Coach's Corner

Our universe is a whimsical place: Hard work doesn't always pay off. Good people die young. Bad people will live to 100. Marathon runners drop dead from heart attacks. Good kids turn bad. I've seen people swim on beaches with shark warnings posted. I've watched divers, without a clue about how to put on their fins, sink to 170 feet, get lost, and surface right next to the boat. One day a tree will bounce your golf ball into a canyon. The next day the same tree will deposit the ball two feet from the pin. Shit, it's said, does indeed happen, often with no regard at all to forethought, good wishes, or common sense.

It was my intention to begin this column with two examples of why fat guys lolling about on frayed couches across our nation -- guys with sour cream stuck in their beards, Pringles crumbs on their soiled Packer jerseys, and five empty cans of Schlitz on the coffee table -- think they can run multi-million dollar sports franchises better than highly paid "professionals" just because they're Broncos season ticket holders and regular listeners of The Jim Rome Show.

My first example was going to be the San Diego Chargers. The city of San Diego itself, home to the Clippers, Padres, and Chargers, has been -- with some rare exceptions -- a level 5 biological disaster area for professional sports. I don't know, maybe the climate is too perfect in Southern California to incubate the necessary venom to achieve in The Big Time. Whatever. So the Chargers, with the first pick in last week's draft, were all set to take Michael Vick. The mechanizations were set in place well in advance. The team hired alleged QB expert Norv Turner to take Vick under his wing to tell him how Troy did it. They hired 38-year-old Doug Flutie -- not to lead the Chargers '02 to glory, but as the only living quarterback (aside from Fran Tarkington) from whom Vick might be able to learn anything -- to take the snaps for a year.

Suddenly Chargers management recalled the horror of Ryan Leaf. Still smarting from what was truly a debacle of tsunami-like proportions (they traded their hard-won No.1 pick to Atlanta for a bag of stones), the Chargers sobbed like a broken-hearted teen in therapy over the fear of "getting burned again." I had to snort. Burned again? Huh. This is a professional football franchise that's won, what, four games in two years, passing on Vick, entrusting their team to a 170-pound, 40-year-old quarterback, because they didn't want to get hurt? I wish Junior Seau had been hooked to a microphone the day all this came down.

Then, with nothing working except blind, idiot luck, the Chargers bumble into Drew Brees with the first pick of the second round. Ever notice how the guy going 95, weaving in and out of heavy traffic, never gets a ticket?

So, moving on to example two: the Portland Trail Blazers. No need for a lot of background here. If you're not already familiar with the Blazers tale, you're probably looking for Click and Clack a few pages ahead. Coach Mike Dunleavy seems like a pretty savvy guy, so I'll presume he has little input in personnel decisions. Surely he cringed the day his boss made the most idiotic player decision of the year: the acquisition of NBA juvenile delinquent Rod Strickland. I knew it was insane. An intelligent German shepherd knew it was insane. The problem, though, hasn't been Strickland. He's been a relatively model teammate. The problem is that the already personality imbalanced, schizophrenic Blazers already had two point guards, one of them Damon Stoudamire, a Strickland clone without the police blotter. Portland has essentially lost every big game since Strickland arrived.

There is a reality here, sportsfans. We could run teams like the Cubs, the Chargers, and Portland. We couldn't do any worse than Michael Jordan, who sounds dumber every time he opens his mouth. But doing it right? That's another question…

It's time to cash in any chits you may have acquired with the wife. That, or prepare for couples counseling in June. With the Stanley Cup and NBA playoffs running concurrently, it's a fine time to be relationship-free. My heart's with the Spurs and Mavericks … but nobody's beating L.A. Dallas will die early. Cause of death: inexperience and an inability to counter the slow, methodical playoff pace. The Lakers will beat San Antonio because they're better. It's that simple. The Laker "bench" is vastly underrated. Fisher, Fox, Grant, Horry, Shaw, Madsen, George, and Harper are superior in every way to Jordan's "supporting cast." Kobe and Shaq don't have to score 30 apiece for L.A. to win.

The Eastern Conference is better, 1 through 8, than any time I can remember. Not many normal people have seen the Bucks play, but they're good -- in fact, they're the best in the East. Miami appears dangerous on paper. Too bad the game is played on wood. The top-seeded 76ers blundered in mid-season by trading away Tony Kukoc and Theo Ratliff for Dikembe Mutombo. Without Ratliff's power, defense, and rebounding, and Kukoc's playmaking and scoring, Philly is even more dependent -- if that's possible -- on Iverson. No bueno.

I wouldn't feel too confident betting the new Mercedes on any of them.