Knick Nots

1. Michael Jordan
2. Kobe Bryant
3. Allen Iverson
4. Lebron James
5. Shaquille O'Neal
6. Tracy McGrady
7. Dwyane Wade
8. Jason Kidd
9. Vince Carter
10. Tim Duncan

Those are the top 10 best-selling NBA jerseys sold at the NBA store on Fifth Ave. in NYC over the past decade. That's Fifth Ave. ... in NEW YORK CITY.

And yet, there isn't a single player on the list who has played a minute for the New York Knicks. Not Starbury, not Allan Houston, not even Ewing. Granted, Patrick's last season was 99-00, just a year after the store opened, but he is still a Knick legend. You would think that the man who took the the team from Lottery Land to the NBA Finals—and who is the first to have his jersey hang in the MSG rafters since the 1970 championship starters—would be able to move some sportswear on Fifth Avenue, at least in the late '90s and early '00s.

That's not a commentary on Patrick Ewing, it's a commentary (and a damn sad one) on how far this team has fallen; that and the fact that they needed overtime to beat the Miami Heat this week. OVERTIME! The Heat, which at 13-59 has since been renamed the Miami You Know, It's Actually Kind of Chilly in Here. Like watching two drunks trying to pass each other on a building ledge.

Mixed Nuts: As of this writing, the only team in the Elite Eight with a double-digit seed is Davidson. In the West it's 1 vs. 3 (UCLA/Xavier); in the South 1 vs. 2 (Memphis/Texas); and 1 vs. 3 (UNC/Louisville) in the East. I'm always happy to see the brand names duking it out but bracket madness is nothing without one long-shot (nine points according to Vegas) shocking the world. Go Wildcats.

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Circus City

I just want to say in this public forum that, should the unthinkable happen and the Mets actually sign Barry Bonds, I plead "not guilty by reason of insanity" in advance of the 12-state shooting spree I'm likely to conduct as a result. (Don't worry, it will just be a Red Ryder BB gun and the only damage I'm likely to do is to put my eye out.) I'm sorry, but a statement has to be made.

With left-fielder Moises Alou, the Human Ace Bandage, injured yet again to start the season, rumors continue to fly that the Mets might still replace him with the the Juice Master 762, which seems about as logical a move as bringing Dustin Diamond back for another season of Celebrity Fit Club. Not for the reasons you might think. Yes, he's a cheater. Yes, he's in big legal trouble. Yes, he ranks between bin Laden and Hitler for Most Reviled Character in History. And those are all valid reasons.

But my main reason for banning Bonds from Shea is that, regardless of how the season ends, Bonds will be given credit for it.

If the Mets sign Bonds and get a ring because he produces, it will be all because of Bonds. I don't care if Santana wins the Cy Young again, if Wright hits .310/35/120, and Reyes steals 90. The headlines will say, "Bonds Brings Mets First Title in 22 Years!"

If they sign him and don't get a ring, it will be all because of Bonds. From BP to the showers, the New York media will scrutinize with electron-microscope precision every conceivable negative influence he's inflicting on the Mets to bring them down.

To paraphrase Joe Pesci in "Raging Bull": "If you win, you lose. If you lose, you still lose." Bringing Bonds to New York is a lose-lose situation.

Mixed Nuts:

• I'm signing off now to watch Siena play Villanova. What a stunner watching the 13-seed Saints take down 4-seed Vandy; my favorite from Upset City this week. I confess to falling asleep in the first quarter of Nova vs. Clemson (after the Wildcats fell by 10 in like the first eight seconds). This one, I'm staying up for. (Good thing the game is at noon.)

That Ebbets Field Feeling

It was tough to see images and read about the last game to be played at Dodgertown in Vero Beach on Monday. During my 14 years as a South Florida resident, I'd seen my Mets play in St. Lucie, and the Yankees in Ft. Lauderdale, far more times than I'd seen the Dodgers in Vero. Yet (although I've since moved up north and haven't seen Tradition Field, the renovated Mets facility that opened in 2004) I always thought Dodgertown was much nicer than the other Grapefruit League facilities I'd been to. Dodgertown had the "home park," "fan friendly" feel that most training parks lack. It wasn't just a temporary facility where the pros could keep warm until it was time to head north; it really felt like a place that loved its Dodgers, who had been there since 1948.

Now that the Dodgers are moving to more proximate digs in Glendale, Arizona, the longtime Florida residents who recall the days of Jackie, the Duke, and Pee Wee must have that same Ebbets Field feeling they had when their beloved Bums packed their bags and headed west in 1958. The last vestige of the East Coast Dodgers is gone. You can almost feel the long-since rusted pins being thrust into Walter O'Malley dolls for the first time since 1957.


Mixed Nuts:

• Trying to decide which is worse: watching the Mets fold like an origami accordion last September, or watching the Houston Rockets win 22 consecutive games while my Knicks have yet to win 20 all season.

• Really Extreme Makeover: Speaking of folding, after the reigning NCAA champion Florida Gators went 3-8 in their last 11 games, and missed the party for the first time in ten years, coach Billy Donovan got a little mad. He not only barred the players from entering UF's $12 million practice facility, he also banned them from wearing any Florida attire.

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Surviving the Drought

Apologies for the long absence, sports fans. Sports Nuts News spent some time on the 30-day disabled list with a debilitating illness.

Sitting on the couch for a month during the Great Drought—that seemingly eternal period between the Super Bowl and Opening Day of MLB—isn't something I'd recommend for people in pain. You find yourself awake at 3 a.m. on a Wednesday and staring at the Venezuelan Women's X-treme Goat Milking Competition on The Deuce. (Looks like Lupe "The Tweaker" Valdez walks away with it this year.) Either that or yet another PGA invitational that should be renamed "Let's Just Give Tiger the Friggin' Trophy and Go Home Already." (Sorry, golf fans. I'm not big on golf; the athletic equivalent of checking the mail, in my opinion. But more on that in a future post.)

There's always NASCAR, but driving in a circle for six hours is only interesting to me when one of the cars has fewer than four tires touching the pavement. I tried to watch the Auto Club 500 from the California Speedway in Fontana on Feb. 24. The race started late because of rain and was delayed almost constantly due to the bad weather. There were so many flags, it looked like the U.N. had exploded. By lap 82 they'd already had seven cautions and they finally stopped the thing at 2 a.m. and postponed it to the next day. It was finally won by Carl Edwards, who, I think, wrote "Blue Suede Shoes."

Well I'm back on my feet and getting ready for March Madness and Championship Week. On the local front, it was good to see Albany's Siena Saints clinch a berth; winning the Metro this week by riding Rider 74-53. Looking forward to Orange vs. Nova this afternoon. But the most fun I've had is watching UNC-Asheville's 7-foot-7, 360-pound center, Kenny George, the country's tallest player. George has an inch and 50 pounds on Yao, half a foot and 35 pounds on Shaq, and, although he's the same height as Manute Bol was when he entered the NBA, George is nearly 130 pounds heavier than the Sudanese Skyscraper. Watching his opponents shooting futilely over his massive bulk was like watching preschoolers trying to fling rocks over a redwood tree. The Bulldogs didn't make the party this year but it may be worth catching the NIT just to see George slam without leaving the ground, and stand in the paint swatting away layups like so many gnats.

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Ya Doesn't Have to Call Me Ray

Okay, this happened like three months ago but I couldn't let it pass. I just discovered that the American League's Tampa Bay Devil Rays have officially changed their name to the Tampa Bay Rays. (Charles? Liotta? Romano?)

And they didn't just drop the modifying "devil," so as to affiliate themselves less specifically with the broader range of plankton-sucking mantas gliding so effortlessly beneath the seas. No, the team now wants to be known as "rays" of sunshine. I'm not kidding. The team's owner said, "We are now the ‘Rays’—a beacon that radiates throughout Tampa Bay and across the entire state of Florida." They've changed their logo, the team colors (navy and light blue, to represent the dark blue water and clear blue skies), and the team mascot. I don't know what the mascot is but I imagine Kirstie Alley in a Sponge Bob Halloween costume.

I just wish they had consulted Sports Nuts News first. I have some better suggestions:

1. The Tampa Bay Humidity
2. The Tampa Bay Melanoma
3. The Tampa Bay Sidewalk Omelets
4. The Tampa Bay Storm Surge
5. The Tampa Pons

Anyway, I haven't heard any beacons of shining news about increasing the team's payroll, which stands at about $24 million, roughly the amount A-Rod makes by Memorial Day. But perhaps this brilliant new look will infuse the spiffy new Rays with the ability to reach their first third-place divisional finish in team history.

In other breaking news, the Toronto Blue Jays have decided to drop the depressive connotations of "blue" and call themselves only The Jays. National anthems will only be sung by the O'Jays, Jay and the Americans, or Jay Z. New mascot? Its name is Leno.

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Roger and Andy Go to Washington

So Roidger Clemens and his jilted lover Brian McNamee are taking the mound at Capitol Hill today to tell their vastly different stories to the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform and a couple dozen other elected representatives and government lawyers. (Hey, it's not like the government has anything better to do; like fight a war in Iraq, stop a steamrolling recession, or figure out how to get the glaciers to stop melting.)

According to AP, Clemens is scheduled to meet with more than a dozen congressmen and senators in advance of next week's public hearing, at which he, McNamee, and Andy Petite are schedule to testify. And McNamee brought some swag with him: gauze pads and syringes that he says he used to inject Rocket's rear with steroids and HGH. Exactly what kind of person keeps blood-stained gauze pads under his pillow for six years? "You will let me know when those lambs stop screaming, won't you Clarice?"

Since none of Clemens' denials have yet to be made under oath, he still has time to change his story. And since pal Andy will also be testifying under oath, Sports Nuts News is giving 3-1 odds that Roger takes the fifth—amendment, not inning.

Perfect Shmerfect... Fermo de tutti Fermi

You wanna talk NFL catches? Okay, let's talk NFL catches. Forget Dwight Clark's "The Catch" in the '81 NFC championship. Forget Lynn Swann in SB X. Forget even the Giants/Niners replacement game during the '87 strike (where "Giants" wide receiver Lewis Bennett reached behind the defender, tipped the ball over him, and grabbed it for a touchdown).

Forget them all. There has never been a catch to equal David Tyree's last night in SB 42. That catch was the Ringling Bros. center ring of circus catches. A blindfolded guy on a high wire juggling Volkswagons.

Recap for the six Tibetan monks who were meditating on a Himalayan mountaintop when their cable when out...

A minute and small change left, Giants on New England's 44, third and five. Nanoseconds from being sacked, Eli Manning—his jersey still stretched by the beefy clutches of the Patriot defense—somehow squirts through the sausage grinder and chucks a benediction down field. Well-covered and airborne... actually INVERTED and airborne... Tyree leaps and grabs Manning's 32-yarder by PINNING THE BALL TO HIS HELMET. He literally holds it against his blue-clad skull while falling backwards and then landing on top of defender Rodney Harrison. There isn't a single person who saw it—Giants fan, Patriots fan, or the people just watching for the commercials—who expected that ball to stay in Tyree's hands, or should I say, on his head. It HAD to be an incompletion. It HAD to pop out of his hands. It HAD to be fourth down and a long-shot field goal attempt. There's no way he could... But he did. Three plays later Manning lofts a gimme into the corner and the GEEEEEEEE-MEN go up 17-14, thanks to a schoolyard head fake by Plaxico Burress on a routine out route.

Suddenly, it's Rocky IV and the invincible Drago is cut. Tony Burton is screaming at Rocky, "You see? You see? He's NOT a machine, he's a man, he's a man!" All game long the Big Blue Wrecking Crew treated Tom Brady like he was an over-stuffed six-foot-four pinata, squashing the heart of the greatest offense of all time. And yet, it still looked like the Giants offense wouldn't be able to get it done. Until the catch that kept the drive alive, and ended the Patriots' dream season in the most nerve-shredding, nail-chomping, cardiac-arresting Super Bowl ever.

As predicted by Sports Nuts News on Jan. 24, the Giants stun the world. And best of all, Tiki the Traitor can sit on the couch during the Today Show in his Armani suit, discussing the 2008 Vera Wang bridal collection with Anne Curry, but there won't be any Super Bowl ring on his treacherous finger. Those are reserved for the guys who sucked it up, stuck it out, kept their mouths shut, and played like champions.

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