The Only Shooting He Did Was at a Basket

Former Nevada Las Vegas basketball player Jermaine Lewis recently returned from a five-month stint in Saudi Arabia, where he played pro ball for the team Al Hilal based in Riyadh.

Couldn’t the former Runnin’ Rebel guard have found a more hospitable foreign locale, especially with a war going on in the Middle East?

“Hardheaded,” Lewis told Rob Miech of the Las Vegas Sun.

Still, with news of kidnappings a daily occurrence, Lewis had enough sense to stay in his compound most of the time.

In fact, he said he hit the streets of Riyadh only for Al Hilal games -- and the time players were invited to the team owner’s palace.

Al Hilal’s owner is Prince Nawaf bin Abdul Aziz, the Saudi intelligence director who married one of Crown Prince Abdullah’s daughters.

More Lewis of Arabia: At the party, Lewis saw a familiar face in the marble- and gold-trimmed, two-story palace -- a framed and autographed picture of former UNLV All-American Larry Johnson.

“When I saw that, I just started laughing,” Lewis told the Sun. “I told [the prince] I went to school at UNLV and graduated from there.”

The prince, Lewis said, “had an indoor pool, lots of cars, and maids and servants were everywhere.”

Palaces, cars and servants?

Sounds like the good old days -- wink, wink -- of UNLV recruiting.

Trivia time: What year did Larry Johnson win the Wooden Award as college basketball’s top player?

Looking back: On this date in 1920, Babe Ruth hit his 30th home run of the season, surpassing his own single-season record, and the New York Yankees beat the St. Louis Browns, 5-2. Ruth finished the year with 54 homers.

Fame pays: Thai tennis player Paradorn Srichaphan, seeded second in the Mercedes-Benz Cup at UCLA this week, on the best part of being famous: “If I get a speeding ticket at home, I get away from it.”

Asked whether his fame in his homeland rivaled Kobe Bryant’s in the U.S., Srichaphan went a rung or two higher, saying, “Maybe Michael Jordan.”

Summertime blues: During one of Bob Uecker’s many appearances on the “Tonight Show,” reader Tim Bornheimer of Los Angeles remembers Johnny Carson asking the baseball announcer whether he had ever been in a batting slump.

Uecker, a .200 hitter in six major league seasons, responded, “Oh, many times. One year I went 0 for June and July.”

False fact: From the always “trusty” SportsTicker, “RH reliever Greg Gagne had his major league record consecutive save streak snapped at 84 games when he blew his first save since August 2002....”

Yeah, and Eric Gagne used to play a mean shortstop.

Trivia answer: Johnson, a forward who played 10 seasons in the NBA with the Charlotte Hornets and New York Knicks, won the Wooden Award in 1991.

And finally: Victor Conte, whose BALCO laboratory is at the epicenter of a steroid scandal, was a musician 25 years ago. The name of his band:

The Pure Food and Drug Act.