The Right Team for the Time

Unconventional wisdom for a Monday morning . . . .

Chicago Bulls: Uh-oh. That’s two in a row now and you know what that means. Furrowed brows, stroked chins and too much wrestling over the inevitable, inescapable question: Is This One of the Great Teams of All-Time? (We go through this every two years.) OK, about Da Bulls: They are the team with the best player of all-time, say that for them, but Pippen-Paxson-Grant-Cartwright tends to sag in the same breath with Russell-Havlicek--Heinsohn-Jones. Most likely, this will be remembered as the right team at the right time--peaking precisely when the Lakers began to play old and the Trail Blazers began to think old.

Portland Trail Blazers: Another question to ponder: Is this the dumbest team in organized sports? The Buffalo Bills of basketball again squandered the league’s richest cache of talent--and, Sunday, in a first, a 15-point lead in the fourth quarter. This morning, you know the ’78 Red Sox are smiling.

Jerome Kersey: That’s a huge hall, Chicago Stadium. A person can get lost there very easily.

Michael Jordan: Think he’ll fit the White House into his schedule this time?

Clyde Drexler: In Barcelona, he’ll finally play on a winner.

Those Angels: A four-game winning streak. Really. Apparently they do read their own press clippings.

Phil Nevin: How do you spell future power-hitting third base star? Don’t ask Commissioner Fay Vincent’s office, which mailed out a newsletter last week topped by the headline Houston Picks Niven Number One . Ol’ David had range, all right, but he could never hit the inside curveball.

Jason Moler: Third baseman Jason Moler goes undrafted in 1991. Catcher Jason Moler goes in the fourth round and immediately signs with the Philadelphia Phillies in 1992. What was that about the quickest path to the majors? Ron Tingley and Mike Fitzgerald could have told him.

Bill Shumard: He has a year in as athletic director at Cal State Fullerton and he has seen the best of it (the Titans go to Omaha) and he has seen the worst of it (the Titans go 2-9 in shoulder pads). When the budget pie has to be sliced again, the first thing Shumard needs to do is slip that Fullerton-Pepperdine tape (coverage provided by CBS) into the VCR and look once more and listen. “That’s one of the most positive things we have going for us, our national reputation of excellence in baseball,” Shumard said in Omaha. “We can’t afford to let that slip.” Words to tackle the rest of the ‘90s by.

College baseball: The sport at its absolute best. Then the players have to ruin it and get drafted.

Greg Patton: The UC Irvine tennis cupboard is anything but bare, so Patton’s successor ought to be able to sustain the winning. But what about the grinning? Rob Nelson, Patton’s first-year assistant, would like to be the one to try. Says Nelson: “I’ll put Nair on the top of my head and grow a goofy-looking mustache if it gets me any closer to carrying on the Patton legacy at Irvine.” Consider Nelson’s hat tossed into the ring.

The Radio Wars: My two cents go to XTRA, which first caught my ear the day the FM blew out in my car. Listen to XTRA long enough and you’ll bump into every type of personality--from Lee Hamilton (he has none) to Chet Forte and Steve Hartman (“Loose Cannons” if there ever were two) to the coffee-addled Jim Rome (sports talk with a punk-rock attitude, right down the very hip mix of tunes he plays during breaks. Where else can you hear The Replacements and Ride right alongside Charles Barkley?) The most telling difference between XTRA and KMPC, though: Both stations broadcast the games of bad local teams, but XTRA goes after the Chargers so hard, it helped run Dan Henning out of town. KMPC spends too much of its air time apologizing for Jackie Autry.

John Ziegler: The NHL held a press conference Friday to announce the league president had resigned. And in Spain, doctors held a press conference to announce Francisco Franco was dead.

The NHL: What the league needs now is, oh, what? A TV contract with ESPN or any other cable network that actually exists. Eric Lindros, on skates, playing for anybody. A playoff system that stops penalizing division champions for not finishing fourth. Wayne Gretzky in the Stanley Cup finals. And after that gets done, they can melt the Forum ice and Encino Man will pop out.

L.A. Kings: Apparently Tom Webster wasn’t the only one who didn’t want to coach them.

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar: His new potato chip commercial with Larry Bird is a hoot. He was never that funny as a player, but then, he did his own writing in those days.

Herschel Walker: He’s virtually risk-free now, having been tendered his release from the Vikings. All a team has to do is sign him and pay him. So what’s stopping the Rams, who face the highly possible prospect of opening their next season with Cleveland Gary and Ernie Thompson as starting running backs? All a team has to do is sign him and pay him.

Kansas City Royals: They are 0-5 against the Angels in 1992. Disbanding the franchise is the only thing left.