A consumer's guide to the best and worst of sports media and merchandise. Ground rules: If it can be read, played, heard, observed, worn, viewed, dialed or downloaded, it's in play here.

A consumer’s guide to the best and worst of sports media and merchandise. Ground rules: If it can be read, played, heard, observed, worn, viewed, dialed or downloaded, it’s in play here.

By MIKE PENNER

May 1, 1998 12 AM PT

What: Sports Illustrated’s “Greatest Teams: The Most Dominant Powerhouses in Sports” by Tim Crothers.

Price: $9.95.

Sports Illustrated staff writer Tim Crothers comes clean in his introduction, admitting that “I have absolutely no idea which are the 30 greatest teams in history, and I have as good an idea as anybody else. I have no clue in what order they should be listed, but I am the closest thing to an expert that there is on the planet.”

That last assertion is debatable, which is precisely the point. Crothers wants to stir it up with his selections as the “greatest” 30 professional sports teams of all time--and he succeeds, grandly, with his choice of the 1990-97 Chicago Bulls as No. 5.

After leading off with safe and sane selections of the New York Yankees, the Boston Celtics and the Montreal Canadiens as the top three “dynasties,” followed by the 1972-80 Pittsburgh Steelers as fourth-greatest team, Crothers all but screams “bring it on” by slotting Michael Jordan and His Supporting Cast ahead of the Green Bay Packers of the 1960s, the Cincinnati Reds of the 1970s, the San Francisco 49ers of the 1980s and a team that would probably spank the Bulls in a best-of-seven series, the Kareem-Magic-Worthy Lakers of the 1980s.

Best one-man team--no question, Jordan would rank supreme.

But fifth-greatest team? As in starting five, plus bench? As in Scottie Pippen plus the box of assorted spare parts that failed to reach the finals both times Jordan failed to play a full season with the Bulls during the ‘90s?

Those Bulls would have had their hands full with the Frazier-Monroe-Reed New York Knicks of the early ‘70s (No. 22 in Crothers’ rankings) and the West-Chamberlain-Baylor Lakers of 1967-72 (criminally undervalued at No. 27).

Crothers advises, “Rant and rave as long as you wish. And, hey, if you really don’t like my picks, write your own book.”