Some Stories Are Just Too Good to Be True

Kurt Rambis of Charlotte and Marc Iavaroni of Utah both were New York Knick castoffs who played in Europe and returned to play for NBA championship teams, Iavaroni with Philadelphia and Rambis with the Lakers.

“Yeah, it’s really something, isn’t it?” Rambis said. “Here we grew up together and played pickup basketball in the same driveway and are such great friends.”

“Wait a minute,” somebody said. “That’s not true, is it?”

“No,” Rambis said, “but it makes for a great story, doesn’t it?”

When St. John’s forward Jason Williams, a Proposition 48 victim last year, was asked by Newsday if he thought the Scholastic Aptitude Test was biased, he said: “You mean racist? Nah, this is the Cosby decade. Everybody’s supposed to be doing their work. I’ll leave that stuff to John Thompson.”

From the Boston Globe: “Oakland’s Jose Canseco is getting $11 per autograph these days but failed to show for a baseball banquet in Baltimore last weekend.

Said banquet director Frank Sliwka: “The jerk just didn’t show up. I don’t know what’s wrong with that guy.”

Former North Carolina State forward Bennie Bolton, in the Raleigh News and Observer, told this one about Coach Jim Valvano, who is under contract to Nike: “Lorenzo Charles forgot his Nikes. He wore Converse. And Coach Valvano almost went into hysterics.

“He said, ‘You can’t wear them.’ And Lorenzo had to tape the picture with white athletic tape over his Converse sign. It was hysterical at the time, but when you sit down and think about it, it’s sickening.”

Trivia Time: Has a team ever won the Super Bowl in its own stadium? (Answer below.)

From Peter May of the Hartford Courant: “Send your condolences to Don Casey, the new head coach of the Los Angeles Clippers. He needs your prayers. Actually, owner Donald Sterling overlooked the obvious choice, Broadway actress Patti LuPone. For roughly five straight years she died eight times a week either of cancer (as Eva Peron in ‘Evita’), from bludgeoning by Billy Sikes (as Nancy in ‘Oliver’) or of consumption (as Fantine in ‘Les Miserables’). Now there’s someone who knows something about suffering, a prerequisite for any Clippers coach.”

From Notre Dame football Coach Lou Holtz: “I’m not a great motivator. I just get rid of the guys who can’t motivate themselves.”

Despite the win over Georgetown, LSU doesn’t figure to make much of a dent in the polls with a 14-5 record, but Coach Dale Brown said: “I have my own poll. I don’t care whether we’re ranked by the wire services. I have a poll for desire, and a poll for hustle and a poll for love, and we’re No. 1 in all of those.”

Trivia Answer: No. Miami has played in 5 Super Bowls but none of them have been in Miami, which has hosted the game 6 times.

Quotebook

Tom Watson, asked how he helped the golf game of former President Gerald Ford: “First, hitting the ball. Second, finding where it went.”