•If I had an opportunity to arrange any matchup in this year's NBA playoffs it would be a series between the two Los Angeles teams, the Clippers and Lakers, which is a possibililty in the second round. The long-woeful Clippers enter the postseason with a slightly better record and open with the Denver Nuggets. The Lakers square off with the Phoenix Suns. Neither team is championship caliber, but their battle for local bragging rights would infuse the games with a delicious extra dimension.

•By the way, did you know that the Lakers hold the all-time record for appearances in the NBA Finals, with 28? Only one other team is even in double figures and we all know who that is, right? Yep, the Celtics, with 19 trips to the finals, but more actual titles (16 to 14).

•Here's another fact about the NBA Finals that's worth sharing: Since 1969, when the league started naming a series MVP, only one player from the losing team has ever captured the honor. That was Laker sharpshooter Jerry West, who valiantly tried to lead his team over Boston in a seventh and deciding game in LA. Balloons were secured in the rafters for a hoped-for celebration release and West had that playoff rarity, a triple-double, with 42 points, 13 rebounds, and 12 assists, but the Celtics, in Bill Russell's swan song, held on to win, 108-106.

•Sitting courtside at a Lakers game is probably the ultimate celebrity photo op in sports. Even so, it was amazing to see how many shots of socialite Paris Hilton ran on the Associated Press photo wire after she and her latest beau graced the front row of the Staples Center April 16. Whatever pictures of the actual game with Phoenix there were, they were far outnumbered by images of Paris, attired in a custom Lakers shirt of some kind, chatting with and nuzzling boyfriend-of-the-hour Stavros Niarchos III.

•It's hard to imagine a big-market franchise in more disarray than the New York Knicks, who barely escaped being the NBA's worst team this season. The league knows it would be helped by having a winner in New York, and probably thought they'd get one with Larry Brown coaching the team, but it's turned into a shipwreck.

•Maybe I missed it, but I haven't yet seen a single story about any NBA player being fined for breaking the league's new dress code. My guess is that some players may be ignoring or rebelling against the regs, but nobody is snitching. It's sort of the military's old "don't ask, don't tell" theme. After all, who realistically is going to blow the whistle on disobedient stars? Some ball boy? Forget it.

•According to NBA rules, hanging on the rim, if done intentionally, is penalized with a technical foul. It's OK, however, if a player grabs the rim in an attempt to prevent an injury to himself or another player. The problem is that a lot of times it seems that this stipulation is ignored and that players are allowed to swing on the rim after thunderous dunks, which are about the ugliest play in basketball.

Touching other bases

•Given China's reputation for large-scale spectacles, the 2008 Beijing Olympics hardly needed to go Hollywood with the opening and closing ceremonies. But that may be what they've done by inviting Steven Spielberg to team with famous Chinese filmmaker Zhang Yimou in producing the ceremonies. Given Spielberg's eye for visual artistry and drama, the TV audiences should be huge.

•Soccer's world governing body, FIFA, hopes to stamp out racist comments at games with new rules approved last month that dock teams three points in league and international competitions for  discriminatory and/or contemptuous remarks not just by players, but by their fans, too. While this strategy, which will be used at the World Cup in Germany June 9-July 9, has good motivations behind it, enforcing it could be tricky. Some fans could decide to shout racist remarks at one of their own players in hopes of drawing a penalty on the opposition. Regardless, there's a limit to what FIFA is willing to do to legislate moraility. When Seth Blatter, FIFA's president, was asked about reports that 60,000 East Europen prostitutes would be trafficked in Germany during the World Cup, he said, "We are not responsibile for the morality and the ethics of the whole population of the world. [People say] we should go against gambling, we should go against drugs, we should go against religion, we should go against weapons, and so on. This is not our duty; our duty is football."

•In an ironic twist, the Red Sox have stripped away the glass enclosure from their luxury boxes this year and built an all new open-air seating section for the big spenders. Sadly, however, they couldn't resist the temptation to corporatize the name, which is now the EMC Club, named for the software company that bought the naming rights, instead of the the .406 Club. The latter made use of Ted Williams's 1941 batting average, the last .400 season ever recorded in the majors.

•I'll be surprised if the Tennessee Titans, with the third pick in the April 29 NFL Draft, don't select Southern Cal quarterback Matt Leinart. The Titans, after all, brought in former USC assistant coach Norm Chow to be the team's offensive coordinator last year and now have an opportunity to reunite this winning combination.

•Regardless of how the scandal with Duke University's lacrosse team plays out, and there are serious doubts about the rape allegations, one lesson is clear: Any team that represents an academic institution must be supervised on and off the field. A fraternity type climate, it seems, has evolved around the the Duke squad, which led to the kind of raunchy team party that is at the center of the current controversy.

President Bush may not have greatest control of his ceremonial first-pitch deliveries, but at least he gets the ball to the plate, which is more than you can say for some politicians - including his own vice president. Dick Cheney bounced the ball off the dirt in front of the plate while handling the honors at the Washington Nationals' home opener this week.

Some speculated that he might have been wearing a bulletproof vest under a Nationals jacket and that this perhaps restricted his throwing motion. Who knows, maybe teams that invite the VIP pitchers are asking too much. Old photos, after all, show that presidents would throw out the first pitch from a front-row seat to a player (often a catcher) positioned close to the box seats.

Now, security concerns presumably dictate placing dignitaries not in some field-level box seat, but in a cloistered luxury box. Since they're not sitting in the box seats, it's understandable that the first tosses would take place on the field. But maybe those given the assignment should be allowed a few warmup tosses in the bullpen to gauge their accuracy and distance.

Earlier this week, by the way, President Bush became the first sitting president to thow out the ceremonial first pitch on Opening Day in Cincinnati. For many years Cincinnati enjoyed the privilege of officially opening the National League season, in recognition of its role as the birthplace of professional baseball. The tradition lost something in the mid 1990s when Major League Baseball decided to designate different teams to play a national opener in a Sunday night, prime-time ESPN telecast.

Bush showed up for Cincy's Monday afternoon opener partly, it appears, because of his friendship with new Reds chief executive Bob Castellini. The two became pals in 1989, when they were part of an investors group that bought the Texas Rangers.

Presidents have long been linked to the national pastime. Abe Lincoln played in baseball games while at the White House, according to the Baseball Hall of Fame. Perhaps most surprising, Harry Truman holds the record for attending the most major-league games as president: 16. He became the first president to attend a night game, in 1948, and in 1950 exploited his ambidexterity by throwing out first pitches for the Washington Senators both with his right and left hand.

Baseball's seedy side exposed

Here's a an offbeat baseball stat that's kooky but telling: According to ESPN magazine, major league players consume 300,000 bags of sunflower seeds a year or roughly 60 bags per team, per game. The magazine doesn't give the source of this trivia, but it seems plausible, given the sport's chewing habits. Sometimes I wonder if Chewbacca of Star Wars fame ought to be the MLB mascot.

Oh, well, it's better that the players chew seeds than wads of tobacco. Still I think the big leagues have dragged their cleats too long in not ridding the sport of its unsightly spitting habit, whether with saliva or seeds.

Let's face it, the only reason baseball players can afford to chew while in uniform is because the sport involves less running (or skating) than any of the major professional team sports. Think about it. When was the last time you saw a player in football, basketball, hockey, or soccer chewing even gum?

Touching other bases

•The New Orleans Saints return to the Superdome next season on Sept. 24 in a nationally televised Monday night game. It should be an emotional event wrapped in a lot of ambivalence. On one hand, it will mark an encouraging revival. On the other hand, it will be a sad reminder of the community angst that enveloped the building after hurricane Katrina.

•Have you seen the bare-bones magazine ad that Domino's Pizza uses to target hard-core sports fans?  It's clever and subtle. There is no mouth-watering product photo, only a block of text in the middle of an otherwise blank page. The copy begins: "Remember that time the quarterback threw the Hail Mary across the blue line to the blanketed point guard for a desperation eighteen-footer while sprinting through the streets of Paris for a seventh straight championship ...." At the end of this stream-of-consciousness fusion of sports memories, the ad reminds readers of what many were doing during their greatest couch-potato, spectating moments: "You were eating pizza."

•Edgerrin James, one of the NFL's premier running backs, is really sticking his neck out by signing with the Arizona Cardinals. The team ranked last in the league this past season in rushing, which means it could desperately use him, but also that the Cardinals don't open up the biggest holes to run through.

•Has it ever occurred to you how much more protected batters are at the plate than they once were.  Some wear padding on their front arm, closest to the pitcher, putting them at less risk from inside pitches. Some players also wear ankle guards to protect against foul tips. And, of course, everybody wears a batting helmet, which wasn't made mandatory until 1971.

•Pete Sampras says his decision to play tennis exhibitions and a limited number of engagements with the Newport Beach (Calif.) Breakers of World Team Tennis this summer does not mean he's coming out of retirement. Mostly, he says, he's looking to have some fun and get in shape. Asked about what he misses and doesn't miss about tennis, Sampras, who is married with two children, offered this insight  during a US Tennis Association teleconference: "I miss the focus. I miss the structured life. I miss the preparation. I really miss the majors. ...What I don't miss is the travel, is the pressure, the stress of staying on top of the game. I feel like I had a bull's eye on my chest for most of my career, so just kind of fending people off is something that I don't miss."

•The Midwest is where bowling probably enjoys its greatest popularity, so it only makes sense that a college team squarely in middle America has emerged as the first national power. The University of Nebraska is the favorite at the National Collegiate Women's Bowling Championship, which concludes April 15 in Houston. The NCAA added the the championship to its postseason lineup just three years ago, and Nebraska entered this year's tournament as the two-time defending champion.

I can't say I was surprised to find renaissance man Grant Hill of the Orlando Magic on the cover of "Homes of Color," the African-American magazine of living and style. Hill is a serious art collector.

In a cover story, he says his dad, Calvin, a former NFL running back, profoundly influenced his own love of art by filling their home with  paintings, sculptures, and artifacts, many by African-American and native American artists. Today, Hill and his wife Tamia, a Grammy-nominated rhythm-and-blues singer, have such an impressive collection of their own that he decided to share it in a traveling exhibit: "Something All Our Own: The Grant Hill Collection of African-American Art."

The show has made stops at museums in Orlando, New Orleans, Baltimore, Dallas, and Houston, as well as at the Basketball Hall of Fame in Springfield, Mass. The tour has reached its final destination: Hill's alma mater, Duke University, where the exhibition runs through July 16.

Maggie Dixon leaves her mark on West Point

Maggie Dixon looked up to her older brother, Jamie, the coach of the men's basketball team at Pittsburgh, but he said he always looked up to her, too. He poignantly shared this at her memorial service at West Point, N.Y., where about 500 people paid their respects recently to the young coach, who died shortly after guiding the US Military Academy to its first-ever appearance in the NCAA's women's tournament. The Dixons are thought to be the first siblings to simultaneously take teams to the women's and men's tournaments. 

The Cadets had the misfortune to face perennial power Tennessee in the first round and were completely overmatched in a 102-54 loss. Still, Dixon won over her players and laid the foundation for continued improvement. Despite Army's low profile in basketball, Dixon knew the school was an important proving ground for two of basketball's premier male coaches, Bob Knight and Mike Krzyzewski.

The military atmosphere at West Point isn't for every coach, but as Ira Berkow of The New York Times learned, Dixon discovered that things aren't always as strict as they look. While under consideration for the job, she said she met with the team one day at lunch. The players had just come from formation and were in military uniform, some with sabers. What surprised Dixon and convinced her that she might fit in at the academy, she told Berkow, was when she glimpsed one player using her saber to slice open a cellophane-wrapped sandwich.

Touching other bases

•Just when you figured sophomore Joakim Noah, the star of Florida's NCAA basketball championship, was a cinch to turn pro, he announces that he's sticking around for at least another year with fellow sophs Tito Horford and Corey Brewer. College life in Gainesville must really agree with him. It will be interesting to see how hungry they are for another title.

•It's nice to see that Mike Davis, who resigned as Indiana University's basketball coach, has landed a new job so quickly. Davis, who felt like something of an outsider in Indiana, is heading home, back to Alabama. A University of Alabama graduate, he takes over at Alabama-Birmingham (UAB), where a hundred fans greeted him with a standing ovation at his introductory news conference.

•Teenager Michelle Wie normally is a pretty cool customer on the golf course. Nevertheless, she was so awed by having Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice as a playing partner recently that their nine holes together was pretty much a blur. And what did she think of Rice's game? "She was kind of a beginner, but she was pretty athletic," she told reporters. "She actually hit her driver really well. She liked hitting her driver." That would make them two of a kind. Wie often hits her tee shots 300 yards or more, which is part of the reason she's been able to hold her own when she's played against men.

•Hats off to the creators of the NCAA television ad campaign that reminds viewers that most of 360,000 student athletes turn pro in something other than sports.

•Tiger Woods laughs when he calls opinionated basketball commentator Charles Barkley the worst golfer he's had as a playing partner. Anyone who's seen Sir Charles swing knows Woods may not be joking. Barkley really should be a better player, given the athleticsm that made him a perennial NBA all-star. And now he's a Hall of Famer, named to the class of 2006 along with Dominique Wilkins, Joe Dumars, coaches Geno Auriemma and Sandro Gamba (of Italy), and contributor Dave Gavitt. Among those who missed the cut were Ralph Sampson, Adrian Dantley, Dick Vitale, Gene Keady, and Don Nelson.

•With that high leg kick, pitcher Dontrelle Willis of the Florida Marlins not only is one of the most enjoyable players in the majors to watch, he may just have the best attitude too. Despite playing on one of the worst teams in baseball, Willis brings a sunny outlook to the game. For proof, check out this recent quote, made after the Marlins sank to 1-4:: "I'm not going to let things around me dictate how I feel. I love the game and love the way we're playing baseball, and that's all you can ask."

•The Boston Celtics have turned into the one of the most relentlessly mediocre teams in the NBA. For every flicker of promise the team shows, there is almost always an immediate sign of stagnation. The glory years are barely a memory now.  There are a lot of contributing factors, but if I had to pick one that really seemed to turn the mental tide, it was the 1996-97 season, when the franchise basically resigned itself to bottoming out with a 15-67 record in hopes of getting a high lottery draft pick. The Celtics have never regained the old championship mind-set, and seldom look as if they are morphing into a consistent winner.  This year, it appears they'll miss the playoffs.

•If somebody had told you a month ago that a team led by a sophomore with braces and a ponytail would would win the men's NCAA men's basketball tournament, you might have laughed.  That, however, is exactly what happened, courtesy of Florida's 6 ft. 11 in. sophomore Joakim Noah,  probably the best big man I've ever seen in attacking the basket.  A few steps is all it takes for him to go from stationary to a blurred, swooping assault force. If he stays in school, the Gators could possibly win another championship or two, but after showing he's NBA-ready in Indianapolis, it's doubtful that he will stick around.

•Much was made this year of how no top-seeded teams advanced through the regional brackets into the men's Final Four, something that had only occurred once before. Here's guessing it could become more common. Why? Two reasons: 1) The traditional powerhouse schools often can't count on holding onto their best players for a full four years, a situation that tends to create greater parity. And 2) when you factor in conference tournaments, the postseason is so long that it's hard for even good teams to sustain a high level of performance against strong competition. This certainly proved true at the Final Four, when all three games were one-sided – hardly the way you want an exciting month of basketball to end.

•Was it just me, or did other March Madness viewers detect a lot of uncalled traveling violations this year?  Seems as if players are often taking an extra step these days, and as long as they're going to the basket, no one minds.

•Yes, the Atlantic Coast Conference was loaded with excellent women's basketball teams this year. Still, I wish the Final Four hadn't been such a parochial affair, with three ACC representatives, North Carolina, Duke, and Maryland.  Having said that, you gotta love those frisky and talented young Maryland Terrapins, who fought back from a 13-point deficit to beat  Duke 78-75 in overtime for their first-ever NCAA championship. It was easily the best of any Final Four game this season, women's or men's. The Terps wound up 6-0 in overtime games, a sign of their coolness under fire.

•If it had been up to a Hollywood screenwriter, Louisiana State's basketball teams would have won both the men's and women's Final Four, instead of going down in flames in disappointing semifinal losses. Until then, both squads appeared on a mission to give residents of the hurricane-ravaged Gulf Coast something to cheer about. LSU may  not have unlocked how to win it all, but it's hard to imagine any school producing three more colorful players in its history than Pete Maravich, Shaquille O'Neal, and Glen "Big Baby" Davis, this year's star. By the way, neither Maravich nor O'Neal played on championship teams either.

Touching other bases

•After a sabbatical, Jim Leyland is back managing in the major leagues, this time in Detroit after stops in Pittsburgh, Florida, and Colorado. He's the only skipper I ever saw on television sneaking a smoke in the dugout. This time, let's hope he snuffs out the cigarettes instead of experiencing managerial burnout, as he said he did with the Colorado Rockies after the 1999 season. Leyland managed the Pirates to three divisional titles, and the Florida Marlins to the 1997 World Series crown. Now he has his work cut out for him with the Tigers, baseball's worst team over the last five seasons.

•Wouldn't you think Kobe Bryant would be the NBA's runaway scoring leader after recording an 81-point game, and 19 games with 40 points or more?  I sure did. But guess what, Philadelphia's Allen Iverson is nipping at Kobe's heals. When last checked, the Lakers' scoring machine was averaging  34.8 points a game, with AI close behind with 32.9.

•I've got  nothing against Kelvin Sampson, the new Indiana University basketball coach, personally. But as an IU alum, I just don't think he's the right pick to succeed Mike Davis. Sampson has proved he can consistently put a winning team on the floor at Oklahoma, but his program has raised questions about compliance with NCAA rules over a high volume of recruiting phone calls and low player graduation rates. Those things count as much to me as success on the court, and frankly, they did to former IU mentor Bob Knight too. Some Hoosier fans were hoping the job would go to an ex-IU player like Steve Alford, now at Iowa. Sometimes, though, a coach is better off not coaching at his old school, since it can get ugly when people who loved you as a player start skewering you and second-guessing your every decision. One radical idea that I'll toss out for future consideration: Next time the Hoosiers have a head coaching vacancy, why not hire one of Indiana's excellent high school coaches? The state is known for its high school basketball, and great coaches often cut their coaching teeth at the high school level, including John Wooden.

•I find those Dick Vitale TV ads for DiGiorno pizza, in which the garrulous basketball commentator  ends up hanging onto the rim, a lot more palatable than the straitlaced pitches Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski made for Chevrolet. I realize that Coach K might have turned down a lucrative offer to coach the Lakers several years ago, but I still find it uncomfortable watching him cash in on his fame before millions of March Madness TV viewers. The same sort of thing occurred last year, too, when he plugged American Express in spots that seemed dangerously close to being personal testimonials for the man some have taken to calling Coach Kommercial. I would think other coaches might  perceive these ads as giving Krzyzewski an unfair edge in recruiting prospective players. Speaking of Vitale, for all his chatterbox ways, he is not a big fan of online fan chat rooms. In fact, he told the Forth Worth Star-Telegram that they're the "worst things ever conceived." As anyone who's ever heard him pontificate knows, he doesn't have anything against  expressing opinions, but he considers these chat rooms "pits" of negativity where ranting fans  demand that coaches be fired and rip college players as if they were high-paid professionals.

•If you're a fan of women's pro golf, the future has seldom if ever looked brighter in terms of the number of high-level players. This year's first major, the Kraft Nabisco Championship, hinted at that. Even with Annika Sorenstam, the tour's best player, and two of its budding young superstars, Paula Creamer and Morgan Pressel, out of the hunt down the stretch, a battle royal still emerged among four crowd-pleasers: heralded teenager Michelle Wie, Mexican superstar Lorena Ochoa, fast-rising Natalie Gulbis, and Australian Karrie Webb, who failed to win a tournament last year but  clearly showed she's a force to be reckoned with again by winning the Nabisco championship. She beat Ochoa in the first hole of sudden death.

•All that ceremonial rigamarole after the Masters golf tournament, in which the winner reverentially slips on a green blazer in the Jones cabin, isn't nearly as much fun to watch as seeing the winner of the LPGA's Kraft Nabisco Championship leap into the water off the 18th green. Thanks, Amy Alcott, for starting this exuberant tradition in 1988, and thanks, CBS, for reviewing the many splendid splashes at the end of this year's telecast.

It isn't everyday a person gets a call from ESPN Classic, the golden oldies  arm of ESPN's sports television universe.

Actually, I'd never received a call from the channel until about a month ago, when producer Barry Abrams rang me up to make a small request: Would I agree to sit for a short taped interview about a famous college basketball blooper, namely the errant pass by Georgetown guard Fred Brown in the 1982 men's NCAA championship game?

By searching on the Internet, Abrams learned that I'd covered that year's Final Four in New Orleans for The Christian Science Monitor. Ah, the power of a search engine!

The program Abrams was working on was "The Top 5 Reasons You Can't Blame Fred Brown," one of a series of programs on sports gaffes. Yes, I was there for the first Final Four played in the Louisiana Superdome when Brown, then a sophomore for the Hoyas, threw the ball directly into the hands of startled opponent James Worthy.

But why, of all people, was I approached? Weren't there many other better-known sports reporters than myself who were eyewitnesses to Brown's blunder?

Yes, Abrams acknowledged, there were some big-name sports columnists still out there who'd seen the game and could comment on it. The channel's producers, however, are careful not to overuse their go-to media stars. They like to freshen the mix, plus there were some gaps in this particular show they thought I might be able to fill.

As Abrams explained it, 85 percent of the narration for the "You Can't Blame..." series is pieced together from the edited interviews of individual guests. Given this format, I could see how I might make a minor contribution to the storytelling of such a show, but the game in question was 24 years ago. All I possessed at this point were broad brushstroke impressions, which hardly qualified me to speak confidently about the game's final frantic moments.

No problem, I was told, ESPN Classic would ship me a DVD of the game for my review.

So I sat down to watch CBS's telecast, not once but twice, replaying and freezing the images occasionally in order to better dissect what had transpired.

I'm not one who cares to tape games or rewatch them on the VCR, so I've never really been the type of viewer ESPN Classic counts on.

With an "assignment," though, I found myself mentally engaged by the playback and the memories it conjured up, plus the then-and-now contrasts it revealed.

TV commentator Billy Packer worked the game, just as he will this coming Monday night, and Brent Musburger, a fixture at many big events, was the setup guy for the telecast. He, of course, looked much younger, but the most striking visual difference was the length of the players' shorts. By today's baggy, knee-length standards, they were veritable briefs.

Another appealing aspect of this journey back in time was the opportunity to see a couple of freshmen, Georgetown's Patrick Ewing and North Carolina's Michael Jordan, as superstars in the making.

Ewing began the game in a shot-blocking frenzy but was called for goaltending on North Carolina's first four shots. Nevertheless, he clearly was a force and continued as an intimidating presence throughout his college career.

Jordan was mature beyond his years, with the kind of instincts and poise you just can't teach. Throughout the game, he kept sparking the Tar Heels with timely rebounds and baskets, and was a constant thorn on defense. Even so, he played well within the team concept taught by Coach Dean Smith, who'd taken North Carolina to the Final Four three other times, but never triumphed.

Jordan scored 16 points compared to 28 by teammate James Worthy, but it was Jordan who released the game-winning  jump shot with 17 seconds left.

Georgetown quickly inbounded the ball and raced up court, hoping to get off a shot before the Tar Heels were set on defense. Unfortunately for Brown, this is when calamity struck. Looking desperately for an open teammate, he instead mistook Worthy out of the corner of his eye for a fellow Hoya and threw the ball - and the victory - away.

Having scrutinized this play in particular, I was ready for my interview, scheduled at Harvard University's Dillon Fieldhouse in Cambridge, Mass. The ESPN Classic crew set up there to conduct interviews for a show on the Harvard-Yale football rivalry, but was piggybacking my cameo.

A few days before, I received a handwritten note from producer Abrams staking out the topics for discussion:

•" Disbelief when the [errant pass] happened."

•"Where it ranks in the history of dumb plays."

•"Dean Smith's near misses in [previous title games]."

•"How the hand of fate [ in those near misses] was different."

•"How good James Worthy was in the game."

•The questionable use of Georgetown's final timeout before rather than after North Carolina's last-second free throws.

This was all well and good, but these talking points weren't necessarily my own. Of course, it wasn't my show and I didn't have a clue what anybody might have said already, but knew that I might be looked to fill in some holes.

As it turned out, I received a call from the interviewer the day of my appointment, asking if I could rush over due to a last-minute scheduling change. I was hustled onto the makeshift set without any opportunity to read over my notes, so I was working on the fly, trying to sound intelligent.

When I got home that night I told the family that I'd survived the grilling, but wasn't sure if the producers would find anything worth using among my answers.

The show first aired March 21 but I had a meeting, so I had to wait until I got home to be greeted by "You were on for 10 seconds."

That sounds grim, I know, given Andy Warhol's predicted 15 minutes of fame for everyone.

Actually, I was just happy to make the cut, especially after I had a chance to replay the show and discovered more than 20  guests had been crammed into just a 30-minute show. Most of them were key figures in the game or reputable sportswriters or broadcasters. Fred Brown himself, attired like the businessman he is today, came through like a champion, good-naturedly speaking about his famous faux pas. The only notable absentee was Jordan, who I was told has only granted one interview to ESPN Classic in its history.

The show offered its reasons for why you couldn't blame Brown, including that Ewing's goaltending spree had cost the Hoyas too many points early in the game and that Coach John Thompson's late-game strategies didn't work.

What I said was something about how even a few final ticks are enough to score a winning bucket. Georgetown, in fact, had just that, after getting the ball back one final time after two missed James Worthy free throws with three seconds left.

With those misses, Worthy could have been the goat instead had the Hoyas managed to make a last-second shot of some kind. And it actually was because Worthy was so out of position following an attempted interception that he was the beneficiary of Brown's ill-fated pass. No one but a teammate, Brown apparently intuited, could have been where Worthy was the floor. So Brown tossed him the ball before really looking.

I also couldn't help noticing that the winning shot was taken with 17 seconds left, when the conventional coaching wisdom is to hold the ball for the last shot and not give your opponent time to score.  Yes, Jordan had a makeable shot, but was he was aware of the time left? And did Coach Dean Smith agonize when Jordan took it so early?

Oh, well, all the second-guessing was fun. ESPN Classic hinted they might even ask me back sometime, but I'm not holding my breath.