There’s No Defense for the New Bulls

Bernie Lincicome of the Chicago Tribune writing on the star-depleted Chicago Bulls:

“Will the Bulls win a single game, a single quarter. Vancouver has circled the calendar. Denver is steamed that the Bulls can’t lose 71 games like the Nuggets did.

” . . . For the record, if anyone is recording this stuff anymore, I make the Bulls 7-43, but don’t expect me to tell you which teams they will defeat.

” . . . And just who is going to play defense for the Bulls. Between them [Toni] Kukoc and Brent Barry couldn’t cover a casserole.”

Refund? The Bulls signed Barry at shooting guard, but comedy writer Jerry Perisho says: “Replacing [Michael] Jordan with Barry is a little like getting tickets to ‘The Blue Room’ and finding that Nicole Kidman has been replaced by Roseanne.”

Restrictions: The last time Jordan retired, he wound up playing for a minor league baseball team in Birmingham, Ala., managed by Terry Francona. Could history repeat?

Francona, now the Philadelphia Phillie manager, told the Philadelphia Inquirer: “He’s invited to come here any time--if he wants to play golf.”

Trivia time: Who holds the Pacific 10 Conference basketball record for most rebounds in a game?

Lock ‘em up: Andrew Hansen, aide to Denver Mayor Wellington Webb, after the downtown area was trashed the night of the Super Bowl: “It looked like the convention of the Idiots of America just let out.”

Homecoming: David Letterman, welcoming Latrell Sprewell to the New York Knicks: “That’s exactly what New York City needs--another borderline psychotic with a hair-trigger temper.”

Sands of time: What do you say when your team has been routed, 35-0, in ice hockey?

“It was the longest game of my life,” said Bruce Smith, the Canadian coach of the Kuwait team after losing to Japan at the Winter Asian Games in South Korea. “I’ve never seen the clock move so slow.”

What, not even in an earlier 44-1 loss to China?

It won’t happen: Barry Horn in the Dallas Morning News: “Maybe the NFL can learn something from the NBA’s exhibition season. Two games are plenty to get fans in the right frame of mind. Actually, one NFL exhibition game a summer would be about right.”

Trivia answer: Swede Halbrook of Oregon State, 36, against Idaho on Feb. 15, 1955, when the league was known as the Pacific Coast Conference.

And finally: Golden State Warrior Coach P.J. Carlesimo, a bachelor, told Frank Deford of Sports Illustrated that he’d prefer to be married, but “I haven’t found the right person yet.”

Said one of his former love interests, ABC sports announcer Lesley Visser: “I sort of knew it wasn’t going to work for us when, one time, we flew back together from the Final Four and P.J. spent the whole trip reading Dick Versace’s book on the 1-3-1.”