There’s still hope for us yet in 2014

As we head into 2014, sports remains our guiding light.

On these pages, we read daily about the good, the bad and the ugly, and we haven’t even gotten to Dennis Rodman yet.

None of what we digest on the Web, or each morning in the paper, is important when placed alongside struggling economies and bumbling governments, or next to the evil of terrorism and the wonders of human deeds.

But sports serves one magnificent calling. Its lessons are frequent and hard to miss.

Keeping score isn’t always bad. Nor is hero-worshiping teams and players we like, or booing those we don’t. It is, except for extremes, harmless.

We are supposed to get our knowledge from school, or our parents, and most of us do. But sports keeps upgrading us.

Lindsey Vonn announces that she can’t ski in Sochi, that her injured knee won’t handle it. That seems like a simple, logical — and sadly painful — decision. But it is more, a nuance and a lesson we shouldn’t miss.

She is a star. She has it all. Beauty, athletic skill, a famous boyfriend named Tiger Woods. She probably would have been the United States’ face of the 2014 Winter Olympics. NBC would have captured her every moment, from sunup to slopes down. She was worth several million additional viewers every time she went to the top of the hill.

It would have best served NBC, as well as the Olympics in general, had she delayed her decision, let hope linger. Maybe they even suggested that to her. Every day closer to the Games that carried the chance she might compete was worth millions.

But she did the right thing. She told it like it was, when it was. Olympic marketing took a hit, but whatever amateur spirit still remains in the Games was well-served. Somebody else will get her spot now, with reasonable time to get ready.

Brett Hundley did the right thing too. He stayed at UCLA for another year.

He is a star quarterback, already a great player. A big paycheck awaited him in the NFL. But there were some rough edges to his play that cried out for one more year of polish from his coach, Jim Mora.

Also, he appears to be the kind of student-athlete who actually fits the first part of that hyphenated phrase. Many do not and should grab the pro paycheck the moment they can. Hundley will be a better player and person, and we have learned more about who should stay, and why.

Rumors surfaced that the Clippers and the Knicks were in discussions about a trade that would send Blake Griffin to New York for Carmelo Anthony. Because we have Doc Rivers as Clippers coach, we didn’t need to wade through days of rumors and whispers, radio rants and reports that are quickly denied and often re-stirred.

Rivers said that it not only wasn’t happening, but that it was “stupid,” which it was. The old days of reporters aiming at getting it right, rather than merely getting it first, are long gone. Rivers showed us how to get it quashed.

Zach Johnson won the first pro golf tournament of the year. There couldn’t be a more decent person, as well as unspectacular player.

He doesn’t hit it very far. He doesn’t pump his fist a lot. He doesn’t try shots he doesn’t have. He just does the best with what he has, and that’s often enough to end up at the top of the leaderboard.

He is a master of no part of the game, but also a Masters champion.

Bill Hancock was executive director of college football’s Bowl Championship Series (BCS). That matched Nos. 1 and 2 in a title game. It ended with Monday night’s Florida State-Auburn game at the Rose Bowl. Next year, there will be a four-team playoff under the jurisdiction of the College Football Playoff (CFP). Hancock has become executive director of that.

Even after he lost a son in a plane crash in 2001, he has remained the master of the glass half full. Each organization he leads benefits from that.

Monday morning, at a Football Writers Assn. of America meeting, he gave us perspective with a perfect summary of the never-ending controversy of his playoffs.

“Next year,” Hancock said, “we will feel badly for the teams ranked No. 5 and 6, just like we did all these years for teams ranked No. 3 and 4.”

Then there is Rodman, who has not done the right thing.

He is the tattooed wack job who may have been the best pure rebounder the NBA has ever seen.

He has, as you know, decided to take up Dennis Diplomacy. He is back in North Korea, cozying up to one of the worst governments in the history of mankind. He plays some basketball games, hangs out with the bad guys, and says it is all harmless.

One wonders if families of Korean War veterans think it is harmless.

But even with Rodman, there is a lesson.

When something looks so weird it can’t be true, it probably is.

If Rodman is involved.

bill.dwyre@latimes.com