Picks, Pans, More of the Magic Man

Unconventional wisdom for a Monday morning . . .

Michael vs. Magic: The hype, of course, is ludicrous; no game of basketball was ever so simple. But consider the respective role-playing during Sunday’s championship opener. Johnson the playmaker: His no-look pass across the key finds Sam Perkins alone for an open, if improbable, three-point winner. Jordan the scorer: His last-second jumper rattles in and out. Bottom line: Michael gets his points, Magic gets the victory. Same as it ever was. (cq)

Sam Perkins: Jerry West won only one NBA championship as a player and the guilt continues to drive him as a general manager. Out go the Lakers in the second round of the 1990 playoffs, out goes West to bring in Perkins for 1991. Next? NBA championship No. 6 for GM West, coming right up.

Dean Smith: His legacy is this NBA Final. Jordan, Perkins, James Worthy--Smith coached them all, on the same 1982 team, and still needed Georgetown to throw the ball away in order to win his only NCAA title by a point. All together now: Dean Smith is a coaching genius.

Orel Hershiser: No offense, Orel, but with a war in the Middle East, a cyclone in Bangladesh, famine in Ethiopia and civil revolt in the Soviet Union, God had more on the docket this year than just your right arm.

Michael vs. Andre: It could be coming, to an NBC outlet near you--Michael Chang against Andre Agassi in the French Open semifinals. Both have reached the quarterfinals and Agassi looks as if he’ll hold up. He plays unseeded Jakob Hlasek next. Chang, meanwhile, tackles Boris Becker for the right to try to blunt the Agassi Menace. It should be a terrific fifth-rounder. May the best man win, if you know what I mean.

Jimmy Connors: He just won’t go away, will he?

Jennifer Capriati: Four rounds in Paris and out? Beaten in straight sets by Conchita Martinez? Gnarly, dudes.

Jari Kurri: Sure, the price was high--Steve Duchesne has been an all-star and Steve Kasper remains king of the faceoff circle. But how many Stanley Cups has Wayne Gretzky won with them? A first line of Kurri, Gretzky and Tomas Sandstrom could be enough to put the Kings over the top. And the Stanley Cup window of opportunity grows smaller with every Gretzky birthday and every second-round elimination.

Bruce McNall: You spend millions, you give your team everything, you watch the Minnesota North Stars play in the Stanley Cup finals. It does things to a man.

Scott Lewis: Edmonton is close now. He needs the time away--to work on what he can control (pitch location) and to forget about what he can’t (Fernando this, Fernando that). For the sake of the Angel press corps, here’s to a speedy recovery.

Dave Winfield and Luis Polonia: You could say that these two acquisitions represented Mike Port at his best. You could also say that they represented New York Yankee business as usual. Tony La Russa: They’re fighting in the stands, they’re fighting in the manager’s office. Saturday in Chicago was a bleak night for baseball media relations, and maybe unprecedented, too: Amid escalating tempers, we have a sportswriter yelling at a manager, “Be a man!” Luckily, the incident ended with only egos bruised. Luckily, the manager’s name was La Russa and not Belle.

Augie Garrido: So where is his name on the NCAA baseball playoff selection committee enemies list?

College World Series: Let’s do this thing right. The winner plays Cal State Fullerton at Rosenblatt, best two out of three.

Cal State Fullerton: The football team finishes 1-11 and then is nearly finished. The basketball team mutinies on John Sneed. The athletic director quits. The baseball team shares the Big West championship and can’t get an NCAA bid. If ‘91-’92 isn’t a quantum improvement over ‘90-’91, they ought to shut down operations now.

Cal State Long Beach: Fullerton is not alone. The 49ers have been dropping sports right and left and football, the Big West big drain, could be next. Fiscal sanity, anyone? Division I-AA, anyone?

UC Irvine: The budget scare was good for one thing. The Anteaters won’t be playing football any time soon.

Dante Powell: Here today, gone tomorrow. The Millikan High outfielder is signed to a Fullerton letter of intent, but his relationship with the Titans should be about the same as his relationship with top-ranked Esperanza in the 5-A semifinals. Hello, goodby.

USA Today: A brief statement about national high-school sports polls: They are fun to read, fun to discuss and totally out of touch with reality. A briefer statement: Millikan 6, Best-In-The-Land Esperanza 0. Prep polls are all right, so long as you don’t take them seriously. Better yet, start your own. All you need is what USA Today has at its disposal--some won-lost records, some coaches’ phone numbers and a good deal of idle time.

WLAF: Now they’re talking about expanding into Paris and Milan. Not a great league, but definitely a great beat.

Triathlons: Sado-masochism with a suntan.

Pat Riley: Be careful. You might get what you ask for.

NBA Finals: Perkins sank the only shot that mattered. Lakers in six.