Good Things Don’t Always Come in Threes

Kobe Bryant’s top three remaining conditions for remaining a Laker:

3. Team must expunge all references to Phil Jackson and Shaquille O’Neal from Laker media guide.

2. Team must build monorail from Bryant’s south Orange County home to team’s training complex.

1. Team must rename franchise “the Los Angeles Kobes.”

Top three reasons shipping O’Neal to Miami might not be the end of the world as we know it:

3. Branch Rickey once said it was better to trade a player a year too early than a year too late.

2. Willie Mays ended his career as a New York Met.

1. Shaq’s wife can finally move out of that 18-room bandbox into something larger with add-on possibilities that include a connector bridge to the Bahamas.

Three toughest things new Laker Coach Rudy Tomjanovich has ever walked into:

1. Kermit Washington’s fist.

2. Cancer treatment center.

3. This (albeit a distant third).

Top three things Marion Jones would like to forget about 100-meter qualifying race at U.S. Olympic track and field trials:

3. Lauryn Williams (11.10 seconds).

2. Torri Edwards (11.02).

1. LaTasha Colander (10.97).

Top three reasons why I’m sick and tired of lists:

3. They are a manipulative and lazy literary device.

2. Just because ESPN says “Hoosiers” is the best sports movie of the last 25 years doesn’t mean it’s true.

1. I fear we are veering dangerously close to the Vatican’s box set re-release of the “Top Ten Commandments.”

Does anyone else think that we’re pretty much “listed” out?

Or, perhaps am I in the minority on this (not to be confused with Sports Illustrated’s recent list of the 101 most influential minorities in sports).

ESPN is running so many “best-of” lists in association with its 25th anniversary that it would shock no one if the network announced plans to release ESPN’s top-25 list of ESPN’s top-25 lists, complete with Chris Berman and a drumroll countdown.

ESPN’s motives, of course, are tied more to self-promotion than settling any real debate about the greatest sporting blunder of all time (America, you decide: Leon Lett’s bonehead fumble in the Super Bowl or that fly ball that bonked off Jose Canseco’s head?).

There is nothing wrong with the occasional list, but, seriously, do we need one every five minutes?

The August edition of Golf Digest offers us “five ways to play more guilt-free golf” and “10 things you don’t know about golf on TV.”

Sports Illustrated recently unveiled “10 reasons why baseball is back.”

Funny, but when pressed, I could come up with only nine reasons.

Next on ESPN ... the top five athletes with first names you could have stuffed and mounted.

Tiger Woods

Buck Rodgers

Moose Skowron

Catfish Hunter

“Bird” Fidrych.

Food Channel unveils the top five fruits of all time.

5. Kumquat (narrowly edges out mango for fifth spot).

4. Grapefruit (lower ranking because fruit does not mix well with certain prescription drugs).

3. Banana (the perfect food ... ask any orangutan).

2. Orange (one judge said the difference between first and second spots was “apples and oranges.”).

1. Apple (so red delicious actress Gwyneth Paltrow named a child after one).

Lists have become, somewhat literally, journalism comfort food. In editorial meetings, nothing gets you to lunch faster than not having to come up with real ideas.

For a columnist with writer’s block, knocking out a “10 reasons why” list deftly sidesteps having to direct cognitive thought toward a computer keyboard.

The media seem to agree readers and viewers prefer that the product be packaged for bite-sized consumption.

You know what, the media may be right.

And so, these great debates continue as we argue over backyard fences about the Sporting News’ list of best sports cities of 2003. FYI: Los Angeles-Anaheim edged out New York-Long Island-New Jersey.

Never mind that, by my count, those two “cities” are actually a city, an island and a state.

By any measure, haggling over whether Winnipeg is really the 361st-worst sports city sure kills an afternoon better than any roundtable discussion of James Joyce’s “Ulysses” (No. 1, by the way, on Modern Library’s list of 100 best novels of the 20th century).

People who put out lists, including the people at “People,” know that lists are the crack cocaine of publishing -- cheap and addictive.

Lists are meant to foment phony controversy, and the worst part is how often you find yourself caught up in the mindless drivel.

Example: Can you believe the American Film Institute’s recent list of the top 100 movie songs did not include one tune from Meredith Wilson’s “The Music Man”?

I almost fell off my Wells Fargo wagon.

Sports Illustrated’s recent list of the 101 most influential minorities was topped by Angel owner Arte Moreno.

No argument there, but how about Woods jumping up from No. 28 to No. 2 during a year in which he did not win a major, refused to acknowledge the obvious flaw in his swing and continued to be flanked by the world’s most cantankerous caddie, Steve Williams?

And how does one explain UCLA football Coach Karl Dorrell’s dropping from 40th last year to No. 88, yet Athletic Director Dan Guerrero, the man who hired Dorrell, moving up nine spots to No. 41?

And you wonder why these lists are so popular.

Top three reasons this column should end now:

3. Bottom of page fast approaching.

2. We’ve belabored the point.

1. Must start new list on washed-up centers Lakers should consider signing.