Jordan’s jumper, Payton’s suspension, Pineda’s arm and Santonio ...

Somehow it is 30 years since Michael Jordan beat Georgetown with that jumper in New Orleans.

And 25 since Keith Smart of Indiana beat Syracuse here with a jumper of his own on the last Monday night of college basketball.

I believe Carmelo Anthony wants to be coached, it is just more and more clear that he didn’t ever want to be coached by Mike D’antoni.

He wants to be coached and he wants to win, and Mike Woodson is giving him his best chance to do that.

I keep asking what baseball was thinking about, opening its season in the middle of the pro football offseason.

If you need Tim Tebow to make you a better person, you sort of need to take another look at how your life is working out.

Tebow’s been in town only a week, and you sort of feel exhausted already, don’t you?

You can’t blame Sean Payton for thinking that if Ryan Braun could win an appeal with his preposterous chain-of-custody defense, he can win an appeal of the season-long suspension he got from Roger Goodell.

But there is one slight difference for Payton:

Braun got saved by an independent arbitrator, this guy Das, who seems to have left arbitrator school early.

Payton’s appeal will be heard by Mr. Goodell.

By the way, you can buy some very nice looking “Free Sean Payton” T-shirts on Canal St., in the Saints colors.

Pretty hard not to root for Daniel Murphy of the New York Mets. I said this at the time that the Yankees traded for Michael Pineda, and it was another one of those winter moves that was supposed to make it game, set, match for the Yankees in the AL East again:

I don’t care how many prospects the Mariners have coming along, they must have at least had some doubts about Pineda being the real deal, or they wouldn’t have moved a young arm like that.

Even for Jesus Montero, who will turn out to be the most special hitting prospect the Yankees have developed since Cano.

So suddenly the Yankees’ younggun rotation features Hiroki Kuroda and Freddy Garcia. Just sayin’. Who are the 49ers going to sign next, David Tyree? Patrick Ewing has done everything you’re supposed to do in his training to be a head coach in the NBA. Now all he needs is a chance. If you’re going to bring in Charles Barkley to talk about college basketball, you need to give him room and let him talk.

And not make him share microphone time with guys such as Frank Martin, the Kansas State coach who just moved to South Carolina. Seriously? I want Sir Charles to stop talking so Frank Martin can start?

At a time when you need to have only a couple of big weeks to become an international sensation, the way Jeremy Lin did, it makes you take another look at what kind of real star Tiger Woods was when he was winning his 14 majors, and becoming bigger than Michael Jordan.

Another guy who had to win, and win a lot, to become the biggest star around.

Nothing against Lin, and nothing against Tebow, but it really has become an “American Idol” world. Every time Andy Roddick still has a big night, the way he did the other night against Roger Federer in Key Biscayne, I start convincing myself Roddick might have one more Wimbledon run in him.

I met Dr. Bob Rotella Saturday in New Orleans, because he works with the Kentucky basketball team, and all I can say is that if you’re a golfer, you know why I felt somewhat like I’d had a brief audience with the Pope.

Frank Mccourt, the Beverly Hillbilly of baseball, might not be the smartest one-percenter around, but he sure is the luckiest, making this kind of score on the Dodgers.

The longer Bill Parcells goes without saying no, the more you think he might actually say yes. Say it again: You don’t have to like everything Santonio Holmes says or does.

But Holmes doesn’t just talk about winning the Super Bowl, he actually won one.

Won it by making the best lastminute catch in Super Bowl history, is all.

When they heard back on 33rd St. that didn’t talk to the media at the Knicks’ morning shootaround in Atlanta and then left the locker room after the game without talking to the media, they probably wanted to make him Garden Employee of the Month!

The people who are so sympathetic to George Zimmerman’s version of how Trayvon Martin ended up shot to death would they be quite as sympathetic if Zimmerman had been the one in the hoodie that night?