Dickie V. was personally responsible for what I think was the single worst transaction (it wasn't really a trade) in NBA history. And the resurrection of the Boston Celtics franchise.

What happened was this: In those days, NBA free agent signings led to compensation to be decided by the commissioner. The Celtics signed ML Carr from the Pistons, meaning the Pistons were entitled to compensation.

Meanwhile, in Boston, John Y. Brown, co-owner of the Celtics, had acquired Bob McAdoo from the Knicks in one of the worst "chemistry" trades in history. It was clear that Red Auerbach hated McAdoo and all he stood for, and was in fact contemplating leaving Boston for the Knicks just to get away from him.

Then he had his stroke of genius, otherwise known as "seeing who the sucker in the room was." And the sucker of course was Dickie V.

Would Dickie V. like to include Bob McAdoo in a negotiated compensation package?

Even though the Pistons had Bob Lanier, whose attitude toward playing with McAdoo was only marginally more favorable than Auerbach's, Dickie V.'s eyes lit up, bay-bee.

And of course, since Carr was nowhere near the player McAdoo was (he's a perennial All-Star!), the Pistons would have to send over some draft choices, right?

So they did.

Carr becomes a key cog in three championship teams for the Celtics. McAdoo and Lanier get along like nitro and glycerine. Dickie V. gets fired.

But the best part is that one of the draft choices turns out to be the first choice in the draft, and Auerbach is not done. The "number one" player in college that year is Joe Barry Carroll, about whom Red was as happy to have as Bob McAdoo. So he convinces the Golden State Warriors to take his number one, trade it for the number three pick, with which he picks Kevin McHale (whom he would have taken with the no. 1 of course), and have the Warriors toss in Robert Parrish.

Dickie V. was as good a college coach as a pro coach. His last University of Detroit team featured five players who would have fairly decent NBA careers, including Terry Duerod, Terry Tyler and John Long. He didn't win squat with them either.

The Western Conference has ten good teams, so there won't be anything like a walkover in the playoffs for the Suns no matter what their seed (not that anyone should be considered a walkover after the Mavs ran into the Warriors last year). And the top three teams in the East are all far better than the Cavs were last year.

I would have thought the time to take a gamble like this would be when there was an opportunity to take advantage of a weak conference, or when a conference was topheavy and the gamble was to get over a specific obstacle. The Pistons won championships with both strategies, getting Rasheed to put them over the top in a weak conference, and gettin Mark Aguirre to finally overtake the Celtics in the late 90's.

But when the conference is this strong, I don't see completely changing your system mid-season. You have no idea whom you're going to play in the first or any other round, so you don't know if Shaq's remaining qualities, even if they do mesh with the rest of the team, will be what you were looking for.

So count me among the quizzical.

Bob Knight was a member of the 1960 Ohio State national championship team under Fred Taylor, along with John Havlicek and Jerry Lucas. His first head coaching job was at Army, and he left his job to his former player and then assistant Mike Krzyzewski.

The fact that he didn't coach any NBA all-stars after Isiah, but did win an NCAA championship after Isiah (which is, oddly enough, the goal he was hired for, not to be a free farm team for the Association) proves it. His teams were better than the talent he had. He was the last man to coach an undefeated NCAA championship team; Dale Brown had four NBA first round draft choices, including Shaquille O'Neal and Chris Jackson, on a single team and didn't win diddly-squat.

Yes, he had a temper. He certainly didn't get a lot of slack in the media because of it. His personality is a lot like Barry Bonds, but while Bonds is under indictment, Knight can go watch his son coach with pride.

Chevy has a series of radio spots involving internet and text abbreviations (so 1990's, but then again, it's radio). They explain "LOL", even. The kicker is supposed to be that the Chevy has an acronym so it's cool like text, get it?

Then they said, and I wish I were making this up, "WTF: Wow, that's fantastic!"

My immediate take was, WTF?

Clearly someone in Chevy's and Westwood One's clearance department is so lame they had no idea something was being slipped past them.

Low seed, teams had played before with the more expected result, Villanova throws a near perfect second half and you kept expecting Georgetown to power out of it, but they never did.

Not that there were many humans more different than Rollie Massimino and Tom Coughlin.

Of course, the game was in Busch Stadium in St. Louis.