I certainly agree with your assessment of Prince's value. However, the kudos he truly deserves are diverted to the individual brilliance of too many of his teammates — All-Stars like Rip Hamilton and Rasheed Wallace and (in the past) Chauncey Billups and Ben Wallace. Prince is usually the Pistons' fourth option on offense. He gets win-or-lose shot opportunities mostly by accident, his long-armed defense depends more on ball-and-space denial than on shot-blocking and he remains a shy person who shuns the spotlight.

As a consummate role player, Prince's contributions to his team are valued by other players, coaches and astute fans — and are generally overlooked by the more casual watchers.

But don't feel sorry for Prince. Increased celebrity would only be an annoyance to him, and he's happy doing what he does as long as the Pistons are successful.

Good for you, though, for appreciating all of his nonglamorous accomplishments.

Travels with Charley

Back in 1991, I was coaching the Oklahoma City Cavalry in the CBA when a major sports magazine did a feature article on me. The writer and I spent the better part of four days together and talked of many things, one of which was the long life of the CBA, which predated the beginning of the NBA by a year. In the profile, I was quoted as saying that the longevity of the CBA can be compared to the famous endurance of cockroaches, which have survived famine, pestilence, hail and floods. I meant this as a positive equation, even quasi-biblical in tone.

Besides, wasn't any publicity a positive thing for the league? Especially in a widely-read internationally-distributed magazine?

However, the CBA board of directors, i.e., the franchise owners, took exception to my metaphor and fined me $4,000.

I was allowed to defend myself during a conference call, where I explained that cockroaches were really clean, courageous and versatile creatures. My arguments only succeeded in cutting my fine in half. But I remained outraged.

My revenge was to write a novel that was filled with real players, coaches and team executives under assumed names. About 90 percent of all the happenings in the novel were likewise copied from actual events. The title of the novel was The Cockroach Basketball League.

Since then, the CBA is down to five franchises (from a high of 14) and is rapidly approaching extinction. But my novel is still in print, and the 1,200 different species of cockroaches are still going strong.