Goodrich Read Right Between the Lines

The Wilt Chamberlain stories just keep coming. Here’s one former Laker teammate Gail Goodrich told Wednesday:

“It’s the day of Game 5 of the 1972 NBA Finals at the Forum, and we’re up on the Knicks, 3-1,” he said from his home in Greenwich, Conn. “I’m driving to the game and go past Inglewood High. I see on the marquee that Wilt is scheduled to be there at the high school two days later for a volleyball exhibition.

“I figured he’d be ready to play that night, that there was no way we were going back to New York for Game 6.”

Goodrich was right.

Trivia time: Who was the NBA’s most valuable player for the 1971-72 season, the one in which the Lakers won 33 games in a row and the league championship?

Remembering: The basketball prowess of Earl Battey, the former Minnesota Twin All-Star catcher who died recently, was mentioned in Morning Briefing earlier this week. Battey was the 1952 L.A. City basketball player of the year.

Bill Dandridge, known as the “Riis Rifle” when he played at now-closed Los Angeles Jacob Riis High in the early 1950s, saw Battey’s skills up close when Riis played Battey’s school, L.A. Jordan, during Dandridge’s sophomore year.

“We designed a box-and-one zone defense -- like the one UCLA used against Elvin Hayes [in 1968] -- just for Battey, and we still couldn’t stop him,” said Dandridge, who was no slouch.

Dandridge averaged 28 points as a senior in 1954 and once scored 56 points against Huntington Park.

Culinary caper: Dandridge was a friend of Allan Malamud, the late Times and Herald-Examiner sports columnist who was one of the great eaters ever in the L.A. sports scene.

Dandridge recalled that on New Year’s Eve, before the 1987 Fiesta Bowl in which Penn State beat Miami for the national title, he and Malamud went to dinner in a Phoenix restaurant.

“After dinner, we told the maitre d’ to call us a cab,” Dandridge said. “He came back and told us it would be an hour’s wait, and pointed us toward the bar and said we could wait in there.

“Allan said, ‘We don’t drink. Just bring us back the menus. We’ll order another meal.’ ”

Nothing to brag about: The Deseret News of Salt Lake City launched an ad campaign this football season to promote its Brigham Young beat writer with billboards that read, “Dick Harmon Bleeds Blue.”

The billboards might just as well read, “Dick Harmon Is a BYU Homer.”

The Salt Lake City Weekly reported that no one in upper management at the Deseret News would admit to giving the ad a thumbs-up. Said Sports Editor Dave Schneider: “I cringe whenever I see the billboard.”

Trivia time: Kareem Abdul-Jabbar of the Milwaukee Bucks.

And finally: From Thomas Boswell of the Washington Post, on Washington Redskin quarterback Tim Hasselbeck’s 0.0 passer rating in the team’s 27-0 loss to Dallas on Sunday: “It’s not like the SAT. You don’t get points for signing your name.”

Larry Stewart can be reached at larry.stewart@latimes.com.