Ever envisioned a 40 something, white bread, midwestern male hooked up with a leather-clad dominatrix who keeps a closet full of studded whips and handcuffs just for kicks and giggles?

OK, I guess it is just me.

It’s not a constant vision, though; I only get that mental image when I’m thinking about Chicago Bulls coach Tim Floyd, mind you. After all, I figure the guy’s got to be a flaming masochist if he has willingly endured three-plus years of Da Bulls***.

The guy is off to the worst start ever for a coach, having compiled a career record of 47-182 (a stellar winning percentage of .205), and he’s had two fights with players in the past month.

Not Karl Malone-Byron Scott fracases either, where he tries to whip the monkey-ass of some other team’s problem child. No, he’s had some highly public spats with Charles Oakley and Ron Artest?athletes on his own team.

Granted, Oak is such a venerable curmudgeon that he couldn’t get along with Gandhi or the Dalai Lama, let alone any NBA authority figure who tries to rein him in, but that does little to detract from the growing perception that lil’ Timmy Floyd is in over his head.

So, why in the name of LaBradford Smith didn’t he just quit when he started discussing that very option with his players earlier this week? Apparently, he never saw that old beer ad about knowing when to say when.

That, or he gets some really serious jollies off of GM Jerry “Krispy Kreme” Krause putting on a pair of stiletto heels and pouring hot candle on wax onto?

Never mind.

Instead, on Tuesday, with rumors flying that he was sick of it all and about to say, See ya, Buh-bye, Hasta la vista, Sayonara, Later and the like, he instead reaffirmed his commitment to the team that rescued him from the drudgery of coaching an NCAA qualifier and gave him the opportunity to captain an NBA ship with a hole in its structure roughly the combined size of Michael Jordan’s ego and Dennis Miller’s mouth.

What exactly is his loyalty to this organization, anyway?

Krause, fearful of seeing his Chicago dynasty degenerate into the mediocrity of the ’90s Celtics, post Bird/McHale/Parish, prematurely dismantles a championship-winning core (Jordan/Pippen/Jackson) and proceeds to assemble a roster featuring the likes of Dickey Simpkins and Fred Hoiberg, and it’s supposed to be a reward to hire Floyd away from Iowa State to let him coach what has turned out to be a mess that a billion soiled baby diapers in the East River couldn’t match?

Then, Krause is so inept in his personal dealings and personnel decisions that he burns bridges with every decent player in the league, has to instead lavish his owner’s millions on also rans and never-will-bes like Ron Mercer, Eddie Robinson and Brad Miller, and sees his team become so thoroughly incompetent that he has to start rebuilding on the rebuilding by trading his one good player, Elton Brand, for a high schooler, and still Floyd puts up with it?

Well, beat me, spank me, call me Susan.

If individuals’ incessant, indiscriminate, inflammatory, incendiary, insidious, insipid, infantile, invective insinuations, innuendos and insults that incited incorrigible insurrections don’t induce infinite insanity or inspire insatiable, intense intellectual instincts to insulate oneself in an institution, then I guess there’s just no helping you.

If he figures that his $2 million salary is worth putting up an offense that couldn’t score with a Vegas hooker, and a defense that couldn’t stop Chris Dudley with two sprained ankles, a broken arm and a case of vertigo, then more power to him, I suppose.

And if Floyd is willing to contend with players who publicly undermine his authority and question his competency, players who kick folding chairs into the stands at every timeout, players who suggest he has all the cranial capacity of a three-eyed wombat after he tells them to wear nice clothes on the bench if they’re injured and not playing (though Artest, the guilty party who apparently has seen video footage of Doug Moe’s fish tie clearly has a valid point on that last issue), then at least it’s his problem, rather than mine.

Then again, I still can’t stop those nightmare flashbacks of him in a studded collar and a g-string?

Eric welcomes feedback at: [email protected].