This Project Might Be More Than a Dream

It’s a publicist’s dream: all of the mouthing off, the comparisons, the talk of retired champions reuniting one last time to give their callow predecessors a dose of humility.

Dream Team vs. Dream Team II. Magic and Michael vs. Reggie Miller and Shaquille O’Neal.

It would be the most anticipated sporting event of this or any year. But could it happen?

The MGM Grand in Las Vegas hopes so.

Even as Dream Team II wends its way through the World Championships in Canada, the hotel-casino is pursuing the matchup that Magic Johnson, Michael Jordan and O’Neal, among others, seem to really want.

According to Bill Doak, the hotel’s manager of public relations, the NBA, which already was contemplating a I vs. II showdown, has been informed that the MGM is interested in holding the event.

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Add Dream: Although nobody is sure when the game would be played, the MGM would like it to be held at the hotel’s 15,000-seat Grand Garden arena to culminate a series of events it would call “Dream Week,” and it says the event would be a show to dwarf all other special events, from Barbra Streisand to title fights, ever held in Las Vegas.

“Can you imagine anything that’d be bigger? I can’t,” Doak said. “Everyone who has ever brought any event here and everyone at this hotel cannot think of a bigger event that has taken place in this town.”

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Last add Dream: Citing the star qualities and teamwork Dream I displayed on its way to the 1992 Olympic gold medal--and the decided lack of same being shown by Dream II recently--MGM oddsmaker Gene Kivi already has made Dream II a 5 1/2-point underdog if the game should ever take place.

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Trivia time: The impending baseball strike could end Atlanta Brave pitcher Tom Glavine’s attempt to win 20 games for the fourth consecutive season. Who was the last major league pitcher to accomplish that feat?

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Big conference: Bruce Pascoe of the Las Vegas Review-Journal tried a more common-sense geographical approach to writing about the Big West Conference, which has added such non-Western schools as Southwestern Louisiana, Arkansas State and Northern Illinois.

It’s the “Big West-of-the-Appalachians Conference,” he wrote.

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Trivia answer: Dave Stewart, who won 20 or more from 1987 through 1990 for the Oakland A’s.

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Quotebook: Cleveland Indian reliever Jeff Russell on having played for the Red Sox in Boston: “I could care less if they bomb this town. The people have no manners. They have no respect for anything. They raise their kids to get on people.”