Chris Paul endorses Kemba Walker

Former Wake Forest star Chris Paul came home to North Carolina Saturday night, leading the L.A. Clippers to a fairly routine 111-86 whipping of the woeful Charlotte Bobcats.

Paul had 18 points and 14 assists in front of what he estimated was a "couple of hundred" family and friends, most from the Winston-Salem area where he grew up. Both his father and brother sat courtside.

I asked Paul a few questions after the game in regard to the theme of my column for Sunday's newspaper and online, which is that any NBA team -- including the Bobcats -- is just two great players away from contending for a championship. The Clippers were a league laughingstock for years -- they once had 29 losing seasons in a 32-year stretch -- but now they have Paul and dunking dynamo Blake Griffin. They can go deep in the postseason.

I mentioned to Paul that the Bobcats (3-24) don't have any superstars while the Clippers (17-8) have two. He then endorsed rookie point guard Kemba Walker (who had 19 points and four assists Saturday) without being asked.

Said Paul of Charlotte: "“They’ve just got to keep working. Kemba is a great young talent. When you’ve got a starting point guard like that, you’ll have an opportunity.”

The Bobcats, of course, once could have had Paul. In 2005, they had the chance to trade the No.5 and No.13 picks away for the No.3 pick, which could have been Paul. They passed on that move, taking Raymond Felton and Sean May instead, and it has haunted them since.

Absolutely incredible: Rivers' 3-pointer beats UNC at buzzer

Now that was truly unbelievable.

Duke freshman Austin Rivers just etched his name deeply into the Duke-UNC rivalry. His deep three-pointer at the buzzer (see video and analysis here) over Tyler Zeller gave Duke an amazing 85-84 win over UNC at Chapel Hill and will mean that Rivers' name will now become synonymous with one of the finest finishes this 233-game series has ever produced.

A quick list of some of the other best shots ever at the end of a game in this wonderful series:

-- Walter Davis's banked 30-footer at the buzzer that completed the "eight points in 17 seconds" comeback in 1974.

-- Chris Duhon's coast-to-coast reverse layup to beat Carolina in overtime in 2004.

-- Marvin Williams' old-fashioned three-point play in 2005 that erased the last of a nine-point Duke lead with 2:40 to go.

-- Jeff Capel's 35-footer to force a second overtime in 1995.

There are many more, of course, but Rivers just pushed his way onto a very short list. It's very hard to do what he just did. The outcome of the game ultimately turned on one shot, and Rivers knocked it down to stun the sellout crowd in Chapel Hill.

If you're a UNC fan, of course, you're thinking it never should have come to that. UNC led by 9-12 points for almost all of the second half and still had a 10-point lead (82-72) with 2:38 to go. Seth Curry traveled just before a crucial three-pointer late and Kendall Marshall had a critical turnover.

And Zeller? What a fine 39 minutes he played and what a bad final minute. He accidentally tipped in a Ryan Kelly airball for two Duke points while trying to get a rebound -- that was just unlucky. But then Zeller missed the second of two free throws with 14 seconds left to give Rivers a chance to win the game instead of tie it with a three-pointer.

And then Zeller didn't close out on Rivers and force him to drive and at least not beat the Tar Heels on the last three. It wasn't like Rivers hadn't been hitting 3s already -- he had been deadly for most of the game from out there. You can't let Rivers get off a squared-up three in that situation.

If you're a Duke fan, of course, you are jubilant -- and rightly so. Duke ended the game on a 13-2 run, on the road, and it was legit. The Blue Devils made every big shot. They kept competing and fighting when most people thought it was over.

Hey, the refs didn't call the traveling on Curry, just like UNC got the benefit of a few other calls during the game. And when the biggest moment of the game came, Rivers noticed Zeller wasn't going to come all the way out on him (after Zeller had to switch off a pick-and-roll that got Reggie Bullock out of the play) and went ahead and decided to try the "make-it-or-lose" three instead of driving and hoping to send the game into overtime. A gamble, but hey -- it ended up in what Rivers told ESPN's Erin Andrews was "the best day of my life."

One last point: I wrote a column Wednesday and made a video (you can see links to both in the blog post below this one) that Duke-UNC was the best rivalry in all of sports. I got a number of emails from college football fans in Alabama and Auburn and Ohio State and Michigan and South Carolina and Yankees and Red Sox fans and so on, all saying their own rivalry was the best.

I think we just saw another example, though, of why UNC-Duke is unsurpassed.

And guess what? They'll do it again in early March, and maybe one more time in the ACC tournament. But whatever happens the rest of the year, we just saw one of the best shots of this college basketball season -- and one of the most memorable moments of the series. Depending on which shade of blue you wear, that shot will either haunt you or dazzle you for a long, long time.

Duke-UNC -- brutal, gorgeous basketball

Here's my column about Duke and UNC's wonderful basketball rivalry.

I think sometimes we take this rivalry for granted, since it comes around like clockwork 2-3 times every year in February and March. But we shouldn't.

It's an extraordinary rivalry, really, affected so much by geography (Chapel Hill and Durham are so close to each other that Mike Krzyzewski and Dean Smith once used the same piano teacher for their daughters). But it's also affected by the fact that the two teams are so great so often -- one or the other (or usually both) have been nationally ranked for every meeting since 1955.

I wrote in this column I believe it to be the best rivalry in all of sports.

Richardson tells Panther fan that helmets will change, uniforms won't

Panther owner Jerry Richardson has long been known to pick up the phone and call a random fan or three that has either written him a letter or written into the "feedback" section of the Panthers.com website. Richardson is like that -- anyone who has met him on one of his pregame golf cart rides knows he likes to talk to fans directly.

The Panthers owner apparently did that late last week with a fan named Mike (who didn't want his last name used) from Winston-Salem after Mike wrote to the Panthers website that he really wanted the Panthers to change their uniforms since the team already has altered its logo for the first time since its inception. Mike is a fan of the "Scott Says" blog and had read this post about the uniform situation, which prompted his letter.

Mike says Richardson told him, however, that the owner was a traditionalist and that the uniforms wouldn't be changing in Richardson's lifetime, as Mike wrote to me in an email and reiterated in a later phone conversation we had.

However, this is interesting. Mike said Richardson also told him that the Panthers' helmet would change in 2012 but that he wasn't going to go into specifics about that.

As Mike said: "He stated we will see some changes in the helmet but wouldn't go into detail."

Now, the Panthers' helmet must change some -- the new logo dictates that. But will the helmet color change? Will anything else change besides the logo on the helmet?

That's the latest -- and maybe the only real remaining -- question about what the Panthers will wear in 2012. Forget about the uniforms -- they aren't going anywhere.

Mike, meanwhile, still wishes the uniforms would change, although he now recognizes that is a lost cause (all those Panther uniform prototypes on the Internet, incidentally, are fake). But he's a huge Panther fan and loved talking to Richardson. Mike said that Richardson's phone call "made my day, my week, my month and my year."

What a Super Bowl!

I didn't really care who won this Super Bowl. I had picked the New York Giants to win in the newspaper, so I kind of wanted that to turn out correctly, but mostly I just wanted to see a great game.

And that's what we got Sunday night, with the Giants edging New England 21-17 in a game not decided until Tom Brady's Hail Mary bounced to the ground as the clock went to zero.

I thought the commercials were disappointing as a whole, I liked Madonna's halftime show more than I thought I would and I loved the game itself.

Having hall of fame quarterbacks on both sides -- and yes, I think Eli Manning just punched his eventual ticket to Canton -- makes such a difference. It means every play seems to have more weight because each QB can burn the other defense at any time. Here are 5 things I loved about this Super Bowl:

1) The "No-I-Don't-Really-Want-To-Score" Touchdown. Bill Belichick made a good move in the last two minutes. Knowing that the Giants were down 17-15 but inside the 10 with a chip shot field goal coming with only 15-20 seconds left if the Patriots played regular D, Belichick allowed the Giants to score instead.

But Ahmad Bradshaw didn't want to score. He got to the 1, realized he shouldn't go in, and then sort of fell over into the end zone anyway. That gave Brady the final shot, which made the game more dramatic anyway.

2) The way the Giants got to 21. If you looked at the score without knowing anything, you'd assume it was three touchdowns. Instead, it was a safety, two touchdowns, an extra point, a missed two-point try and two field goals. Those sorts of 21s are usually the way the casino beats me in blackjack.

3) Charlotteans playing well. Both the Giants' Hakeem Nicks (Independence High, UNC) and Chris Canty (Charlotte Latin) made key plays, and Nicks was especially effective.

4) Brady's drive just before the half. I'm not a big Brady fan personally, but I appreciate the excellence. He completed a startling 10-for-10 for 98 yards and a TD on that drive, and that was basically without TE Gronkowski, who could barely run and was hardly a factor.

5) Eli's throw to Manningham. On that final Giants' drive, Manningham's gorgeous sideline catch of a perfect Manning throw was the longest -- and best -- play of the game. It turned the momentum entirely and set up a great last two minutes, which is what you hope for anytime the Super Bowl is played.

Cam, Katy Perry and Super Bowl week

Two unsurprising things happened Saturday night at Indianapolis:

1) Cam Newton won the AP NFL Offensive Rookie of the Year award (getting 47 out of a possible 50 votes).

2) Katy Perry flirted with Newton -- mildly -- in front of photographers.

Does either one stun anyone? It shouldn't. Newton easily deserves every rookie of the year award out there -- as I wrote earlier this month after doing a lot of research, his rookie year was the best any rookie has ever had at the NFL level.

And Perry? She's a masterful entertainer in that she always seems to be in the spotlight, which is what the Madonnas and Lady Gagas and Perrys of the world do. They either have a hot song, or they're hosting "Saturday Night Live" (Perry did that a few weeks back) or they're doing some world premiere of their latest video or they are mildly flirting with whoever else is hot at the moment.

And Cam is hot. It's a different sort of thing for the Panthers, who have never had a player as nationally recognized (although someone like Steve Smith or Julius Peppers has obviously done a lot more in his NFL career than Cam has of yet).

The key for Cam after all this attention?

Keep his eye on the prize. This postseason he has been in the headlines a lot. And it's fine to play (not very well) in the Pro Bowl and take a picture with Katy Perry and win a few individual awards, but there's a bigger goal out there. Newton wants to play in this game one year; not just be in the same city, looking photogenic.

He has kept his focus very well so far. Let's hope that doesn't change.

Video on Jim Beatty's world-record mile

I wrote a long column today about Charlottean Jim Beatty, who was the first person ever to run a sub-4-minute mile indoors 50 years ago this week. I've also had a few reader requests about thisblack-and-white video for the race.