Delivering a Bouncing Baby ... Basketball?

The fact that Marion Jones hasn’t played basketball in six years -- since she was a junior at North Carolina -- didn’t stop the Phoenix Mercury from choosing the track and field star in the third round of the WNBA draft last week.

The move smacked of being a publicity ploy -- and it worked, didn’t it? -- but Mercury officials said they were quite serious.

“We needed some athleticism on the perimeter, and I believe that with Marion Jones we got the best athlete in the world,” Mercury General Manager Seth Sulka said. “When you have a chance to take a player that, besides her world-class sprinting job, is a great basketball player, why not?”

OK, so here’s one really good reason: When the WNBA season starts in May, Jones will be seven months pregnant -- and most likely will have lost something from that previously very quick first step.

Trivia question: Who is the youngest player to be ranked No. 1 in men’s professional tennis since the ATP began computerized rankings in 1973?

High note: Natalie Gilbert, a 13-year-old eighth-grader, said she “just blanked” Friday when she tried to sing “The Star-Spangled Banner” before Game 3 of the NBA playoff series between the Portland Trail Blazers and Dallas Mavericks at the Rose Garden in Portland.

Standing at center court, the words suddenly escaped her. But just as she was about to give up, Maurice Cheeks, Portland’s coach, walked over, put his arm around her, leaned close and started singing into the microphone. Gilbert joined him. So did many in the crowd of 20,000, and the most awkward of moments was saved.

Gilbert isn’t sure why she faltered, but thinks she might have been affected by flu.

As for Cheeks, the girl told John Canzano of the Portland Oregonian, “He saved me.”

Alas, Portland lost the game, proving, Canzano wrote, “that the Blazers’ players are less coachable than a flu-ridden teenage girl.”

Fast company: Jerry Nadeau, who drives a Pontiac nearly 200 mph in Winston Cup, drove a 70-ton U.S. Army Abrams tank 45 mph while visiting troops in Kuwait.

How does he compare the two?

“The tank has a lot better brakes than we do,” he said. “That was critical too, because we were only six miles from the Iraq border and we might have needed to stop fast.”

Trivia answer: Lleyton Hewitt. At 20 years 8 months, the Australian took over as No. 1 on Nov. 19, 2001 and remained there for 75 weeks -- until Monday, when Andre Agassi, who turns 33 today, replaced him. Agassi is the oldest player to be top ranked.

And finally: Lendell Martin lost $100,000 in endorsements and the chance at other six-figure opportunities, all because he refused to wear a patch advertising Busch beer -- a requirement for professional fishermen on the Bassmaster tour.

It seems Martin, 49, stopped drinking beer 20 years ago because an alcohol problem nearly ruined his marriage.

He has no regrets about being unwilling to compromise.

“If they want to take Budweiser beer as a sponsor, that’s fine,” Martin told Bloomberg News.

“But don’t force it down everyone else’s throat.”