He Always Had a Great Sense of Courtship

Ah, Love.

Bob Love, former Chicago Bull player and currently the team’s director of community relations, chose to be married in the kind of surroundings he enjoyed so much as a bachelor: on the basketball court.

Love and Rachel Dixon were married in a seven-minute ceremony between the first and second halves of a recent Bull game at the United Center. Chicago’s owner and general manager attended the ceremony, which was witnessed by a sellout crowd.

Lacy J. Banks, a sportswriter for the Chicago Sun-Times, is also a Baptist minister and performed the ceremony.

*

Trivia time: Michael Jordan is the leading scorer in Bull history. Who is No. 2?

*

Money matters: A recent analysis reports what most of us suspected: Jordan is the highest-paid athlete in the United States with a $3.9-million salary and another $40 million in endorsements.

Second on the list is Mike Tyson, who was paid $40 million to box in 1995 but earned no endorsement money.

*

Don’t feed the fans: Art Spander, writing for the ESPNET SportsZone: “The Oakland Zoo is about five miles east of the Oakland Coliseum, although on football Sundays, it’s not easy to tell the difference. I mean, the chimpanzees have better manners than the fans, leading me to wonder if the wrong species is inside the cage.”

*

Take three: Actor Wesley Snipes, who plays a baseball player in his new film “The Fan,” had Cal Ripken Jr. on the set as a technical advisor. Snipes told “Entertainment Tonight” that Ripken critiqued his baseball ability and said, “Go back to your day job.”

*

Out and about: The prospect of moving to sunny Phoenix next season doesn’t excite Winnipeg Jet Coach Terry Simpson, who doesn’t sound as if he gets out much.

“From a hockey standpoint [weather] is not important,” he said. “Really, what you need is an airport and a rink and that’s it. You think of the weather and all that, but I don’t see it as any different from going to Minneapolis, Oklahoma City or anywhere else. I’ve worked in three or four cities. You know where the airport is and the rink is and that’s pretty much it.”

*

You still here? Meanwhile, an NHL team that is not moving has fans that seem to wish it would. The Edmonton Oilers are drawing poorly at home this season, including crowds of fewer than 10,000.

According to Jim Matheson of the Edmonton Journal, the largest crowd at the arena this season was 15,800 to see a concert by Luciano Pavarotti.

“But can Pavarotti and Placido Domingo play defense?” Matheson asked.

Perhaps not, but they can nail the national anthem.

*

Trivia answer: Love, who scored 12,623 points for Chicago from 1968 to ’76.

*

Quotebook: Philadelphia 76er Sharone Wright on new teammate Derrick Coleman’s locker-room politics: “I’d play with Newt Gingrich if he’d score 20 points and grab 10 rebounds.”