But you figure out what’s going on. Between the accusations flying from both sides, I just gave up trying to sort it out. It gave me a headache. The headline is probably what will stick for most people.

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At least that’s what it appears in this story, which indicates a candidate who was heretofore unknown:

Jackson also said he did not anticipate coaching at the collegiate level, although a booster from the University of Oregon contacted him in hopes of Jackson taking over that program.

That’s PHIL Jackson, in an ESPN story.

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In the comments section of a recent post I heard a lot of people whining about Allen.

You can say what you want about how he’s run the team — and I’ve been critical of his management style — and you can even stay all paranoid about him moving the team to Seattle, which he isn’t going to do.

But I remain firmly convinced of one thing — without Allen as the team’s owner, the Trail Blazers would have moved out of Portland a long time ago.

Huh?

Well, here’s the thing — Allen’s most lasting contribution to Portland sports isn’t just his ownership of the team, it’s that he built the Rose Garden. And I will maintain forever that he’s the only one who would have done it.

I mean, seriously — you think the city of Portland would have done it? There is NO WAY. In the 90s, this team would have still been trying to make it playing in Memorial Coliseum and our city would have slipped into its usual “if you want an arena, you better build it yourself” mode and any other rational owner in sports would have looked elsewhere.

I mean, plenty of other cities would have been willing to build an NBA owner a new arena. The Trail Blazers would have moved to Kansas City or Las Vegas a decade ago without Paul Allen deciding just to build his own venue, which ended up costing him a lot of money and heartache.

The fact is, the price you pay for major-league teams these days — which most progressive cities believe is important — is building the venue.

Portland doesn’t do sports venues. We re-do them. Which is a bit of a joke in most cases.

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The death of the great John Wooden last week prompted a memory that I haven’t pondered in years.

Probably American’s Greatest Coach (any sport, any level) Wooden is a legend as much for his contributions to life as to basketball. But only old timers know all the stories about Sam Gilbert, the legendary booster who was always said to be responsible for so many great players showing up at UCLA.

Most of the stories about how well Gilbert took care of the Bruin basketball players were told only out of the media spotlight. People whispered them back and forth but never published them — either unconvinced they were true or afraid to come close to tarnishing the Wooden legend.

But on a few trips to the Southland to cover basketball, I was told a story by a couple of veteran sports writers that fascinated me. And that story was that there was a book already written, prior to the death of Gilbert many years ago, that chronicled abuses in the UCLA program and told all sorts of interesting stories about that school’s recruitment and special treatment of basketball players.

They would tell me about this (and I heard it two or three times) and finish by saying, “But the agreement has always been that the book would not be published until after Wooden’s death.” I heard these stories more than 20 years ago and I believe the writer who supposedly wrote this book may already be deceased, too.

I never really believed the story. I just don’t think secrets like that could be kept for so long. But I guess now that Wooden is gone, we will find out.

God bless John Wooden. He’s published more sensible and valuable words to live by than a whole lot of famous philosophers and world leaders combined. And I have to tell you, as someone who was around while he was winning NCAA championships every season, there was no more of a hopeless feeling ANYTIME, ANYWHERE than rooting for a team on the same floor as one of his UCLA teams.

You. Could. Not. Beat. Them.

I mean, it was hopeless. I’ve never seen another situation quite like it. You think the Chicago Bulls were difficult to beat when Jordan was there? That was nothing.

Wooden’s UCLA basketball teams were absolutely impossible to beat. Season after season.

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It is a bit of a shocker. They’d name the Creighton coach, Dana Altman and call that the impact hire they were looking for? That’s what The Oregonian is reporting.

I had heard earlier Saturday they were considering Reggie Theus, who would have been a bigger name. He’s now an assistant coach with the Minnesota Timberwolves after being unsuccessful as the head coach of the Sacramento Kings. He’s had some success at the college level, having gotten New Mexico State into the NCAAs.

He was an outstanding NBA player who probably would have been an outstanding recruiter.

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The University of Oregon is apparently doing plenty of background checking on former Alabama basketball coach Mark Gottfried. A former assistant coach at UCLA, Gottfried had mixed results at ‘Bama and departed in difficult circumstances.

Gottfried resigned at Alabama during the middle of a season with the program in pretty poor shape. Anytime a college coach does this for anything other than health reasons, red flags pop up. Apparently, though, he’s very interested in the job and the Ducks are taking a look at him.

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At Oregon they’re more than mildly amused at all the media pressure on them to name a new basketball coach in a hurry. Well, while they’ve been guilty of bringing some of that on themselves by promising to have their guy in place by the Final Four, I still tend to see their side of it.

There’s really no hurry in doing this when you consider how important the decision is and the fact that they have only one scholarship to give out this year, anyway. If Jefferson’s Terrence Jones is going to wait on them, it’s great — but I’m not sure they’re going to get him anyway, depending on who eventually gets the coaching job.

Rather than make a rash decision, it’s always best to wait when you’re looking at paying someone upwards of $2 million a season for the next several years.

It’s also interesting to note that so many coaches have been mentioned as rejecting the Ducks when Oregon has actually talked to only two of them — Jamie Dixon at Pittsburgh and Brad Stevens of Butler. And in neither case, did discussions even get as far as salary. This has been confirmed by a source close to the search process.

Another fact from that same source — there are coaches out there continuing to use the Ducks to get a raise or other considerations from their college who have been consistently begging for a UO interview and can’t get one.

The Ducks are trying to be thorough in their search and are taking their time, although this week promises to be the key week. There are a couple of names who continue to come up that haven’t been frequently mentioned and another name that’s come up a lot and dismissed, although still in play. Here they are:

Missouri Coach Mike Anderson — Young and energetic, known to be good with boosters and a solid recruiter. Coaches a fast-paced game and creates excitement. An up-and-comer who ought to be interviewed. Signed a seven-year contract before last season, though.

UNLV Coach Lon Kruger — Once one of the hottest college coaches in the country, after leading Florida into the Final Four in 1994. But he was not successful in a three-year run as head coach of the Atlanta Hawks and has been rebuilding his reputation at UNLV, where he’s done a respectable job.

Gonzaga Coach Mark Few – Yeah, I know. Old topic. He’s turned them down. Hey — including his time as an assistant coach, he’s been in Spokane 22 years now. But what I’m hearing now out of Eugene is that there’s still “a flicker” of an interest and that there’s been some movement on both sides. I say “both sides” because I think the Ducks have been put off that Few hasn’t shown more interest in the job at his alma mater.

This is where it stands right now — still fairly wide open. And I think the smart play for the Ducks is to do what they’re doing right now: take time and make a smart hire without being rushed. They have one scholarship to give out and no matter how good the player is who might take it, you want this coach to be around longer than that player.

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But it’s arrived at a dead end.

I watched what’s been called the best women’s college basketball team of all time last night — watched it score 12 points in the first half. Connecticut, which managed to come from behind to beat Stanford in the second half to finish off its second straight undefeated season and NCAA title, was awful.

The game was butt-ugly, folks. Horrible. And really the only reason I bring it up is that I constantly have people tell me how entertaining the women’s game is. Yeah, right. I also hear these people — only half trying to be funny but I swear, they believe this stuff — talking about how that U-Conn women’s team could give the men’s team a good run.

Sorry, fans, they couldn’t beat a good high school boys team. In fact, they couldn’t beat an AVERAGE high school boys team. A good high school boys team would bury them. There is little quickness and jumping ability. Not a lot of ability to hold onto the ball or to raise the skill level. I’ve been waiting for decades now to see a major jump in physical skills — but so far, I’m just not seeing it.

I’m not saying don’t watch women’s basketball. If it’s your thing, go for it. Just please — quit telling me how good it is. Because it’s not.

(Oh, and the usual disclaimers — I love that women are allowed to compete. I am not against gender equity in sports. Quite the opposite. Just don’t tell me how entertaining they are to watch, or that I somehow owe them a measure of attention or publicity for their efforts.)

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Man, you intentionally miss a free throw with a two-point lead? With more than a couple of seconds to play?

Not sure any other coach in America could have gotten away with doing that with the minimum of second-guessing that the Duke coach has faced. It’s not a sound play — and when the coach looks into the camera at the end and smiles sheepishly while saying, “What the hell, it worked,” you have to figure he knew it was the wrong move.

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– Donovan McNabb + Mike Shanahan = championship? Maybe. I do not believe I would have traded McNabb within the division. If this thing is going to come back to haunt the Eagles, it doesn’t have far to go.

– Funny how all the state agencies are so interested in Mike Bellotti getting $2.3 million as a golden parachute. The guy was the highest paid state employee around here for years and nobody thought much about it. And right now, the Ducks are out there searching for a basketball coach they may end up paying more than $2.3 million a year. A handshake deal? It happens. It’s binding. So what? Find some serious state problems to deal with.

– I don’t see how Butler can stay with Duke tonight. Too big, too talented.

– Speaking of Butler, Brad Stevens — college basketball’s Doogie Howser — just has to be a guy Oregon is going to talk to about that open job, right?

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