I remember the exact moment I became a New York Knicks fan: The first-ever NBA Draft Lottery on June 18, 1985, when commissioner David Stern pulled the Pacers' envelope from George Jetson's dryer, meaning Indiana would pick second in the upcoming draft and the Knicks would pick first -- and undoubtedly select Georgetown center Patrick Ewing, my favorite player.

If you're 12 years old, a basketball junkie, and most of your family either graduated from Georgetown or attends the school in 1985, it's hard to overstate your excitement when the local NBA team lands Ewing. Sure, he and the Hoyas had stabbed me in the heart by losing to Villanova in the NCAA title game that spring, but he'd led the school to 3 title games in four years, including one championship. In the annals of college big men, how many outside Westwood, California, could unabashedly pit their resume against his? Not Shaquille O'Neal or Tim Duncan or Ralph Sampson or Akeem Olajuwon, because none of them won NCAA titles.

Before Pat Ewing (and remember, he was "Pat" before arriving in NYC), I had no firm NBA allegiance. The early to mid-80s was an exciting time in pro basketball, but living in Fairfield County, Connecticut, my only NBA-viewing option was the Rory Sparrow-led New York Knicks. Sure, the Celtics, Sixers and Lakers played exciting ball on the nationally televised weekend games, but none of them corralled my loyalty. In retrospect, it now seems I realized (albeit subconsciously) that NBA basketball was 8 months of waste and one month of wonder.

When Ewing arrived in New York, however, I started watching Knicks games regularly. Unfortunately, the team didn't transform overnight. Sure, Ewing won the NBA Rookie of the Year award in 1985-86, but he missed more than 30 games due to injury and the team limped through another lackluster season, finishing 44 games behind Larry Bird and the champion Celtics in the Atlantic Division. If I'd been a cynical pre-teen, I might have wondered, "Why couldn't my entire family have gone to Indiana State?"

Over the next decade-plus, Patrick Ewing and the Knicks couldn't get past the Celtics, Pistons and Bulls in the East; and when they finally did, in 1994 (when Jordan was off flailing at change-ups), the Knicks fell to the Houston Rockets in the NBA Finals. In the ensuing years, Ewing turned into something of a farce, boldly predicting victories but never delivering. In 2000, he was abducted by aliens and never heard from again. In the meantime, I've tried to maintain my allegiance to the Knicks, if only to honor his memory. But the drunken uncles in charge at Madison Square Garden make it impossible right now.

Here, in short, is what needs to happen for me to become a New York Knicks fan again:

1. James Dolan needs to go to prison and lose ownership of the team. If the clever, conniving Martha Stewart can get caught for insider trading, then James Dolan is living on borrowed freedom. He must have done something illegal. The fine folks at TMZ need to find out what, embarrass the hell out of him (ya know, to prove it's actually possible), then let the law take over. I'm not averse to framing him.

2. Isiah Thomas needs to relinquish the compromising photos of James Dolan and that rare Chinese panda. If Dolan goes to prison, hopefully for something utterly humiliating, it stands to reason that Thomas's blackmail photos will lose their influence, opening the way for Thomas's dismissal and his public stoning.

3. The Knicks need to draft Georgetown center Roy Hibbert. I confess, I like symmetry. Am I saying he's the next Patrick Ewing? No, he's the first Roy Hibbert. At least I think he is. He might have ancestors named Roy.

4. The Knicks need to pay Stephon Marbury to go away. Listen, I'm sorry about the deaths in his family this season, but he was a selfish, pouting lout well before those happened. Besides, people die every day, and his inability to deal with the reality of that -- like everyone else in the world -- just underscores his self-absorption.

5. The Knicks need to re-hire Jeff Van Gundy. Come on, we've all seen "The Lion King," so we all know the song, so sing it with me: "In the Circle of Life/In the wheel of fortune/It's the leap of faith/It's the band of hope."
(Don't kid yourself; you sing along when no one's around.)

6. The Knicks need to hire current Orlando Magic (?) assistant coach Patrick Ewing, in some capacity, any capacity, to infuse the organization with some semblance of excitement, not to mention throw a bone to the fans who were last excited by the Knicks when Ewing was their leader. If Michael Jordan can get a job as "Managing Member of Basketball Operations" for the Carolina Bobcats, and Isiah Thomas -- a freaking Detroit Piston! -- can become general manager of the New York Knicks, then Patrick Ewing can find a job at Madison Square Garden. My god, on-air dilettante Walt Frazier has been getting paid to ab-lib fake words for the last 20 years. I say we let Walt Clyde go prowl for cougars with Keith Hernandez, and let Ewing call games with Marv Albert. Is he qualified? Are you kidding me? He has a fine arts degree from Georgetown, of course he is.

So, if ALL six of these criteria are met, I will start rooting for the New York Knicks again. In June anyway. After all, NBA basketball is eight months of waste and one month of wonder.

In the wake of the Chargers' loss to the Patriots in the AFC Championship Game, the public images of Philip Rivers and LaDainian Tomlinson have gone in opposite directions. The brash, trash-talking Rivers, who now admits to playing the game with one ACL, has been fast-tracked for canonization, while the humble Tomlinson, who played briefly before shutting it down, has been vilified as a soft, selfish teammate who pouted on the bench because he couldn't contribute.

On the San Diego Union-Tribune Web site, here's a typical comment about superhero Philip Rivers, from a Charger fan named Blue& Gold:

"Wow!!!! That's giving it up for the team!! This kid has some heart!!
Do you think either one of the Manning punks would've had the stones to do what he just did for his team mates? No way in hell, not in a million years.
Now, maybe Rivers will get the respect he deserves, not only as one of the best QBs ever at this stage of his career, but as one of the toughest."

Sorry, pal, but playing a game without an ACL doesn't make you tough; it makes you dumb. Discretion, as they say, is the better part of valor, and Rivers showed no discretion -- and contributed mediocre stats from the quarterback position -- while Tomlinson had the good sense to admit, "Ya know what, I can't go. Let Michael Turner and Darren Sproles play."

And so what happened? What production did the Chargers get from these respective positions? Rivers goes 19-37, with no TDs and 2 INTs, leading the Chargers to four measly field goals, even though the team won the turnover battle against the highest-scoring team in NFL history. Meanwhile, Tomlinson's backups rushed for 99 yards on 21 carries, averaging 4.7 yards per carry, which is EXACTLY what Tomlinson averaged during the regular season. So, Rivers grits it out, hobbles around like a wounded wildebeest for four quarters and earns the everlasting praise of talking heads like "Mad Dog" Chris Russo, who spent Monday drooling about how much he respected Rivers's play, and how he could "quarterback my team any day." On the other side, Tomlinson get vilified (and rightly so) for not standing up and rooting on his teammates. At the end of the day, however, who really helped his team more?

A dispassionate observer would have to say Tomlinson.

LT may have come up small in the teammate department, but at least he was wise enough to let other people - namely, his BACKUPS - do their jobs. Rivers, on the other hand, tries to pull some Curt Schilling bloody sock routine. The problem, of course, is that Schilling actually pitched great in Game 6 of the 2004 American League Championship Series. Rivers threw like...oh, I don't know, a guy playing without an anterior cruciate ligament?

Yesterday Rivers revealed that he had arthroscopic surgery last week to clean out loose cartilage, which enabled him to play.

"If I don't do that Monday, I had no chance of playing," Rivers said.

Um, good?

Correct me if I'm wrong, but one of the chief reasons why football teams have backup quarterbacks is for instances when the starter has misplaced his ACL. I know football is a manly-man sport, and guys are supposed to play with bones sticking through their eyeballs, but this macho charade cost the Chargers a very good chance to beat the New England Patriots and advance to the Super Bowl. Billy Volek, who relieved St. Rivers after he martyred himself in last week's game versus the Colts, went 3 of 4 and led the team to a go-ahead touchdown on the road in that fourth quarter. Would it have been so bad to let him have a shot at the Patriots? After all Volek, who's started 10 games in his career and passed for 2,486 yards in 2004, brought both ACLs to the game on Sunday.

If Volek played in place of Rivers (particularly in the second half, when it was clear Rivers was struggling to move), would the Chargers have won? We'll never know, because Norv Turner agreed to roll out a hurt quarterback with a severe case of megalomania. Who convinced Turner that Philip Rivers, the 18th-highest rated quarterback in the NFL this season, was so irreplaceable that he had to play him, even with one leg?

We're going back a ways, but one of the all-time great Man-Up stories is about Hall of Fame linebacker Jack Youngblood, who played for the Rams with a broken leg in both the 1980 NFC Championship Game AND in the Super Bowl. That's hardcore, yet people don't talk about it that much; not nearly as much as Schilling and his bloody sock. Ya know why? Part of the reason, of course, is that Schilling is a self-aggrandizing loudmouth, while Youngblood isn't. But the biggest reason is that Schilling's team won the title that year, but Youngblood's didn't. This is but one example of how it's commendable to do whatever it takes to win -- just as long as you actually DO win.

You can say Philip Rivers was heroic for playing the AFC title game with no ACL, and you can say LaDainian Tomlinson hurt his team by not cheering from the bench. But really, who hurt his team more? The wanna-be hero who didn't get it done, or the affirmed superstar who let his backups take a shot?

For the record...

* Norv Turner should have replaced the hobbling Philip Rivers at halftime of the AFC Championship Game. You win the turnover battle on the road against the Patriots and you only come away with 12 points? A healthy Billy Volek couldn't have done better than that?

* LaDainian Tomlinson looked pathetic sitting on the bench with his dark visored-helmet yesterday. I know he was hurt, but he looked like Aunt Edna strapped to the roof in "Vacation." Ya know, if Clark had stuck a motorcycle helmet on her head.

* Igor Olshansky now knows what's up.

* Laurence Maroney surprised the hell out of me with several long cutback runs.

* Norv Turner is a moron for thinking he could punt with 9 minutes left in the game (at the Pats' 36!) and still expect to get TWO more possessions against the best offense in NFL history. The change in field position? Barely 20 yards.

* Lawrence Tynes got up off the mat like a freakin' man.

* Is Bubba Franks dead? I didn't hear his name called once yesterday.

* Plaxico Burress never had guts like that while playing in Pittsburgh.

* Peyton Manning's last Priceless Pep Talk reinforced why he's tough to dislike.

* Brett Favre should not retire.

* Tony Dungy should.

* Does the NFL give Archie Manning a box at every stadium?

* I wanted the Patriots to lose, but I'm rather glad it didn't happen to San Diego. No offense to its fans, but the Chargers are really hard to root for, which says a lot when a team has never won anything.

For the Record...

* If Eli Manning leads the Giants to victory in Lambeau, in the kind of weather they're predicting, Peyton automatically becomes the soft one in the family.

* Have you ever actually seen someone thrown under a bus? In fact, has there ever been a recorded case in transportation history? Then where's this term come from? I don't understand how this particular phrase became sports speak for "pinning the blame on someone else." Why a bus? Why not a Mack truck, a Ford pick-up or the ass of Rosie O'Donnell?

* It sounds rather queer when a sportscaster like Sean Salisbury says, "I'm a Rich Rodriquez guy." You hear that kind of thing all the time.
"I'm a Parcells guy."
"I'm a Larry Brown guy."
You're a wienie, is what ya are.

* I hope Billy Volek has to save the day for the Chargers.

* I hope the Super Bowl goes into overtime.

* The Jeopardy online contestant test is next Tuesday, January 29. I'm spending already, anticipating my cash windfall.

* The country is not worse off because TV writers are out of work. Read a book, play Tetris, have sex: Use this down time to do something productive. Don't worry, TV writers will back soon enough, and the country can return to its passive consumption of regurgitated crap.

* Baby Boss is a great name for Hank Steinbrenner.

* Roger Clemens will not go gently into that good night.

* Andy Roddick is a dink. In fact, every A-Rod is a dink.

* Donald Fehr is an obstructionist. Take blood, store blood, get a reliable rest for HGH. Citing Lance Armstrong is fear-mongering. Besides, we all know that's how the French roll.

* Jim Rice got rooked.

* The Knicks could win 38 games in a row and I still wouldn't root for them.

* Goose Gossage is a megalomaniac. "I got out of situations that God couldn't?" Yeah OK, pal. Trim the 'stache already; the Village People are no longer cool.

One of the more annoying constants in television sports journalism is when commentators refer to former coaches and current talking heads as "coach." I know it's supposed to be a form of respect, but too often it sounds like ass-kissing. Listen to Mike Greenberg and Mike Golic continually addressing Mike Ditka in this manner. Or Jay Bilas giving this nod to Digger Phelps, who hasn't prowled a sideline since the early 90s. Ya don't hear Phelps turning to Bilas and saying, "Great point, Attorney Bilas," even though Bilas holds a law degree from Duke.

Granted, if I ran into my high school basketball coach, I would undoubtedly say, "Hey, Coach Owen, how are you?" But that's only because I never called him anything but Coach Owen. If I were all of a sudden compelled to say, "Hey, Tim, how's it hanging?" or "Hey, Tim, I still freaking hate you," then things would be strange. I mean, that's like all of a sudden referring to the parents of your childhood friends by their first names. In my experience, it's easier to stick with Mr. or Mrs., if only because it makes you feel young while making them feel old.

"Coach" is definitely appropriate in certain contexts; for example, when Keyshawn Johnson refers to Bill Parcells by that title. After all, Parcells used to actually be his coach. But Terry Bradshaw referring to Jimmy Johnson like this? They're contemporaries and co-workers, so the charade sounds hokey. Then again, everything Bradshaw says sounds hokey, so maybe that's a bad example.

The case that brought this all to mind, however, is the case of Brent Musburger and
former UCLA coach Steve Lavin, who were calling today's upset of #1 North Carolina. Throughout the telecast, Musburger -- who seems to think every possession is HUGE -- referred to Lavin as "coach," even though Lavin is 25 years his junior and currently calling games because he was a not-so-great coach at UCLA and has been out of work for five years.

Mind you, Musburger wasn't needling the 43-year-old Lavin. He wasn't saying "coach" in a sarcastic tone (though he'd certainly have been in his rights, since uber-recruiter Lavin got canned for going 10-19 in 2003). No, Musburger was probably doing it because he thinks it lends an air of gravitas to anything Lavin says. It doesn't. Just because Lavin used to be a coach, that doesn't mean his elders have to treat him like some kind of basketball poobah. Just because he led a team once (like Dick Vitale at the University of Detroit back in the 1970s), that doesn't earn Lavin a lifetime Coach Card. Unlike generals or presidents, coaches don't get to keep their titles for life. Lou Holtz? He's Mr. Holtz. Unless, of course, he lisped at you at Notre Dame, Arkansas or South Carolina. In that case, he's certainly Coach Holtz.