Rodman: Spurs' Problem Now Coach

Now that the San Antonio Spurs have sent Coach Bob Hill to Boot Hill, do you think former Spur Dennis Rodman, who clashed regularly with Hill, is pleased?

Not actually.

"Rodman would rather have his hair dyed black than say something nice about Gregg Popovich, Hill's replacement," writes Thomas Bonk of the Los Angeles Times.

"Gregg Popovich was the big problem in San Antonio," Rodman said in his autobiography. "We didn't get along from the beginning. He's Mr. Discipline, Mr. Straight, Mr. Conservative.

"He wanted to `tame' me. Then when he found out I wasn't his puppy dog, he set out to drag my name through the mud in the NBA."

WHICH WAY TO GO?

Rodman, now with the Chicago Bulls, presents a Catch-22 situation for journalists, writes Bill Dwyre, sports editor of the Los Angeles Times.

"A decision to publish lots about Rodman offends those whose sense of the normal order of things includes a dislike for public profanity, tattoos, nose rings and men in dresses. A decision to publish nothing but the bare minimum of information about Rodman offends those who see him as a rebel with a cause or a gimmick with a game plan and therefore someone with high readership and interest value. It's the swamp or the moral high ground.

"Or maybe it's neither. Maybe we need to take Rodman as we take one of those big fat pills: One painful gulp at a time, with the additional joyous thought, like the headache you take the fat pill for, that he, now 35, soon will just go away. At least from the sports pages."

THEY SAID IT

-- John Starks, New York Knicks, upon hearing that Dennis Rodman, before he was suspended, had cursed out teammates in the Chicago Bulls' locker room: "He's a ticking time bomb."

-- Patrick Ewing, New York Knick center, to Starks: "Let me get this straight. . . . You're calling somebody else a ticking time bomb?"

-- Golden State's Bimbo Coles: "Man, I hate going to these schools and talking to these kids right now. Every time I go there, they come up to me and say, `You guys are sorry.' "

-- Coach John Calipari, New Jersey Nets, after guard Khalid Reeves missed all seven shots in a loss to Chicago, then demanded to be traded: "When you play like he did, you're going to demand anything."

-- Jerry Tarkanian, Fresno State basketball coach: "I would rather watch `Gilligan's Island' than a regular-season NBA game."

THEY WROTE IT

-- Mike Barnicle, Boston Globe, not exactly lamenting Roger Clemens' signing with the Toronto Blue Jays: "The guy was blessed with a $31 million arm and a pea-sized brain."

-- Jayson Stark, Philadelphia Inquirer: "You could probably buy half the province of Manitoba for what the Blue Jays paid Clemens."

-- Hal Bock, Associated Press columnist, on Rich Kotite's insistence he was not fired and did not quit (but somehow no longer is coach of the New York Jets):

"That is like saying we're not going to run the ball and we're not going to pass it, which occasionally seemed like the Jets' game plan."

Compiled by Chuck Ashmun, Seattle Times