We Traded for Shaq? Oh, Thank Heaven

So how does Miami Heat President Pat Riley feel about acquiring Shaquille O’Neal?

“It’s like somebody hitting the lottery,” Riley told reporters. “For years and years and years you’ve been going down to the corner 7-Eleven store and buying lottery tickets, and then one day you get a call that you won.”

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Trivia time: What former Laker player and coach scored the final two points of the 1972 NBA Finals, when the Lakers defeated the New York Knicks in five games?

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He can do it all: When Phil Jackson was on Jay Leno’s show recently to promote his book, Ben Affleck was also a guest.

Of O’Neal, Affleck said, “I’ve heard Shaq wants to be a cop, or a sheriff. He said he didn’t think he could stop all crime, but probably most of it.”

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Center of attention: Before the Heat has even played a regular-season game, O’Neal is touting his influence on Miami.

“We’re going to get our 20 games on [national] TV,” he said. “There’s going to be a lot of marketing. There’s going to be a lot of sold-out games.... We will become the new basketball mecca.”

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A humble side: O’Neal recently taped a Spike Lee-produced TNT promo in which he teaches Spanish to kids. Afterward, doing a promotional interview with a TNT producer, O’Neal said that he’d like to be a teacher or a principal.

O’Neal, out of character for him, said, “But I don’t think I would be very good at it.”

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Football mecca: “Just another average, ordinary Saturday of college football,” wrote Jim Armstrong in his AOL.com column. “Florida lost, Florida State lost and Miami lost, prompting Sunshine State officials to concede that Utah is the new college football capital of the universe.”

Then again, California has the No. 1 and No. 4 teams in the Associated Press poll.

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Survey says: In a basketball survey involving about 1,000 participants, 38.2% thought the U.S. would fare better at the next Olympics if the NBA sent the league championship team rather than a group of stars.

And then there was this suggestion: Tell all participating players that they will be exempt from league drug tests if they win a gold medal.

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Looking back: On this day in 1963, Wilt Chamberlain scored 55 points for the San Francisco Warriors in a 118-99 win over the Lakers.

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Trivia answer: Reserve Jimmy Cleamons, who was an assistant under Phil Jackson and is now on Byron Scott’s staff with the New Orleans Hornets.

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And finally: Was Boston Red Sox first baseman Kevin Millar, during a recent appearance on FSN’s “Best Damn Sports Show Period,” really kidding when he said his teammates did Jack Daniels and Crown Royal shots to keep warm, beginning with Game 6 of the American League championship series at Yankee Stadium?

Well, consider this: Of pitcher Curt Schilling’s bloodstained sock, Millar said, “It was a red Sharpie; I actually colored it in.”

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