Bull Market Really Starts After Finals

Dave Kindred, writing in the Sporting News: “In the short term, the Bulls are alive. They will win the NBA championship because the league is so bad that even a team capable of shameless indifference can win it.

“But the wondrous Bulls of the 1990s soon may be only a memory. Next time we look up, somebody from somewhere in Iowa may be the Bulls’ coach and Phil Jackson may be in Los Angeles, whispering Zen into Shaq’s ear even as Michael Jordan explains to the big guy:

“ ‘I’m the movie star. You, you get the rebound.’ ”

Trivia time: How many no-hit, shutout games did Nolan Ryan pitch when he was with the Angels?

No choir boys: Houston Rocket center Hakeem Olajuwon told Houston Chronicle columnist Fran Blinebury that the Utah Jazz is a team of “pretenders.”

“They want to look like good guys all the time. They want the NBA and the whole world to believe they are good guys, [Karl] Malone, [John] Stockton, all of them.

“But the truth is that they are bad guys, very bad guys.”

Whatever. The “bad guys” eliminated the Rockets Thursday night.

Still growing: San Jose State has awarded a basketball scholarship to Ira Trawick, who was 5 feet 7 in high school in San Jose but now, at 22, stands 6-7.

Said Spartan Coach Stan Morrison, “I told him I don’t know what he’s eating for breakfast, but keep eating it.”

L.A.’s kind of team: Art Spander in Inside Sports magazine writes that the San Francisco 49ers have a gloomy future:

“Now--after an awkward change of coaches, questionable free-agent maneuvers, and two mostly lousy drafts--the 49ers are staggering. The descent is under way, and a climb back to the top would be a hard one.”

Looking back: On this day in 1983, the Philadelphia 76ers won the NBA championship with a 115-108 victory over the Lakers, completing a four-game sweep.

Trivia answer: Four--two in 1973, and one each in 1974 and 1975.

And finally: USA Today’s Baseball Weekly reports that Boston Red Sox pitcher Jim Corsi saw the bright lights of New York on May 23. Someone directed a targeting laser beam at Corsi’s eyes while he was on the mound.

Even so, Corsi got out of a bases-loaded, one-out jam and protected a 6-3 eighth-inning lead.

“It was like a laser you’d have on a hunting rifle,” Corsi said. “I wasn’t worried, though. I didn’t think it was deer season.”