NEW YORK – It was almost unfair. There’s Kevin Garnett at forward, Ray Allen at guard, and Paul Pierce on the wing. So, it seemed highly unlikely that Kendrick Perkins would emerge as the central figure. But, on a day that celebrated the life of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., the slain civil right’s leader, it was Perkins who stood tallest among his Celtic teammates. The 6’10” center, an insignificant player for much of his five NBA seasons- tallied a career-high 24 points, and added eight rebounds as Boston –the league’s best team- smoked the Knicks, 109-93, on Monday afternoon at the Garden. Not that Garnett, Allen and Pierce were entirely invisible. KG and Allen, acquired during the off-season to support Pierce, the lifelong Celtic, finished with 20 and 17 points respectively. Pierce was limited to 10, but his beef with Quentin Richardson with Boston ahead by 17 in the waning minutes of the third quarter -which created double technical fouls and subsequent ejections for each player- reminded observers of one thing. That, regardless of the sport, the New York-Boston rivalry is as hot as ever.

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It was going to take one hell of an effort to knock that “Leave Britney Alone” she-male off the viral video throne, but you have to give Oklahoma State football coach Mike Gundy credit for trying. His petulant verbal assault on Jenni Carlson, a columnist for The Oklahoman who wrote a hit piece on a benched quarterback named Bobby Reid, ruled the airwaves on ESPN and filled the inboxes of countless sports fans once it was digitized. It was an epic performance, but I can only assume it was a performance and not an honest reaction to the column — any coach with a Midwestern-sized beef with a journalist would have had it out with said journalist in the privacy of his own office, flanked by the most hot-headed assistants he could yank off the practice field. The writer would sit in the room surrounded by a sense of creeping dread, like when Danny Ocean slowly scanned his holding cell in Terry Benedict’s casino, observing, “No cameras in here, huh?”

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