The Lakers Can Learn Some From Rodman

The Chicago Sun-Times’ Rick Telander has seen this before, the dismantling of a dynasty. When the Bulls were torn apart in 1998, they were coming off three consecutive championships and six titles in eight years. The Lakers completed a three-peat in 2002.

There are certainly similar subplots, and Telander sees them in the person of Dennis Rodman and the Worm’s former agent, Dwight Manley.

“It is so hard to keep good things going,” Manley told Telander. “Like with Dennis, if he would just come through the door, I could fix so many things for him.”

More Manley: “A year ago, I went to Dennis’ bar on Pacific [Coast] Highway.... Dennis looked terrible,” Manley said. “He looked like he lived without a roof over his head. His skin was pockmarked. He always kept his hair nice, but now even it wasn’t groomed. He was distraught, and he cried and sobbed when he saw me. And I started crying too. Such a waste.”

“Ah, success,” Telander wrote. “How swiftly we throw it all away.”

Just ask the Lakers.

Trivia time: On which big-screen bad guy did Rodman base his ever-changing hair color?

Looking back: On this date in 1937, Joe Louis won the world heavyweight boxing title with an eighth-round knockout of Jim Braddock at Chicago’s Comiskey Park.

Bakersfield to Boston? The stock of former USC recruit Robert Swift, a 7-foot high school basketball center from Bakersfield, has been rising steadily, even though he has not worked out privately for any team in anticipation of Thursday’s draft.

“We’ve tried to get him in, and we can’t,” Danny Ainge, director of basketball operations for the Boston Celtics, told the Boston Herald.

Still, the Celtics have reportedly reached an agreement with Swift to select him 24th or 25th in the first round, if not 15th. Hence, Swift’s passing up playing at USC.

Name change: Given the state of global affairs, the NBA is asking teams not to refer to their meeting places as “war rooms,” according to the Chicago Tribune. The league prefers “draft centers.”

Silver lining? Desmon Farmer’s college basketball career could not have had a worse ending, the Trojans’ fourth all-time leading scorer suffering through a two-for-20 shooting night in a three-point loss to Arizona.

But Farmer, who averaged 19.4 points as a senior, is slated to go in the second round, 46th overall, to the Milwaukee Bucks, in nbadraft.net’s latest mock draft.

Trivia answer: Simon Phoenix, as played by actor Wesley Snipes in the 1993 movie “Demolition Man.”

And finally: Telander says Kobe Bryant is getting what he wants, though he should be careful what he wishes for.

“And if he doesn’t go to prison for his alleged sexual assault, he’ll have Los Angeles all to himself,” Telander wrote.

“Of course, he’ll help pick the coach -- Henry Bibby, Pat Riley, Rudy Tomjanovich, Ray Meyer, Jack Nicholson, whoever. Ain’t ego grand?”