Russell Remains the NBA Standard for Great Centers

OK, I’m just saying . . .

* If Shaquille O’Neal helps the Lakers win this year’s NBA championship, it’s time to measure him against Bill Russell and Wilt Chamberlain. But nothing short of the title will do. As mighty as O’Neal is at both ends, the question remains: Does he want it badly enough?

Russell made all those Celtics miracles happen by the strength of his will. Russell got every rebound and blocked every other shot (memory insists). He scored as needed.

But those good works were the least of it. Russell is the standard against which great centers are judged because he was the ultimate winner, gifted athletically, gifted personally, a man to whom defeat was such an insult as to be rejected on thought. His presence changed everything. “I told Shaq to put us on his back and carry us,” forward Robert Horry said of a pep talk delivered during Game 3 of the Western Conference finals against the Trail Blazers. That Shaq did--but no one, not Robert Cousy, not Bill Sharman, not Red Auerbach, ever said such a thing to William Felton Russell.

* If the NBA wants Michael Jordan to succeed as Lord of All He Surveys, Commissioner David Stern needs to get him out of Armani and into No. 23--today if possible. Or at least get him out of Washington (can you trade a team owner?), where the Wizards are such a salary-cap/head-case mess as to defy repair even by a boss with Solomon’s wisdom and Auerbach’s savvy. Sad to say, M.J. so far has shown not a glimmer of such wisdom/savvy, having botched the firing of Gar Heard and the hirings of Rod Higgins and Mike Jarvis. One cups an ear toward the nation’s capital, perhaps to hear M.J. apologize to the Two Jerrys for his criticisms of their front-office work with the Bulls.

* If Patrick Ewing is the beating heart of the Knicks, how come they beat the Pacers without him and lose with him?

* If today’s Frank Robinson, the hanging judge, had been in charge of baseball discipline during the career of the firebreathing terror named Frank Robinson, that old F. Robby might not be in the Hall of Fame. He’d have been suspended half the time. Today’s Mr. Robinson is the statesman version of the F. Robby who, as the Indians’ player-manager, once rounded first and punched his own pitcher in an intrasquad game. An earlier time, Robinson slid high into Eddie Mathews at third, provoking fisticuffs from which The Future Wise Man emerged with an eye swollen shut. That was the first game of a doubleheader. One-eyed, Robby homered to win Game 2.

* If Mark McGwire keeps this up (and why wouldn’t he?), Ken Griffey Jr. will need 900 home runs, not 756, to become the career leader.

* If Bill Walton wants to beatify John Wooden, more power to him. Wooden is a wonderful man who should have been the NCAA’s coach of the year every year that UCLA won the thing. Winning a national championship when everyone expects you to win it is all but impossible. Wooden did it seven consecutive times, 1967 to 1973. He won with centers Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Steve Patterson (pardon?) and Bill Walton. While praising Wooden in a May 29 Time magazine essay, Walton contrasts his coach with Bob Knight. The contrast, predictably enough, is done in caricature, good and evil, sunlight and darkness. But while Knight has earned the insults, Walton might be better served by using only the truth. At one point, he criticizes Knight with this sentence: “No wonder great players--Larry Bird, Isiah Thomas, George McGinnis--don’t last in Bloomington.” Bird left Indiana after a month for reasons that had nothing to do with Knight; the small-town freshman was intimidated by the big place. “Him and me, we’d have got along good,” Bird later said of Knight. “He’d have loved my game. . . . He’d have made me a better player.” Thomas left for the NBA’s money after winning a national championship. As for McGinnis’ problems with Knight, they couldn’t have been all that bad. He never played for Knight. McGinnis’ two years at Indiana, Knight coached at West Point.

* If the Atlanta district attorney has a case against Ray Lewis, it’s long past time to show it. What we’ve seen so far isn’t enough to arrest the Ravens’ linebacker, let alone convict him. Something’s very wrong.

* If Pedro Martinez wins another Cy Young (and why wouldn’t he?), that’ll be nice. Nicer is a story reported by the Everett (Wash.) Herald. An usher at Seattle’s Safeco Field noticed a man carrying large garbage cans stacked one inside the other. He wore a Red Sox uniform, cap pulled low, and walked alongside a woman from the stadium housekeeping crew. The usher, Shelly Garofalo, asked, “Are you Pedro?” The pitcher with a $75 million contract took her hand to pull her away from passers-by and said, “I can carry garbage cans like everyone else.” Martinez later told a Boston reporter, “I saw the lady carrying six cans. She was kind of petite, and she seemed to be struggling. I just decided to help her out. I thought it was the only normal thing to do. . . . It doesn’t make me a good person or a bad person.”

* If you dropped into a lake a fishing lure decorated with a NASCAR driver’s headshot and a picture of his car (with his autograph on the hook), no self-respecting fish would bite--but maybe a plastic one would. In time for Christmas shopping, $59.95 buys a 6 1/2-pound plastic trophy bass painted in the shiny colors of your favorite driver’s car.