“It’s hard out here for a pimp…”

Starting Five

1. “In a loss in OKC, the Lakers showed they can compete against the West’s elite…” That’s the subhed on ESPN.com’s lead story this morning. Chico, please. We caught much of last night’s game and here are a few items that may contradict that assertion:

A) Oklahoma City scored a season-high 71 first-half points.

B) From the 3:29 point of the first quarter until the 6:43 mark of the fourth, the Lakers were never within seven points of the Thunder. During most of 33-plus minutes, they trailed by double-digits.

What is the antonym of “symbiotic?”

Valiant comeback? Yes. Dogged tenacity. Uh-huh. But Kobe is now playing hurt (elbow stinger), Dwight Howard either has been playing hurt or he’s chosen to emulate Albert Pujols’ first two months in an Angels’ uniform, and Steve Nash has been reduced to being a spot-up perimeter shooter. He’s not Steve Nash; he’s Steve Blake. And the Lakers already have a Steve Blake. And this isn’t Nash’s fault. You cannot execute the pick-and-roll when no one picks. Or rolls.

You want to know what’s wrong with the Lakers (and this is just one of many problems)? The greatest assist man of the past decade, Nash, had four assists last night — and that still led the team.

2. An “alternative to ESPN”, Fox Sports 1, plans an August 17 launch (which, if you’re keeping score, is one day and 59 years after Sports Illustrated launched, one day and 43 years after Bonnie Bernstein launched, and one day and one year after this site launched). The first name lined up to host a show? Regis Philbin, who will turn 82 in August. This conforms to Rupert Murdoch’s edict that no host of a Fox Sports 1 program be older than he is (Murdoch turns 82 on Monday).

Simply the best female sports broadcaster out there

Again, we implore Fox: Get Paula Faris. Get Mary Carillo. Let Charles Davis be the Charles Davis I know off-camera. Go after John Buccigross and Linda Cohn, who have tremendous chemistry at ESPN and are somewhat taken for granted in Bristol. Have a Party of Five cast reunion (this has nothing to do with sports; I just want to see Scott Wolf and Jennifer Love Hewitt have another deep talk, preferably with one of them wearing a low-cut blouse; also, we’d love to know how our contemporary, Paula Devicq, has aged).

3. The Gaza Marathon, scheduled for April 10, has been canceled. Why? Because Hamas has ruled that women be banned from participating. Rule No. 3 of marathoning: If Hamas has anything to say about how the event is organized, you are better off not registering for it (women were not allowed to compete in the Boston Marathon until 1972,  so the Middle East is not actually “light years” behind the USA culturally but rather 41 years behind).

4. Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez, 58, succumbs to cancer. Venezuela, which is in South America, which in the southern hemisphere (unless you are a member of Cartographers for Social Equality [Didn’t you love when “The West Wing” got goofy?]) is a leading producer of both oil and Miss Universe pageant winners.

Triple-Crown winner and reigning American League MVP Miguel Cabrera will be sworn in as Venezuela’s next president

5. The Dow Jones Industrial Average reaches an all-time high , closing at 142543.77 (a quick finance lesson, kiddies: The Dow Jones Industrial Average is nothing more than the sum price of 30 publicly traded corporations that have been chosed to comprise the DJIA based on their size and influence; the choice of companies is mostly arbitrary and it is outlandish that the wealthiest company on earth, Apple, is not among this group of 30. Moving on….) even though unemployment is still hovering up near 8%, there’s a Sequester taking place, and the Angels only gave Mike Trout a $20,000 pay raise this season.

Be very wary.

Reserves

Brian Crashman? It’s just too easy. The Yankee GM broke his leg while skydiving earlier this week. Between this injury and Curtis Granderson’s on his first at-bat of spring training, writing portents of the doomed 2012 New York Yankee season is like looking for phallic symbols in a sausage shop.

Real Madrid (Cristiano Ronaldo’s side) knocks out Manchester United (the Yankees of Europe) in the UEFA Champions League round of 16. For Ronaldo, who started out with Man U., it was a bittersweet homecoming (he vowed not to celebrate if he scored a goal, and he held to that). If you’re not familiar with Champions League, it’s basically a 32-team tourney of the previous years’ European League champions (and a few invited guests) that is conducted around the regular-season schedules of those teams. It’s also a great way for Americans to survive winter afternoons on Tuesdays and Wednesdays.

This is NOT Ryan Kelly

Suddenly, with the return of Ryan Kelly, Duke looks like the best team in the country.

Justin Timberlake will be hosting Saturday Night Live for a fifth time this week. He’s entering Baldwin/Hanks/Martin territory.

Jack Cooley will never forget his final moments in a Notre Dame uniform at the Purcell Center…

Remote Patrol

Chicago Bulls at San Antonio Spurs

9 p.m., ESPN

No Rose. No Parker. But you do get to see arguably the NBA’s best team and inarguably its most overlooked, plus Tiago Splitter.

.

Starting (Divisible by) Five

1. 55: That is the number of minutes No. 2 Notre Dame senior Skylar Diggins played last night in the Fighting Irish’s 96-87 triple-overtime victory against No. 3 UConn. In other words, all of them. Diggins finished with a game-high 29 points and a team-high 11 rebounds in her final home game in South Bend as the Irish (29-1, 16-0) capped their first undefeated season in Big East play. And yes, it was reminiscent of the men’s five-OT win versus No. 11 Louisville last month.

The Irish have now taken six of seven from UConn, but another encounter in Hartford looms next week.

2. 50: That’s the number of points Baylor’s Brittney Griner scored, a career-best, in the Lady Bears’ 90-68 defeat of Kansas State.  The six-foot-eight leviathan was 21 of 28 from the field (including her first dunk at home since freshman year) and eight of 10 from the free throw line as top-ranked Baylor (29-1, 18-0) extended its home winning streak to 55 games, which is also a multiple of five.

Griner: The Lew Alcindor of women’s college hoops

3. 20: That’s the number of years that have passed since Quentin Tarantino’s classic, Pulp Fiction, was released. Kudos to Vanity Fair for turning over the rock and revealing how the movie got made, how the stars were cast (Matt Dillon: You blew it!), where the name Honey Bunny originated, and why Ving Rhames’ Marcellus had that Band-Aid on the back of his skull (we would have liked, though, to have seen a photo of the actor who played The Gimp). You cannot have everything, alas. Zed’s dead, baby. Zed’s dead.

Stay cool, Ringo.

4. 15: That’s the consecutive number of games the Miami Heat have won after last night’s disposal of the Timberwolves in Minneapolis. A thought occurred to me: What if LeBron, just to punk us all, had said, “Milwaukee” instead of “Miami.” If he had said, “I want to play for the Bucks, not the bucks.” (and, yes, we know he could have made more $$$ going somewhere other than Miami). Anyway, it was just a thought. Milwaukee’s actually a really nice city…in the summertime. While the Heat are in the midst of their franchise’s longest win streak, this season’s longest win streak still belongs to the Los Angeles Clippers, who won 17 straight back in December.

5. 5: The letters in the first name of Regis Philbin, who is the first name talent to be associated with the new sports channel, Fox Sports 1, that today Newscorp will announce that it is rolling out in August. Hey, I love Reege, but he turns 82 in late August. A few suggestions for my (one of) my former employer(s): Get Keith Olbermann and make him your flagship anchor (love him or hate him, people will watch him). Bring in my old friend Paula Faris, who is being criminally underutilized at ABC. Behind the scenes, bring in the wizard of producers, Michael Weisman. Make a big push into soccer, and not MLS, but EPL and other Euro soccer. Fox already has soccer and this is a boomtown sport whose demographics include both recent immigrants and dissident white males who are a little fed up with overproduced, over-officiated (Did we really need to stop the game to see if his foot was on the line for that three-pointer…again?) American sports.

Faris: Smart and savvy.

There’s a window here for Fox. You’re not going to beat ESPN…not any time soon, anyway. But with patience and straight sports coverage (i.e., avoid all “First Takery”) you can build a formidable competitor.

Reserves

Six Catholic schools in the AP Top 25 this week, headlined by top-ranked Gonzaga, a Jesuit school. What say you, Seths Davis and Greenberg, Andy Katz and Doug Gottlieb?

So, Tom Petty is playing five dates at a venue that is literally five blocks from my apartment this spring? Well, I’m there.

LATE-BREAKING: Former N.C. State head football coach Tom O’Brien is now an assistant coach at Viriginia. And he had to move some of his belongings from Raleigh, N.C., to Charlottesville, Va. This is how O’Brien told his former employers that they could kiss his ACC.

Remote Patrol

Los Angeles Lakers at Oklahoma City Thunder

TNT, 9:30 p.m.

Kobe is back, but are the Lakers? The Mamba is averaging a shade under 35 points per game in his last five games, four of them wins, as LA returned to .500 for the first time in 30 games or, literally, half a season (they are 30-30). OKC, however, has won 18 straight at home versus Western Conference teams and five in a row at Chesapeake Energy Arena versus the Lakers.

Kobe is averaging his age (34) of late.

(Honestly, this game has more star power but we may be more intrigued by watching Ryan Kelly play his final home game at Duke at 7 p.m. on ESPNU)

Starting Five

1. If you told us a month ago that Dennis Rodman was going to hook up with a Kim, we’d have taken Kim Kardashian over Kim Jong-un. Stay tuned for Jose Canseco’s visit with Iranian leader Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Rodman: “You know, he’s a good guy to me. Guess what?  He’s my friend…I don’t condone what he does, but as a person-to-person, he’s my friend.

Are rebound for war with North Korea? Worm says no.

Someone  on Twitter cited North Korea, Iran and the 1988-89 Detroit Pistons (of which Rodman was a member) as the true Axis of Evil. Seconded.

2. This is certainly not the play New Rochelle’s coach drew up on the white board during the final timeout versus rival Mount Vernon, but who cares? It worked. Keep in mind: Khalil Edney, the New Rochelle player who tossed in the 55-foot game-winning shot, is also the guy who inbounded the ball. The three-pointer capped an 12-1 comeback in the 61-60 victory. The game was for the New York Section I Class AA championship. Worth noting: Edney was the quarterback on New Rochelle’s state championship-winning football team last fall. This is one interception he did not mind tossing.

3. Later today a Catholic school will find itself ranked No. 1 in the nation in a major revenue sport, even though most experts don’t believe they are truly the best team in the country. Haven’t we seen this movie before, this academic year? Welcome, at long last, to the summit, Gonzaga. On Saturday night the Zags beat Portland, 81-52, to move to 29-2 on the season and finish the WCC schedule 16-0.

Gonzaga coach Mark Few (371-92, .801): Sometimes the smartest career move you can make is to stay put

The Bulldogs’ top two players, center Kelly Olynyk and forward Elias Harris, are from Canada and Germany, respectively. Gonzaga’s total undergrad enrollment? 7,874. Indiana University, last week’s No. 1, has an undergrad enrollment of nearly 43,000 students.

4. Sinkhole de Mayo? (Okay, we were stretching). The massive sinkhole that swallowed Florida man Jeff Bush, 36, is actually not that uncommon in western Florida. In fact, that area of the state is known as “Sinkhole Alley.” Bush’s body will not be recovered as authorities have decided to raze the house before anyone else comes to harm. Not to sound callous –which is a signal that I’m about to be callous –but if you’re just going to unearth a corpse only to bury that corpse once more, what’s the point?

If only a sinkhole would swallow Tropicana Field

5. Premature Evaluations, ESPN variety: At halftime of Sunday’s Heat-Knicks contest, in which New York led by 14, Michael Wilbon said that “it looks as if Miami is going to lose this game.” The Heat won by six. Later, during the Thunder-Clippers contest, our good friend Arash “Guest List” Markazi had a third quarter tweet that began, “And Kevin Durant just put the game away with that dunk.” The Clippers would come back to tie the Thunder before ultimately losing. After the game, on ABC, Bill Simmons was discussing the ankle injury to San Antonio’s Tony Parker and said (not verbatim), “Let’s be honest: Tony Parker’s injury means that Oklahoma City is going to get the No. 1 seed out west, and that means that we’re going to have a replay of last year’s NBA Finals.” The Spurs currently lead OKC out west by three games and last night, minus Tony Parker, they beat Detroit by 39 points. As Magic Johnson might say(might say? Try “always says”), “You know what? Look. Shut up and let things happen or at least own up to when you’re wrong.”

This photo of Bar Refaeli has nothing to do with anything we are writing about today

Reserves

Oh, this was stupid. A 46 year-old man dies during the swim portion of the Escape from Alcatraz Triathlon in San Francisco Bay. It was stupid because the event is ordinarily held in June, but the race was moved up three months to accommodate the America’s Cup, which will be staged there come June. If you’ve been to San Francisco, you know that the bay is never particularly warm. Yesterday water temps were about 51 degrees. Approximately 150 swimmers were pulled from the water.

Brrrrrrr-ing it on!

Blackhawks up… Chicago’s point streak survives as Patrick Kane scores a game-tying goal versus the Red Wings with 2:02 remaining in the third period. Chicago won a shootout, though the streak was intact just by forcing overtime. The Blackhawks now have at least one point (tie or win) in 22 consecutive games to open the season, an NHL record.

How much longer must Chicago’s points streak extend before someone wonders aloud whether their logo could be any more racist?

Speaking of streaks, Miami wins its 14th straight as LeBron comes up HA-YOUGE in the fourth quarter at Madison Square Garden versus the Knicks. New York led by 16 early in the second half.

Hot-and-cold shooting: In Norman, Oklahoma converts all 34 of its free throws as the Sooners beat Iowa State, 86-69. OU’s charity-stripe perfection equaled an NCAA record achieved twice before, by UC Irvine in 1981 and by Samford in 1990. In Riverdale, N.Y. (just north of Manhattan), it was Manhattan 34, Fairfield 31, the second-lowest scoring game of the shot clock era. Only Princeton 41, Monmouth 21, in 2005, saw fewer points scored.

In Mississippi, doctors claim to have cured a baby that was born with the HIV virus. That baby has since offered LeBron James $1 million to participate in next year’s NBA Slam Dunk Contest.

The Lakers, fueled by Kobe’s 34 points, beat Atlanta 99-98  to get back to even (.500). LA is now 2 1/2 games out of an 8th-place playoff spot. You know what? Look. We want to see the Lakers make the playoffs as much as anyone in the 310/323 does, but if they draw San Antonio it’ll be ugly and swift.

Earlier that day at Staples, OKC beat the Clippers. The Thunder’s Serge Ibaka nut-punched Blake Griffin late in the fourth quarter, and for some bizarre reason was whistled for a flagrant-1 but not ejected. Ibaka later converted a three-point play (and-one style) and had a key block as the Thunder held on to win. The Clippers and Lakers both played at home as part of “MarkaziFest”, a celebration of our friend’s birthday.

How do you introduce a clause such as “(Roger) Goodell, who has an openly gay brother…” just one graf from the end of this column?

There are three remaining unbeatens in college basketball, all of them on the women’s side: Division II Clayton State (Ga.) is 26-0. Division III squads Montclair State (29-0) and DePauw (30-0) could meet in the second round of the D3 tournament next weekend, with DePauw hosting…and speaking of perfect female hoops teams, Duncanville (Texas) won the 5A state championship this weekend to finish 42-0 and run their nation’s-best win streak to 70 games.

Remote Patrol

Connecticut at Notre Dame (Women)

ESPN2, 7 p.m.

The No. 3Huskies (27-2) lead the overall series, 29-9, but theNo. 2 Irish have won five of the past six. No. 2 Notre Dame has won 22 straight, which is one shy of the school record. Its only loss was to No. 1 Baylor. UConn’s only defeats have been to Baylor and the Irish. These two coaching staffs don’t like each other very much. Geno Auriemma is a ball-buster and a funny guy. Muffet McGraw? Not so much. No one’s fannies will be patted tonight.

Skylar Diggins of Notre Dame