, a nine-year veteran, just laughed at the label affixed the Bulls’ Argentinean import.

“If a guy like Noce is considered dirty, what would Charles Oakley be considered now?” Harrington asked, knowing the answer falls somewhere between fined and banned.

“The idea of what’s dirty sure has changed a lot since I came into the league,” the Bulls center said.

One theory the old guard advances for the difference: In the contemporary NBA, players often consider passion passe and think it isn’t cool to play so intensely so often during the 82-game regular season.

“That is definitely one way to look at it,” injured Bulls rookie Luol Deng said. “A lot of coaches, if you ask them how they would want their teams to play, (would say they want them to) play like the Bulls. Watch the playoffs. You’ll see teams playing like we play during the season. Are they all dirty?”

Out in the hallway, Wizards coach Eddie Jordan was making the same point in a different way. Discussing the ideal role player for a playoff team, Jordan pulled out the example of former Los Angeles Lakers forward Kurt Rambis, a floor-diving, elbow-flying, fit-inducing hustler. A 1980s version of Nocioni.

Asked if Rambis would be labeled a dirty player in today’s NBA, Jordan shook his head.

“Absolutely not,” Jordan said. “He had great technique, and one of the first players I can remember in old days or modern days who could front the post. He made people mad. He got clotheslined (by Kevin McHale in the 1984 NBA Finals) against Boston because of the way he played. Some guys just misinterpret what physical play is.”

Some guys still do — guys in Jordan’s own locker room. He is not one of them.

“I don’t consider anybody on the Chicago Bulls a dirty player,” Jordan said. “They just know how to play hard.”