What Did This Guy Expect for an Answer?

Is Kobe Bryant coachable?

That’s probably the first question any Laker coaching candidate, other than Phil Jackson, is going to ask.

So Kenny Smith, taping an interview Wednesday that will air on TNT tonight before the Lakers’ game against the Miami Heat, asked Bryant: “Are you coachable?”

Said Bryant, rather emphatically: “Three championships in five years. I would think I am very coachable.”

Trivia time: What does Smith have in common with Michael Jordan, James Worthy and Mitch Kupchak?

Favorite topic: Smith said Bryant was guarded during the interview, except when he was talking about basketball.

“There are friends of mine, some who played in the NBA and some who didn’t, that I can talk basketball with nonstop for four hours,” Smith said. “Kobe, if he had the time, would be one of those guys.”

Alone on an island: Know anyone who has UCLA winning it all in his or her NCAA tournament pool? Morning Briefing found someone -- Jason Alexander, formerly of “Seinfeld,” who now stars in CBS’ “Listen Up.” Alexander, a Boston University alumnus who lives in Southern California, said he’s simply supporting the local team.

Alexander has top-seeded Illinois, North Carolina and Duke as his other Final Four teams. Nothing wrong with that. But UCLA over North Carolina in the final? Alexander plays sports talk show host-sports columnist Tony Kleinman in “Listen Up,” but obviously he’s no expert.

Every man for himself: Dwight Perry of the Seattle Times found an item on sportsfanmagazine.com involving former USC and major league pitcher Bill “Spaceman” Lee and another former major league pitcher, Ferguson Jenkins. They once had an encounter with a black bear in Canada, and Lee now claims he wasn’t scared.

His logic: “I said, ‘Fergie, I don’t have to outrun that bear. I just have to outrun you.’ ”

Key omission: Congress subpoenaed seven baseball players in its steroid probe, but not Barry Bonds.

“Isn’t that like investigating automobiles and not calling General Motors?” asked Greg Cote in the Miami Herald.

Looking back: On this day in 2001, the Connecticut women’s basketball team beat Long Island, 101-29, in the first round of the NCAA tournament. It’s the fewest points scored by a team in the women’s tournament.

Trivia answer: They played for Dean Smith at North Carolina. (OK, that was an easy one.)

And finally: For top-ranked Illinois, the “Road to the Final Four” is more than just a figure of speech, according to the Chicago Tribune’s Mike Downey.

“When’s the last time a team won a national championship without getting on a plane?” Downey wrote. “If the Illini win their regional games in Indianapolis and then Chicago, sending them to the Final Four in St. Louis, all this team is going to need for a ‘Drive for ‘05’ is a gas pump and a road map.”

*

Larry Stewart can be reached at [email protected].