* Avery Johnson has been chosen to be the West coach for the All-Star Game. He's the fastest coach to get to 50 wins in NBA history. He was named Coach of the Month for January and has now won that honor three times in four months on the job. And he's an all-around great guy.

So I'm prepared to name AJ "Greatest Coach In Sports History.''

But I'm thinking some credit needs to go to the situation he stepped into, as well. Avery might be an almost-percent coach, but the team he took over was pretty close to almost-perfect, too.

As top assistant Del Harris says, "he didn't exactly take mud and make a fruitcake.''

Good one, Del. ... except have you ever actually tasted fruitcake? Are you certain they don't make those things out of mud and maraschino cherries?

* Really happy for George Clooney. He received unprecedented sort of Oscars honors this week. And it's about time that poor bastard could sure use a break in life.

* One of my best stories from my days as a Cowboys beat writer concerns old friend Troy Aikman (who should on Saturday afternoon be announced as a Pro Football HOF'er) and his legendary "vision'':

Everyone knew that Aikman was somehow vulnerable to concussions; his hang-in-the-pocket gutsiness positively begged for him to lose some brain cells. In the 1993 NFC Championship Game, he got kneed in the earhole, and here came concussion No. 10. The Cowboys shipped him to the hospital when they asked him if he knew where he was, what he was doing, and he answered that he was playing "Henryetta Hens.''

That was his high school team. Henryetta (Okla.) High. Yeah, the Hens.

The next day, he begged his way out of the hospital and made his way to Atlanta. And before the January 30, 1994 Super Bowl kickoff against the Bills, he quietly informed the team's medical staff that he was woozy, that he had a severe headache. Aikman started neverthless, but as you might recall, there were long stints when he wasn't asked to throw; the Cowboys' decision to openthe second half by handing the ball to Emmitt on seven consecutive plays was as much headache-driven as it was gameplan-driven.

Did Troy play that game with a concussion? Not exactly.

"I played with my right contact in my left eye and my left in my right," Aikman told me the next day. "I just put 'em in the wrong eyes. But please don't write that. It's too embarrassing."

I hope it's OK, Troy, if I write it now.

* A girl named Epiphanny Prince, a 5-foot-9 senior, shattered the all-time national high school girls basketball scoring record this week with 113 points as Manhattan's Murry Bergtraum routed Louis Brandeis 137-32. I could delve into how this story ties to Kobe Bryant's 81-point game, how it speaks to the socioeconomic troubles of our inner cities, how there are noteworthy differences and similarities between the men's game and the women's.

I could do all that. ... but I'm still hung up on the parents who named their little baby girl "Epiphanny.''

* Utah coach Jerry Sloan, a disciplinarian type, had so much praise for the Mavs the other day that he even complimented the way Dallas lines up for the National Anthem. It really has been an accomplishment over the years here, inasmuch as half our around-the-globe team didn't exactly grow up singing the thing

* Bill Walton is on ESPN. He's on ABC. He's on the radio. He's on the internet. He's everywhere. And the other day, he mumbled something about how "the Mavs are being overlooked.''

Listen, you Big Pothead. ... I mean, Big Redhead. ... given the fact that you are ubiquitous on the basketball airwaves, aren't you the guy most in charge of 'un-overlooking' them?

* Aretha Franklin will sing the Super Bowl's National Anthem. Because, apparently, the game isn't important enough to get a popular singer from present times. OK, I'm being a little rough. I know she's a Detroit girl and all that. So I'll accept it. As long as Aretha doesn't wardrobe-malfunction her way into exposing a breast or two.

* In his address to the nation, Mr. Bush says "America is addicted to oil.'' Weird thing is, according to my sources, he said this while a gas pump was being plunged into a vein on his wrist.

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