If This Is a New Day in the NBA, He’ll Stay in Bed

Don’t count Detroit Piston Coach Doug Collins among those in favor of the kind of money some NBA teams are tossing at players these days.

“The commissioner must be sitting back in his office shuddering at what’s happening, because this is not good,” Collins told the Minneapolis Star Tribune.

“You have teams fighting over players, spending huge amounts of money and devastating franchises. And what is going to happen is red ink. People are going to start swimming in it.

“It used to be that the NBA was about scouting, evaluating, drafting and developing. You can throw that out the window.”

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Trivia time: Who finished atop the Ft. Worth Star-Telegram’s reader poll for least favorite Dallas Cowboy player?

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Sound familiar? “The driver got lost so many times that the boys on the team had to take over his job. It was not uncommon for the Australian team to leave the hotel before 10 a.m. for practice or competition and not arrive back until 12 hours later.”

Atlanta 1996?

No, Amsterdam 1928, as reported in a new book “Australian Women and the Olympic Games” by Dennis H. Phillips.

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Game, set and par? Ivan Lendl, winner of eight Grand Slam tennis titles and 94 tour events, is entered in this week’s Czech Open, part of the European PGA tour.

Since trading his tennis racket for a set of clubs, Lendl has improved to a two-handicap, regularly shooting in the 70s.

“My goal,” he said, “is to get to the level where I would never have to look for a ball.”

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Minor infraction: Cincinnati Red pitcher Johnny Ruffin had what he considered a good reason for not showing up in court last year on charges of speeding and not having a driver’s license.

He said he failed to appear because that was the day he was sent down to the minors.

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Greene fee: Jerry Greene of the Orlando Sentinel, describing what Don Shula’s new position as Miami Dolphin vice chairman actually means: “That is corporate talk for ‘available for at least 18 holes, possibly 36.’ ”

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They’re woozy: The next time the PGA Championship will be played at Valhalla Golf Club in Louisville, Ky., will be in 2000. Perhaps by then organizers will know how to spell Ian Woosnam’s name.

No, it’s not “Woosnaman” as the scoreboard at the ninth green listed it last week.

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Paper money: From Steve Aschburner in the Minneapolis Star Tribune: “At the standard agent’s fee of 4%, the Lakers essentially will be paying Shaq’s [Shaquille O’Neal’s] man, Leonard Armato, $700,000 per season.

“Twenty years ago, Hall of Famer Kareem Abdul-Jabbar earned the biggest paycheck in the league, a now-paltry $625,000.”

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Trivia answer: Michael Irvin in a landslide, 275 to 60 over Deion Sanders.

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And finally: From Fani Pali-Petralia, the former Greek sports minister who oversaw Athens’ bid to stage the 1996 Olympics: “It takes a lot of effort to organize the Games as badly as Atlanta did.”