Of course it’s ridiculous that James Dolan of Madison Square Garden wants to hire Isiah Thomas to consult with his Knicks. The guy is the prime reason the Knicks are in the tank right now.

But, and I’m surprised more people aren’t talking about this right now, I cannot imagine that consulting contract is even legal. The NBA has rules about hiring people who coach college teams — anybody who has contact with underclassmen can’t work for an NBA team. And I’m shocked the NCAA and Florida International haven’t weighed in, too.

I mean, seriously — the NCAA wants one of its coaches taking a check from an NBA team? And a college that’s paying him to coach its team wants him to be on the payroll of an NBA team?

The whole thing is just about the nuttiest story I’ve heard in a long time. Crazy. And it just can’t stick, can it?

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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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I cannot believe how ridiculously disfunctional that group is.

After all the offending players and coaches are gone, the NCAA finally gets around to punishing USC? Great. The coaches and all the players involved plunder and pillage the joint, head for the hills and then someone else gets punished.

That’s like you embezzling money from your company, leaving for a better job and your replacement getting sent to prison. It’s a serious joke. They’re going to have to figure out a way to investigate and prosecute these things a lot quicker or why even bother?

We can investigate and prosecute murderers quicker than we can solve the riddle of a booster giving college kids money under the table?

And I love these penalties for lack of academic progress. Ken Bone coaches basketball at Portland State, uses it to get his dream job at Washington State and then Tyler Geving replaces Bone and has to pay the penalty for Bone’s lack of attention to APR.

Yeah, that makes sense.

Not that I buy into that APR stuff. I never have. I had a son go to college with financial aid for sports. Never, NEVER, would I hold a coach or an athletic director responsible for my son’s academic progress. Nope, we hand young people a scholarship, tutors, advice on which classes to take — and then we don’t hold them responsible for their own success or failure in school? That’s ridiculous.

Coaches are hired to win games. Period. And a whole lot of their “student-athletes” attend college only to play ball. So what? They have no choice, in many cases –it’s the standard, accepted path to their goal of playing pro sports.

Let’s climb down off that high horse and get real about how semi-professional these sports really are, OK?

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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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I got a couple of e-mails this morning. This can’t be real. Two different people e-mailed me to tell me that now the Oregon Ducks are talking to Paul Westhead about taking the men’s basketball job.

I love Westhead. Good guy. Good coach. But at 71, does he really want this? I thought the women’s job was a perfect fit for him, but the pressure and workload of the men’s job? Wow.

No, it cannot be real. Forget I ever mentioned it.

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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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I’m hearing a few things. It’s being reported that Brad Stevens has turned the Ducks down. The Butler coach has a shot at the Wake Forest job, apparently, and probably finds the ACC a better fit than the Pac-10.

I’ve also heard from a very reliable source that Terry Porter has interviewed at Oregon. I am not sure if they’re taking him seriously as a candidate, however. Porter’s status as a revered former Blazer was probably enough to make an interview possible — and don’t forget that this state now has a Rooney Rule, which interviewing Porter satisfies.

I’m still hearing what I heard originally, that former Trail Blazer, Golden State and Oklahoma City coach P.J. Carlesimo is the fallback candidate and is in line ahead of Porter because of his previous experience as the head coach at Seton Hall.  The Ducks have said they want a coach with previous experience as a college head coach.

I also heard recently that Oregon was making another run at Mark Few, who has previously turned the Ducks down.

What are the Ducks going to do? I’m not sure even they know now. If Stevens has turned them down, don’t be surprised if Carlesimo gets the job. Before that happens I would like to see the Ducks at least attempt to interview Rick Adelman.

I know, it’s a long shot he’d take the job. But this guy marches to a little different beat and I would think at this point of his life he wouldn’t mind getting back to what he considers his home state, where his grandchildren and children live and where he could provide leadership and support for his large family.

He’d be a slam dunk, better than anyone else being mentioned for this job. Many years ago, he was a junior college coach, his brother was a very successful JC coach in California and with his extensive NBA experience, I think he’d be able to recruit good players — he’d certainly be able to convince high school stars he could speed their path to the league.

The Ducks couldn’t pay him what he’s making in the NBA, but at a certain point, when you’ve made the kind of dough Adelman has made over his career, it shouldn’t be a big factor. It would come down to whether he’d like to come on home at this point of his life — and he might.

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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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