Mason and Ireland Don’t Have a Prayer

Andy Yao, no relation to Yao Ming, is the host of a weekly sports-talk show called the “Big Hour” on Houston radio station KCHN. Yao does his one-hour show Wednesday mornings in the Mandarin dialect of Chinese.

Andy Yao was a guest on KSPN’s “Big Show” with John Ireland and Steve Mason on Tuesday. Yao said he was from Taiwan and had lived in Houston for the last 13 years, but Mason kept asking him what things were like in China.

“Is there religion in China?” Mason asked, to Yao’s astonishment.

A likely topic on Yao’s show today: Sports talk-show hosts in Los Angeles ask really dumb questions.

It happens: Maybe Mason can take solace in knowing that even the best sometimes ask dumb questions.

Fox’s Joe Buck, who won the sports Emmy for best play-by-play announcer Monday night, asked a doozy at the end of the 2001 National League championship series.

Buck was interviewing the Arizona Diamondbacks’ Tony Womack when they were joined on the field by a woman.

Said Buck: “Who is this, Tony, your mom?”

Womack: “No, man, that’s my wife.”

Trivia time: What is the NBA playoff record for most points by one team in a quarter?

Here’s an idea: Laker announcer Paul Sunderland, a guest on KSPN with Joe McDonnell and Doug Krikorian before the Laker game Monday night, ended the interview by explaining he had to go rehearse.

“What does he have to rehearse?” McDonnell wondered. “I’m sure glad we don’t have to rehearse.”

Maybe they should.

Lost in translation: Bobby Valentine, managing in Japan for the second time, has discovered there can be communication problems talking through an interpreter.

“There was this throw-behind-the-runner situation [in practice] that I had the last time I was here,” Valentine told HBO’s “Real Sports.” “I told the players to throw behind the runner, but when they practiced it, they never did.

“I finally asked what the problem was, and they said, ‘We understand your aggressive American style, but we don’t understand in practice why we should throw to the behind of the runner.’ They thought I was playing dodge ball on the baseball diamond.”

Looking back: On this day in 1996, the Chicago Bulls won their last regular-season game and finished with an NBA-record 72 victories. The previous record of 69 was held by the 1971-72 Lakers.

Trivia answer: 51, by the Lakers in the fourth quarter of a first-round game against the Detroit Pistons in 1962. The Lakers got by the Pistons that year but ended up losing to the Boston Celtics in the Finals.

And finally: Phil Mickelson says he and his wife, Amy, took his green jacket to bed the night after he won the Masters.

Writes Mike Bianchi in the Orlando Sentinel: “Amy better hope Phil doesn’t win the John Deere Classic.”

Larry Stewart can be reached at larry.stewart@latimes.com.