• By SHELDON MICKLES
• Advocate sportswriter
• Published: Nov 21, 2008 - Page: 1C - UPDATED: 12:05 a.m.

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METAIRIE — With everything that’s going on around him, it would be easy for Deuce McAllister to lose focus on Monday night’s key game with the Green Bay Packers.

But McAllister, one of the classiest players to ever put on a New Orleans Saints’ uniform, knows there’s only one thing he should be thinking about for the next four days: how he can help the Saints stay in the NFC playoff hunt by beating the Packers.

On Tuesday, McAllister traveled with teammates Will Smith and Charles Grant to New York for a hearing with NFL officials over possible four-game suspensions they face for testing positive for a banned substance.

On Wednesday, McAllister had to have fluid drained from his surgically repaired left knee. On Thursday, he was held out of practice to let the knee calm down before he begins preparing for the Packers.

Considering he’s had reconstructive surgery on both knees in a 24-month period and had microfracture surgery as well, the soon-to-be 30-year-old McAllister wasn’t thinking about possibly playing his last game in the Superdome or walking away from the game at season’s end.

“I’m not even gonna go there, so I won’t entertain the question nor the thought as far as getting into that area,” he said. “I’ve got one game I know I’ve got to perform and play for, and that’s Green Bay.”

As far as his hearing for the use of the banned diuretic Bumetanide, which can be used as a masking agent for steroids, McAllister said he thought that things went well during a “marathon” meeting between the players, lawyer David Cornwell and league officials.

“I think enough is out there that we can kind of piece together whatever story we want to put together and put whatever spin we want to put on it,” said McAllister. “Just say things went well, and we’ll wait and see what happens.”

McAllister, who claimed the weight-loss pills he took were tested years ago and found not to contain Bumetanide, said he was optimistic both before and after his hearing that he will be cleared in the case that also includes several other high-profile players.

“I was optimistic even before the process because I know the steps that were taken,” he said, “so I don’t think it was recklessness or anything.

“We feel pretty good about it. But just feeling good about it, that’s not going to give us a positive verdict. We’ll wait and see what happens, but we feel good about the situation.”

Smith, who talked about the case for the first time, seemed happy to get his side of the story out.

“The point we wanted to make is that our urine was not diluted, which basically is what it does,” he said. “No steroids of any kind was found in our urine. That brings it somewhere else. You can put that on the record.”