FanHouse Ralph Sampson

Tip-Off Timer counts down the days until the first game of the 2009-10 NBA season. On Monday, there are exactly 85 days left.

Even today, 24 years after the fact, the debate still rages over the 1985 NBA Draft Lottery. Was it predetermined to ensure the high-profile New York Knicks got the No. 1 pick and franchise center Patrick Ewing, the most heralded college player in several years?

Or is that just another wild-eyed conspiracy theory? People still argue it, while Commissioner David Stern grew tired of the talk long ago.

"I've heard the theories,'' said longtime NBA executive Pat Williams. "And they're just bogus.''

You may not know what he looks like, who he was and why people felt he was special enough to teach them but Pete Newell was one of the best coaches college basketball has ever seen.

Newell died yesterday at the age on 93.

Newell was a legend and held the respect and admiration of the game's other legends. Newell coached for 14 years at San Francisco, Michigan State and California. He compiled a 234-123 record and won the 1959 NCAA Tournament while at Cal. His final head coaching gig came the very next year when he took an Olympic team with Oscar Roberston, Jerry West and Jerry Lucas to a gold medal.

He also beat UCLA's John Wooden the last eight times they met.

He's legacy lives on with his "Pete Newell Big Man Camp". The camp has been going on for over 30 years and has taught the likes of Lew Alcinder, Bill Walton, Shaquille O'Neal, Hakeem Olajuwon and Ralph Sampson. The camps have become a mandatory stop for any big man wanting to get into the NBA.

ESPN is doing yet another 'Greatest' countdown, the newest one counting the greatest college basketball players in history. Although the No. 1 name hasn't been announced, it's going to be UCLA center Lew Alcindor. ESPN.com has a listing of Nos. 25 through 3, and Alcindor's name isn't on that list. On ESPN Radio this morning Mike Greenberg said that No. 2 is Oscar Robertson, so Alcindor is obviously No. 1.

Alcindor, who later changed his name to Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, is a fine choice, having been an All-American and Most Outstanding Player of the NCAA Tournament all three years of his college career. But looking at the Top 25 as a whole, one big problem stands out: ESPN and the corporate sponsor of this exercise, IBM, clearly wanted to pack the list with big-name stars, so it inflated the college greatness of players who eventually went on to have NBA success.

To echo something Matt Norlander has written, ESPN is calling this a list of the greatest college players, even though it's clear that the players' post-collegiate careers played a major part in where they were ranked. Larry Bird, Michael Jordan and Magic Johnson, for instance, are all ahead of Ralph Sampson.

'Revisionist history' is the nicest term for that kind of emphasis.