A lateral move that started a down year

Four days.

In the sporting year that was 2006, our city was a blissful, unblemished place for all of four days.

Four days until Reggie Bush would catch a short pass from Matt Leinart and scamper off on a long run that would surely ignite a USC rout of Texas in the national championship Rose Bowl.

Four days until, about 20 yards short of the end zone, Bush would stunningly lateral the ball to a walk-on wide receiver who had not handled it all season.

Four days until Texas would recover the fumble and march toward the first score of its eventual national title victory.

It was dumb, it was deadly, and you know something?

The ensuing 352 days haven’t been so hot, either.

Across the Southland sports landscape, from Murrieta to Corona del Mar, from a pack of Kent’s to a cup of Joe, from two left feet to one big mouth, this has been the year of the knucklehead.

For only the second time in the new millennium (OK, the last six years), no local major sports team won a championship. For the first time, it seemed, nearly everyone got close, then collapsed.

The Dodgers discovered the playoffs, then got lost at third base.

The Clippers came within a game of the Western Conference finals, then stopped thinking.

The Lakers came within a game of their first post-Shaq playoff series victory, but stopped playing.

USC’s football dynasty ended. The Kings’ local love story faded. The Ducks changed their name and their shirts and nobody noticed.

Even the most wonderful local sports story of the year, UCLA basketball, ended on a night when John Wooden went into the hospital and the Bruins went into a funk in a 73-57 national championship loss to Florida.

It was a year of big mouths and bad decisions by representatives from nearly every team, including this one.

I was the proud author of a wonderfully conceived column about the shameful fraud perpetrated upon the world by drug cheater Marion Jones.

Twenty days later, it was announced she was clean.

I messed up. But I was not alone. The 10 biggest Los Angeles sports blunders of 2006, from dumb to dumber:

10Crazy 8

After leading the Lakers to the seventh game of their first-round playoff series against the heavily favored Phoenix Suns, Kobe Bryant suddenly disappeared.

In the first half, he had 24 points. In the second half, he had one.

In the first half, he took 13 shots. In the second half, he took three.

Some say Bryant tanked it. Those who attended the game would not agree. He kept playing hard, and was guilty only of showing the weariness and frustration of one who was finally buckling under the weight of this undermanned team.

Bryant scored 24 points in the first half and they still trailed by 15, so perhaps he also played with a sense of hopelessness. Whatever the reason, their 121-90 loss was overshadowed by the only guy who can steal the headlines even when invisible.

9Foul him!

The Clippers were within 1.1 seconds of winning Game 5 against the Suns and taking a three-games-to-two lead in the second round of the NBA playoffs.

The Suns’ only chance was a game-tying three pointer. But the Clippers had a foul to give, so the Suns would never get the chance, right?

Wrong. Daniel Ewing, who had entered the game for defensive purposes, allowed Raja Bell to drain a three-pointer that forced a second overtime, where the Suns won, leading to eventual series victory.

Have the Clippers played any smart defense since?

8Buzz kill

Having already stolen attention, fans and respect from the Dodgers, the Angels were two months from sneaking back into the playoffs.

They reached the trading deadline just 1 1/2 games out of first place in the American League West. They needed only one power hitter to make them a legitimate contender.

And what did Bill Stoneman do? What does Bill Stoneman always do? Absolutely nothing.

The Angels made no moves, and finished the season 12th in the league in homers, 11th in the league in runs and four games behind the Oakland A’s.

7Court jester

Over the span of several months, Kings forward Sean Avery managed to slander French Canadians, allegedly refer to a black opponent as a “monkey,” get fined by the league for taking a dive, and then get thrown off the team for refusing to follow a coach’s order.

All of which paled in comparison to his expletive-filled diatribe against Ducks announcer Brian Hayward, during which Avery ripped Hayward’s play as a former goalie, eliciting the comeback of the year.

“How would you know?” Hayward responded. “You were in the third year of the eighth grade then.”

6Liquor talking

Joe Beimel, the Dodgers’ best left-handed reliever, missed their playoff series against the New York Mets after he cut his left hand on a broken beer mug while hanging out in a Manhattan bar about 36 hours before the first game.

Bad enough? It got worse. Beimel initially lied about the accident, claiming he cut his hand in the team hotel. He so infuriated his teammates that they didn’t want to give him a playoff share, and so angered management that General Manager Ned Colletti waited a day to return his apology phone call.

5Testosterone talking?

Floyd Landis, who lives in Murrieta, tested positive for synthetic testosterone after winning the Tour de France.

Landis is still claiming he is innocent, so maybe it was only a coincidence that his positive A and B samples were taken after his breathtaking comeback ride through the Alps.

4She’s WHAT?

On the day when Kathy Goodman and Carla Christofferson announced they were buying the Sparks, franchise player Lisa Leslie announced she was pregnant and would miss the season.

3Nyuk, nyuk

In the second inning of the Dodgers’ playoff opener against the Mets, Jeff Kent was on second base and J.D. Drew was on first when Russell Martin singled off the right-field wall.

What followed was part Dodgers history, part Dodgers hysterics.

Kent got a slow jump. Drew got a fast jump. Kent rounded third just before Drew rounded third.

Drew finally caught Kent at home plate, where catcher Paul Lo Duca was waiting for both of them with -- surprise! -- the baseball.

Out. Out.

It was only the second time in the video age that anyone could remember two runners thrown out at home on the same play.

“It was a real wreck out there,” said third base coach Rich Donnelly.

Three games later, not coincidentally, it was something else.

A Mets sweep.

2Sasha silver

She took the ice as the leader after the short program, the favorite to win the crown jewel of the Winter Olympics, the gold medal in women’s figure skating.

But, once again, Sasha Cohen couldn’t keep her backside dry.

For the fourth time in a major skating championship, Cohen blew a lead in the long program, falling twice in the first moments and skidding to a second-place finish at the Winter Games in Turin, Italy.

A day earlier, she’d failed to show up for practice because, she said, she was tired. Then, shortly before her program, she trudged through the warmups as if tentative and worried.

“You know, when you go out there and have all those people watching ... and you know that your practice hasn’t gone completely right, it’s hard to feel like you’re getting churros at Disneyland,” said Cohen, ever goofy.

1Bush gores

Why? Why? Why?

Why would the Heisman Trophy winner try to lateral the ball to a guy who hadn’t touched it all year?

Why couldn’t Reggie Bush just allow himself to be tackled with the ball, like everyone else?

Why did Reggie Bush suddenly have to believe the Superman hype?

If Bush allows himself to be tackled on the Texas 19-yard line, instead of trying that lateral, the Trojans probably finish their long drive against a stunned Texas defense with a touchdown and a 14-0 lead.

And the nation’s best team would not have blown a 14-0 lead.

It is not a stretch to say that Bush’s blunder was the biggest reason the Trojans lost the national title. They were carried out on the swagger that had once been their shield.

“We tried to do too much,” Bush admitted.

About the only way Bush could have messed things up worse for this team would have been if he’d bolted for the NFL, leaving in his wake reports that a prospective agent had been paying his parents’ rent.

Oh.

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Bill Plaschke can be reached at bill.plaschke@latimes.com. To read previous columns by Plaschke, go to latimes.com/plaschke.