THE NBA / MARK HEISLER : Jordan to the White Sox? Surely a Screwball Idea

Nice retirement, Mike.

Those of you who had four months in the Michael-Jordan-is-back pool, you win. I thought his comeback would be in basketball, but with Jordan, you never know.

What a guy! He’s the best who ever played basketball. He takes up golf and says he wants to play on the pro tour. Now he takes batting practice for a month and announces he would like to go to spring training with the White Sox.

This will do wonders for the White Sox’s exhibition attendance, if not team morale. Remember when White Sox players got upset that Bo Jackson was getting all the press? When they vetoed Minnie Minoso’s return? When Jordan’s retirement overshadowed their playoff series with Toronto? Wait till they see this circus.

White Sox General Manager Ron Schueler says politely that Jordan would be “at best a longshot,” adding they will decide next month whether to invite him. However, it won’t be up to Schueler but owner Jerry Reinsdorf, who also owns the Bulls and would never deny his Mike anything.

Jordan, of course, likes his chances.

“This is no fantasy,” he told his biographer, Chicago Tribune columnist Bob Greene.

“I don’t know yet whether I’ll actually be good enough to make the team, but I believe my chances are better than 50-50. This is something my father wanted me to do. He started me in baseball when I was 6. Two years ago, he told me I should go for it.”

Jordan hasn’t played baseball since his junior year in high school. He might have been a prospect, but had he stayed at it, he would have seen the pitchers begin to spin the ball as they release it, resulting in an altered flight path called a curveball.

Then there are sliders, sinkers, split-finger fastballs, cut fastballs, screwballs, changeups. . . .

“He couldn’t hit .300 in a college league,” Red Sox scout Frank Malzone said. “What’s going on? Are the White Sox exploiting him?”

Jordan, having worked it all out, is undeterred.

“Baseball teams stay in a city for four or five days at a time,” he said. “It’s not like the NBA, where you fly out after the game. I’d like to take my wife and children with me on the road.”

That heads off the I’m-quitting-basketball-to-spend-time-with-the-family question.

“Basketball, that’s over,” Jordan said. “That’s the past. I don’t miss it at all. When there’s a game on TV, sometimes I watch, sometimes I don’t. It’s easy for me to turn off the TV and walk away.”

It’ll be fun while it lasts, although Jordan might not have really thought this out. He hates to be embarrassed. When he laid an egg in the All-Star three-point competition, he all but stopped shooting treys for a season.

One word of advice as he chases his dream: Don’t bet on it.

MEANWHILE, BACK IN CHICAGO STADIUM . . .

It’s almost as if Jordan never left. The Bulls are winning and players are on General Manager Jerry Krause, upset that he didn’t try to beat New York to Derek Harper.

Said Horace Grant: “I truly believe if we’d gotten Derek Harper or Jeff Hornacek, we’d be back in the finals.”

Said Scottie Pippen: “New York lost their point guard and within two or three weeks they got a solid replacement. We lost the best player of all time and three months later, we’ve done nothing.

“If people expect the Bulls to contend, we have to have something to go to war with. . . . I’m not going to be comfortable if we have to go to the playoffs with what we’ve got now.”

BIG D, AS IN DUE FOR A SHAKE-UP

The Dallas Mavericks are winless at home and have fallen behind the pace of last season’s 11-71. Since March 1, 1992, they’re an astounding 18-123.

Owner Donald Carter is loyal to a fault, but the heat now falls on the other two members of his central committee, General Manager Norm Sonju and personnel director Rick Sund, both already on the outs with new Coach Quinn Buckner.

“When you look at our difficulties under (John) MacLeod, (Richie) Adubato and Quinn, I think that raises some management questions,” says Doug Adkins, Maverick vice president.

“When this happens with three coaches in a row, I think obviously that management has to do some self-evaluation.”

Meanwhile, Buckner, having rid himself of his nemesis, Harper, is still butting heads with rookie Jamal Mashburn.

Last week, Buckner again pulled Mashburn, who then pointedly refused to join the huddle. Cut off leaving the dressing room through a back door, he said, “You’ve got to ask Quinn. I don’t have anything to say about it.”

Said Buckner: “He’s having trouble getting the ball to go down. That could be it.”

Friday night against Atlanta, Buckner didn’t start Mashburn.

Said forward Terry Davis: “Whatever him and Quinn got going out there, they’d better straighten it out because this isn’t the league for that. Whatever Quinn is doing to him or whatever, we don’t need that . . . around here. It’s already bad enough.”

THE DONALD IS ON THE CASE

With Clipper dreams in tatters and the franchise poised to follow, owner Donald T. Sterling is trying to get to the bottom of this in his inimitable style.

Sterling has started asking confidants what they think of his coach, Bob Weiss.

There are also reports he’s asking what they think of his general manager, Elgin Baylor.

Since some of those confidants are sportswriters, it didn’t take long to leak.

Weiss is a nice man, perhaps too nice, but they can’t pin this on him. This team was in big trouble before he arrived. He made two mistakes. The second was letting Sterling suck him into voting against trading Danny Manning to Miami. The first was taking the job.

Baylor is a good basketball man who has been hamstrung at every turn. He had an agreement to sign Manning but Sterling’s fiscal watchdog, Andy Roeser, fiddled it away. He had a deal that would at least get something back for Manning, but Sterling threw it into committee and thwarted that, too.

Sterling, upset at charges that he has a divided front office, OKd a plan in which no one was to comment on anything except publicist Joe Safety. Now Sterling, Baylor and Roeser are unavailable on routine matters. Behind the scenes, it’s the same old zoo.

By now, it looks safe to kiss off the 20th Century.

If the 21st is to be any different, Baylor must be given real operational control, with the ability to fire anyone and no obligation to consult the owner.

If Sterling isn’t comfortable giving him that much power, he has to find someone else. The Clippers need a strong man.

If Sterling wants to know who has messed this whole thing up, his initials are D.T.S. and he can find him in the mirror.

FACES AND FIGURES

Bad Boys, Worse Boys (Cont.): Detroit forward Sean Elliott on the team’s plummet: “We’ve got a lot of crybabies on this team. There’s a lot of finger-pointing. Somebody makes a mistake, we fall apart and start arguing.” Said exec-to-be Isiah Thomas: “I would have to say that’s fair.”

Old Trail Blazers never die, they just need more shots: Portland General Manager Geoff Petrie on his aging roster: “We have some players who think they’re the same player that they were five or six years ago (Jerome Kersey?) and players who still think they can get to the rim and slam and take over games at will (Clyde Drexler?). What we do have is a team with an awful lot of talent and once it gets healthy, we’ve got a good chance to make some noise.”

Philadelphia 76er owner Harold Katz’s plan to move into a new arena in Camden, N.J., was foiled by New Jersey Gov. Christine Whitman’s pledge not to raise taxes. Gov. Whitman says she was convinced by rocker Jon Bon Jovi, who told her the area would support only one arena. Katz might now have to rejoin his rival, Flyer owner Ed Snider, who is building Spectrum II.

You’re nobody till somebody loves you: 76er forward Clarence Weatherspoon, averaging 17 points and 10 rebounds, railing at his lack of fame: “I’m a . . . nobody and I always do all the . . . work. I’m a nobody around the league and in my own city. I go out every night and get close to 10 boards and I still get pushed in the back. Ask around the league who’s a better player, me or LaPhonso Elis, and everybody will holler Ellis. He was first-team all-rookie and I barely made second team. That’s . . . up.”

Orlando’s Anfernee Hardaway averaged 12 points, five rebounds, five assists and shot 45% in the first month of the season but went up to 15-5-6 and 48% in the second. The Magic, criticized for trading Chris Webber for Hardaway, is ecstatic: “In my opinion, he’s the runaway rookie of the year,” Coach Brian Hill said. “And there’s no one even close.” Actually, someone is: Webber is averaging 17 points, nine rebounds, four assists, two blocks, a steal and is shooting 54%.

Long Beach State’s Bryon Russell, starting at forward for the Utah Jazz, was chosen to play in the rookie game All-Star weekend. Russell credits his development to playing against pros last summer, including Magic Johnson. “Magic was hogging the court,” Russell said. “I said, ‘Yo, big man! Can we get in there?’ He said, ‘Next game.’ ” Russell says his team beat Johnson’s and Johnson told him: “You’ve got a future in this league.”

Turn out the lights, the party’s over: Karl Malone was averaging 26 points and 12 rebounds when the league office told him to take the little lights out of the heels of his sneakers. Since, he’s averaging 21 and 11. . . . Malone has led the league in free throws attempted the last five seasons but is now running No. 3 behind David Robinson and Shaquille O’Neal. Starting last week, Robinson had shot 396 free throws, 91 more than O’Neal. “You look at all the people around the league who bitched and moaned about me getting to the free-throw line,” Malone said. “Maybe it’s finally working.” Or, maybe the Mailman, at 30, is slowing down.