Kobe Bryant’s annual Garden variety visit last Friday triggered me to re-examine the draft of 1996. Many people have gone straight from high school to Hollywood and become overnight sensations . . . after countless years of dejection and rejection. Kobe actually morphed into ...

There they were in Boston on Friday night with an actual chance to silence the wolves, the lambs and the vultures and what did the Knicks do? Croaked from second-hand choke. Up a dozen against the recently exhumed Celtics, they were hosing their hosts ...

Flip Saunders isn’t the reason the Wizards flopped. Just ask him. When Saunders took the Wizards’ job, he said after being terminated, he believed his staff had the opportunity to coach a veteran team that had a chance to make a run into the ...

Kobe Bryant recently “pinpointed” Jamaal Tinsley as an ideal conductor of offensive arrangements, exactly what the Lakers (and Knicks) distinctly lack. While there’s really no reason to solicit a second opinion on Tinsley once Kobe expressed his considered “viewpoint,” it’s germane to note the ...

In Kobe Bryant’s initial meeting with Mike Brown, he cautioned the Lakers’ newly hired coach “not to pull back,” to coach him “like everyone else; otherwise the players will turn on you,” he told me during dinner in Los Angeles just before Christmas. Kobe ...

On second thought, I was wrong to make it appear coach killers DeMarcus Cousins and Tyreke Evans of the Sacramento Kings — who paved the way for Paul Westphal’s recent ouster — are more full of themselves than self-absorbed slugs back in the day. ...

Now I know what all the fuss has been about. Now I know why NBA executives and Euro talent scouts were so enchanted all these years. Now I understand why Donnie Walsh offered to give up smoking to make Ricky Rubio a Knick. All ...

Five minutes before Mark Jackson was to conduct his initial rehearsal as a head coach at any level — ahem, exempting a brief AAU fling — he sat in the Warriors’ locker room by himself and let his wired emotions guide him. Jackson reached ...

Only once during four decades of covering pro basketball do I recall a team that became almost whole in a forced trade by its franchise player . . . and that took two seasons after Milwaukee agreed to relocate Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (and Walt Wesley) ...

Congratulations to David Stern: Here were are, into December, and not one team has been eliminated from contention or contempt, heavy on the contempt slant. I could have sworn the brainstorm behind the NBA lockout — and inescapable loss of countless millions as well ...

For someone who did Julius Erving’s bidding for almost three decades, it warmed my innards to see so many others still have the touch. Erving’s weeks-long, online auction of personal memorabilia wrapped up last weekend with Dr. J pocketing $3.5 million, minus taxes, consignment ...

Moments before Game 6 began, it became self-evident the NBA Finals would soon conclude in a “Dead Heat.” No performer with any pride would dare try to follow Marc Anthony’s unparalleled interpretation of the national anthem. So, who do you think was happier about ...