For a time, I could not help but feel some sympathy, and a little admiration, for LaVar Bell and his big plans for his sons and for himself.

Here was a father deeply (very, very deeply) involved with his sons’ lives, overseeing their training and practice in an effort to see all three of them as college basketball stars and then NBA players.

He seemed to be fighting, successfully, against the the long, sad history of American basketball development, which is riddled with cases of kids used and abandoned by amateur coaches and skeezy agents in the long and perilous journey from mini-stars up to the NBA.

Here was a father who decided he knew what was best for his sons, and had a plan for them — and, for a time, seemed to be pulling it off.

But LaVar has lost me since the mess involving his second son, who was arrested for shoplifting in China (pretty much the definition of “international incident”), which was amplified today when the elder Ball revealed he is pulling that son, LiAngelo, out of UCLA.

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On the way back to Spain from Portugal, we left the little town of Luz and took a short detour through the “big city” in this part of the Algarve region — Lagos, population 30,000.

What originally drew my attention was the town’s name — also the name of the biggest city (and former capital) or Nigeria. And, yes, the Nigerian megalopolis apparently was named after the small Portuguese town.

Turns out the European “Lagos” is one of those smallish places that do not look like all that much, in the 21st century, but which saw lots and lots of history pass through its gates, here in the southwest of Portugal.

Lagos was the home port for the early Voyages of Discovery, which led to Portugal projecting power and influence around Africa and to points further east, on the Indian Ocean.

That shipping traffic brought wealth to Lagos, way back in the 1400s, in the form of gold and trade goods.

It also brought sub-Saharhan African slaves, apparently the first to reach the European continent since Roman times, if not earlier, and Lagos opened Europe’s first slave markets, in 1444.

That is some weighty history, indeed.

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Twice, I have seen Lionel Messi play at Camp Nou. In 180 minutes of La Liga play witnessed by moi, he has scored three goals (and Luis Suarez has another) … but FC Barcelona did not win on either occasion.

The first Camp Nou match for me was a 2-2 draw with Real Madrid in 2012. Messi had two goals, Cristiano Ronaldo had two goals and that was that.

This time?

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The World Cup without the U.S. national team?

Those who consider it a disastrous setback for soccer in America are badly mistaken.

It’s 2017, not 1998! Soccer in the U.S., at the club level, is in fine shape and trending upward.

If anything, sitting out Russia 2018 can serve as a wake-up call for the national team, which has been stuck in a sort of rut for a decade,

But, if you just can’t look at the World Cup draw without a red-white-and-blue flag on it (for the first time since 1990) …

Let’s look at how the Yanks might have fared, in the draw, had they qualified by 1) finishing third (sted Panama) in the Concacaf hexagonal or 2) made the tournament by defeating Australia in the inter-confederation playoffs.

How excited or daunted would U.S. fans be?

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We live in a silly world. We shrug as the list of countries with nuclear weapons grows but we have printed warnings that coffee may be hot, plastic bags should not be placed over your head and, now, we have instructions for getting toothpaste out of a tube.

I noticed the other day, on a tube of “regular paste” Crest, the instructions for use are printed on the tube in bright red letters, all caps. (As can be seen above.)

Actually, I am thankful that Procter & Gamble, makers of the paste, were thoughtful enough to include instructions because I confess to sometimes being a bit unsure of the process. It can be tricky, no?

For example:

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Eli Manning will not start for the New York Giants on Sunday, ending a streak of 210 consecutive starts at quarterback for the Giants, going back to 2004.

However, the Giants are 2-9 and their playoffs hopes were buried weeks ago, and Eli will be 37 in five weeks and is not having a very good season, albeit trying to lead a banged-up and only semi-talented team.

An outsider could make a case that the Giants trying something different might be a good idea. Nothing to lose; let’s have a look at the backups, starting with Geno Smith at QB.

But Eli has friends and fans in New York. Lots of them. The Giants won the Super Bowl twice with Eli at the controls.

News of the benching circulated yesterday, a decision made by a remarkably unpopular coach, Ben McAdoo (who, parenthetically, has the most ridiculous hair in football) and an unpopular general manager named Jerry Reese.

Pretty much, New York exploded, with radio guys (hello, Mike Francesa) and TV guys (hey, Screamin’ Stephen) and pundits, experts and fans throughout the Tri-State area going nuts.

They all hate that the Giants are awful, and Eli being benched makes them crazy, overlooking the idea that the NFL is competitive and the definition of insanity is to keep starting, again and again, the same quarterback who just got beat.

Anyway, I like Eli. He has appeared several times on this blog in items I like, and I will link to them below, saving the best for last.

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As a native of Southern California, I knew all about the Los Angeles Clippers.

They were bad, except when they were horrid.

They didn’t have fans, per se; their games were attended by bargain-hunters who could not afford to see the Lakers or were supporters of whatever NBA team the Clippers happened to be playing.

They were owned and operated by Donald Sterling, a bad man and a bad owner, and the idea of the Clippers ever eclipsing the Lakers in the standings or in the hearts of fans was preposterous. Ahead of the 2011-12 season, they had reached the playoffs four times in 33 seasons with the Clippers name, advancing to the second round once.

Then the Clippers got a few things right. They used the No. 1 pick in the 2009 draft to take Blake Griffin, a year after they had taken a promising center, DeAndre Jordan.

NBA president David Stern then scandalously stepped in to punish the Lakers and help the Clippers, blocking the trade of Chris Paul, then 26, from the New Orleans Hornets to the Lakers, and a week later approving the trade of Paul to the Clippers for three middling players and a No. 1 draft choice.

And “Lob City”, as it was called, broke out with Paul tossing the ball at the backboard, where Griffin or Jordan would dunk it.

It was fun, for a time there. For the next six seasons, the Clippers won at least 60 percent of their games, racking up a 66 percent winning record (including a club-record 57 victories in 2013-14) and reaching the playoffs six consecutive years — though failing to get past the second round.

And now?

The Clippers are so over. Headed back whence they came — to the land of no-hopers and discounted tickets.

How did this happen?

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Let’s make this formal.

I apologize for suggesting that Jared Goff was a bust.

(This is Day 2 of the Empathy Tour; pretty sure I will get over it.)

I never directly wrote, on this blog, these words: “Goff is a bust.” But I did suggest here and here and here that he could be, or that someone else thought he was, or could be. The first of those, even before the season began, was fairly thorough in outlining all the ways he could not be up to snuff.

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It was a paragraph of the sort every sports journalist has written once, twice, a thousand times in describing athletes who turn out to be not as successful as others believed they would be.

It went like this, on the New York Times website:

The Minnesota Twins picked first at the 1999 Rule 5 draft … The Marlins, who picked second, wanted a pitcher named Jared Camp. The Twins wanted a pitcher named Johan Santana. So the Twins took Camp, the Marlins took Santana, and then the teams swapped those players … Camp never pitched in the majors and was out of pro ball within three years. Santana won two Cy Young Awards for the Twins …

Our focus is meant to be on the Johan Santanas of the world but increasingly I find myself pondering the fate of the other guy, in constructions such as this one, and wonder about what becomes a lifetime of being held up as a cautionary tale. A failure.

A bust.

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You would think the NCAA knew better. That the sturm und drang that accompanies the 68-team college basketball playoffs would have prompted them to leave football alone — ending the season with bowl games and letting collections of journalists and/or coaches and/or cranks with a trophy to figure out who ranked where.

But then some sharp guy down in accounting did the math and decided a college football playoffs meant more money for the organization and one “champinship game”.

But did anyone really think that pitting Nos. 1 and 2 at the end of the regular season would solve, forever, the “who deserves to be called champion” question?

Or that going from one extra game to three, via the College Football Playoff committee, would definitely, finally, end all hint of unhappiness from the rest of the nation’s major college football teams.

Someone is always going to be on the bubble.

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