Yes, the Bulls should be a much more competitive team this year, but the Celtics are not supposed to lose to them on opening night at home.

The Celtics were held to 12 points in the fourth quarter. Yikes. Pierce was his usual excellent self, but Walker only shot 5-for-23. Double yikes. The supposed final piece to the puzzle, Vin Baker, played only 18 minutes and scored only six points. Triple yikes.

Hopefully, this is not an omen for the rest of the season.

But I told you so. What I don’t get is why, in Dusty Baker’s mind, Kirk Reuter wasn’t strong enough to start the game on three days’ rest but was strong enough to pitch four scoreless innings in relief.

Why not start Reuter and have Hernandez ready for long relief? Especially given each pitcher’s respective performance earlier in the series and the overarching fact that the Angels are a lefty-dominated lineup that hits better against righthanded pitchers.

Even leaving aside the question of why Baker went with Hernandez as starter, why did he leave him in so long when he so clearly struggled from the very beginning? He waited too long to get the bullpen warmed up and because of that Anderson had doubled home three runs before Zerbie was ready to come in.

Why? Why? Why? Still hesitant about Reuter? Fine. Zerbie pitched great in game two (four scoreless innings to give the Giants a chance to make it interesting) and hadn’t pitched since. Ugh.

Baker did a great job of getting the Giants to the World Series and all the way to game seven. He’s done a wonderful job of managing that clubhouse and especially of gaining Bonds’ confidence, but he blew it in game seven. His management of the pitching staff in game seven was as terrible as the Giants’ relief pitching was in game six.

There’s no guarantee that the Giants would have won had Reuter started, of course. But he was their strongest chance to win, and all you can do as a manager is make the right moves to give the strongest players a chance to perform. He thought he was doing that with Hernandez, but he was wrong. And he didn’t figure out he was wrong until it was too late.

That said, it’s hard to be too upset about the way things turned out. The Angels are a feisty team and most definitely un-evil, unlike the Yankees or Mets. It’s always nice when a franchise wins its first ever championship. As for Bonds, he did about as much as a man could do this postseason.

Through game six of the World Series, Bonds had hit .356 with eight home runs, 16 RBI, 18 runs, and 27 walks. His on-base percentage was .581, and he slugged at a .978 clip. He was at his best in the World Series, hitting .471 with four home runs, 13 walks and eight runs.

His team actually got to the World Series — a first. His team actually won a round of the playoffs — a first. But how it all ended up only proves what Bonds said all along — one man cannot win it all. This was partly just excuse-making for Bonds’ pathetic .196 career postseason average coming into this October, but the nut of it is true.

Of the four major American professional sports, baseball is the one where a single player cannot carry his team to a championship. In baseball, no matter how great you are, you only get four or five trips to the plate. And if you’re really great, they can just pitch around you.

If you’re a starting pitcher, you can only pitch three times at most in a seven-game series. Someone has to win that fourth game. It took both Johnson and Schilling to beat the Yankees in seven last year.

Even a great reliever like Mariano Rivera needs solid starting pitching and enough offense to get to the seventh or eighth inning with the lead. I bet that if you systematically looked at the hall of famers in each sport, you’d find that baseball has a higher percentage of members without world championships. Ted Williams, Ernie Banks, Ty Cobb, Nolan Ryan, just to name a few.

In basketball, football and hockey, one player can dominate. When it came to the final seconds, everyone knew the ball would be in Jordan’s hands. Wayne Gretzky won games single-handedly with his scoring and passing when he played for the Oilers. Marshall Faulk could handle the ball every down.

Of course these guys need good supporting casts. They cannot do it alone. It would be preposterous to suggest such a thing. My point is that when it comes to crunch time in these other sports, a single player can control the fate of his team. Barry Bonds couldn’t just grab the bat out of Kenny Lofton’s hands and say, “Hey, I’m going to take this at bat against Percival. Watch me tie it up with a three-run homer.”

Barry had to wait his turn. He was in the dugout, his bat in his hands. Waiting for the moment when he had to be pitched to and he had the chance to affect the outcome of the game with it all on the line. And he’s still waiting.

Who knows if he’ll get it now? Kent and Baker may be gone. Both can be replaced, but some of that magic might be gone. The Giants were nine outs away on Saturday night. A couple of ground balls, a couple of fly outs, a pop foul, a strike out. One last lazy can of corn to left field for Barry to squeeze tightly in his glove, as a huge grin encompasses his face.

But those outs were more than enough for the Angels. And Barry’s still waiting.

You’ve got to think that it’s all but done for the Giants now.

After Ortiz pitched six scoreless innings and had a 5-0 lead, they had to think that nothing was absolutely safe given the Angels’ proven ability to score bunches of runs, that they were in as good a position as they could hope for. Even if Ortiz wore down quickly, they were handing the game to their excellent bullpen with a cushy lead.

And they blew it. Rodriguez, Worrell and to a lesser extent Nen blew the ballgame and with it dealt a blow to the Giants hopes for a world championship.

Unless Baker decides to mix it up and throw Kirk Reuter out there tomorrow night, we’re looking at Livan Hernandez in game seven. He was hammered in game three, but unlike Ortiz there’s not much reason to think he’ll be fare better tomorrow.

He had a whopping 4.38 ERA during the regular season and opposing batters hit .283 against him. Then again, John Lackey got beaten up in his World Series start, and the Giants have now shown in two straight games that they can hit Francisco Rodriguez.

Bonds has always said that he could not single-handedly carry his team to a championship in the postseason. And he’s right. He’s done just about everything so far, and in spite of a couple of bobbles in the seventh and eighth innings, there was nothing he could do to stop his team’s relievers from wasting Ortiz’s fine outing.

This loss had to be devastating. If the Giants come back and win game seven amid all those rally monkeys, it will definitely be a feat worth admiring, especially because World Series game sevens are usually won by the home team (indeed, no road team has won the seventh game since the Pirates beat the Orioles in 1979). I fear that unless Lackey struggles, the rally monkey will be able to chill with the champagne and just wait for the party.

Hendry and the Cubs have put everyone else on hold in order to pursue Giants manager Dusty Baker. It’s incredible to think that, after 10-plus years as manager, he might finally lead San Francisco to a World Series ring and then skip out of town to Chicago. Relations must be really bad with Giants owner Peter Magowan.

On the other hand, in spite of all the indications, the Cubs are actually a prime destination. They’ve got one of the best young pitching staffs in the major leagues, three up-and-comers in Choi, Hill and Patterson and — oh, yeah — Sammy Sosa. They should be a perennial pennant contender if they are managed correctly and fill in a few pieces. Whereas the Giants are clearly a veteran team going for a last shot.

But the Cubs, the Cubs, the Cubs. Every new manager wants to think he’ll be the one to change the tide, defy history, etc. But it’s got to weigh on you, because it’s not just history, it’s the organization. But if the Cubs show Baker they mean business (i.e., by offering him a big enough payday), it may be enough to convince him they’re serious about winning. It’s funny how that sort of thing works.

First the Trib’s Teddy Greenstein reported last week that the Cubs were looking to hire as manager someone without previous managerial experience. Now Phil Rogers reports that they’re looking for proven guys like Dusty Baker or Bobby Valentine.

Huh? Who’s confused here? The Tribune’s sportswriters or the Cubs management?

I don’t think I am in possession of the requisite superlatives to describe “Punch-Drunk Love.” It is fabulous. It is fantastic. It is fantabulastic. It is, finally, alive.

Every shot makes you smile with wonder at how beautiful it is. Jon Brion‘s score seems to punctuate entire scenes. How much of a genius is Paul Thomas Anderson? He finally made a good Adam Sandler movie.

“Punch-Drunk Love” is laugh-out-loud funny, but also very touching. Not touching in an “oh-that-music-is-playing-so-I’m-supposed-to-care-now” way, but in a real way that makes you glad to be human. Karen says she loves Anderson’s movies because they make her feel normal, beautiful and right. They make you feel connected.

They give you a reason to think there is still some hope for the movies, in spite of all evidence to the contrary.

I’m not sure how to feel about Teddy Greenstein’s report that Cubs general manager Jim Hendry is leaning toward going with someone without previous managerial experience as new skipper.

On one hand, I can see either Melvin or Macha being better with younger players and being more patient about winning. On the other hand, it would be nice to bring in a Lou Piniella or a Dusty Baker who has a proven track record of winning. The last “name” manager the Cubs hired was Jim Frey, and even he had had only one good year, taking the Royals to the Series in 1980.

Before that … Leo Durocher. How much difference does a manager make to a team anyway? That’s one thing that even baseball experts aren’t sure about. A bad manager can do harm, but even a good manager can’t win with a bad team.

Less money for a big name means more money for a good middle reliever or a third baseman with pop, either of which would probably win more games than the best manager out there. Still, I can’t help
but feel that the Cubs are just going with the same old hand-me-down routine in their managerial search.

So now that our World Series matchup is in place, we see that, combined, the Angels and Giants franchises have gone 99 years with a world championship. Aw, Jeez, they’re getting spoiled.

I mean the Yankees only won four in the last six years and 26 total. Poor Yankees fans. Poor, poor Yankees fans. Lucky us. I look forward to a fantastic World Series.

I was very happy to see David Bell sliding into home tonight on Kenny Lofton’s bottom-of-the-ninth single, and will be rooting hard for Barry and the Giants. But it couldn’t come close to my mania at seeing ex-Cub Mark Grace and the D-Backs beat Mariano Rivera and the Yankees in the ninth inning of the seventh game of last year’s Series.