Balloon Stunt Is Again Deflating

If the Charlotte Hornets had been aware of NBA history and bad omens, they never would have had balloons ready for release from the rafters of Charlotte Coliseum last Thursday, in anticipation of a series-clinching victory over Milwaukee.

As it turned out, the Bucks rallied from a 15-point deficit and won, forcing a Game 7 in Milwaukee. They won there Sunday, advancing to the Eastern Conference finals.

In 1969, Laker owner Jack Kent Cooke had 5,000 balloons similarly placed at the Forum in what he expected would be an L.A. victory over the Boston Celtics in Game 7 of the NBA finals. Those balloons stayed put too, as the Celtics won, 108-106, in what turned out to be Bill Russell’s last game.

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More balloons: Long after the game was over, Russell came out to the seating area near the press box, pointed to the ceiling and cackled, “What’s the Cooker [Cooke] going to do with them now?”

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Trivia time: Who is the last player to have won golf’s U.S. Open in successive years?

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Surprise! Dave Checketts, fired last week as president of Madison Square Garden, had overseen not only the Knicks and Rangers but also the Garden’s expansion into running Radio City Music Hall productions.

“He majored in business but drama was Checketts’ real passion,” Mike Wise of the New York Times said. “This is how he proposed to his wife: He persuaded Deb’s parents to wrap him up in a large appliance box and stuff him under the Christmas tree. Checketts popped out and popped the question.”

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Crying out loud: After pitching a no-hitter recently against San Diego, the Florida Marlins’ A.J. Burnett made several phone calls, one to his family.

“My wife was crying, my mother was crying, even my son was crying,” he said. “But he cries all the time.”

His son is 2 months old.

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A bigger bust: Mike Lund, a former freestyle ski champion who was accused of trying to smuggle 37 tons of marijuana into the Pacific Northwest in 1978, was arrested in Denver last week after 23 years on the run.

“The feds’ seizure of Lund’s $74-million potpourri was hailed as the biggest bust in Seattle-area history,” says Dwight Perry of the Seattle Times, “until 1999, when the Sonics handed Vin Baker $86 million.”

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Shhh! Andre Agassi and Steffi Graf are secret investors in the growing LaMar’s doughnut chain, the Las Vegas Sun reported, but they haven’t let it be known because images of them eating pastries might conflict with their dreams of getting future endorsement contracts from Nike or other companies dedicated to the glorification of hard bodies.

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False impression: Jim Armstrong in the Denver Post: “By the numbers: .161. Going into the weekend, that was Deion Sanders’ slugging percentage since the three-hit game in his season debut.”

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More Sanders: From comedy writer Jerry Perisho: “Deion is truly one of a kind. He plays two professional sports and doesn’t hit in either one.”

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Young hustler: Morgan Pressel, 12, of Boca Raton, Fla., the youngest player to qualify for the U.S. Women’s Open golf championship, says, “One boy in school asked me for 10 autographs, so he could sell them.”

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Lower level: Bill Scheft in ESPN the Magazine, on ice hockey’s low TV ratings: “If playoff ratings drop below 1.0, the league has to change its name to the XHL.”

Trivia answer: Curtis Strange, in 1988 and 1989.

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And finally: Yogi Berra, a man with an eighth-grade education, received an honorary doctorate Saturday from Roger Williams University in Bristol, R.I.

“I wasn’t big on school,” Berra said. “When someone asked me how I liked school, I said closed.”