Detroit Free Press

Later today, he plans to load up his van and drive to Manhattan, Kan. He doesn't know the streets there, not the ...

Like a lot of folks in Detroit, I've known Dave Lewis for a while. And that's the problem. He has been here as a player. He has been here as an assistant coach. And he has been here as head coach. Familiarity breeds contempt.In sports, it breeds the door.So Lewis is out today as the Red Wings' skipper. What should we make of this? Well first, let's admit, just talking about hockey - as if it's actually, you know, a sport that plans on playing sometime soon? - is almost exhilarating, isn't it? I pretty much forgot we had a team.

Her son was dead. He died serving our country.At this point, you're thinking "Iraq." But this young man never wore a helmet. He never carried a gun. His name was Andrew Goodman. A white college student. Forty-one years ago, he went from New York City to Mississippi after hearing the Ku Klux Klan firebombed a church. He tried to help.He was murdered.And yet, here is what Carolyn Goodman told me a few weeks ago when I asked if she regretted her son's devotion to civil rights:

Novelists say when they start a new book that they often have several endings in mind. But at some point they choose one and throw out the others. No more "maybe this happens, maybe that." They find their North Star and sail toward it defiantly.Same goes for the Pistons, on this morning of the last day of the last game of the year. All other endings have been thrown out now. All other possibilities -- early exits, unexpected collapses -- are crumpled in the trash can. There is one page -- and one page only -- that completes the book of Detroit's operatic season.Win it.

SAN ANTONIO - They took every stone the devil could throw, and they caught the last one and threw it back in his face. It took history. It took belief. It took desperation in every dribble. But mostly it took hope, and with every Pistons achievement - every Rip Hamilton jumper, every Rasheed Wallace put-back, every Ben Wallace block, every Chauncey Billups three-pointer - there was hope. They were supposed to die, because that's what teams do when faced with silly odds. But here they were at the end, heading off the floor with one more game to play.Dead men walking.

You don't leave him alone. You never leave him alone. But there he was, alone, at his favorite killer spot, the three-point line, Rasheed Wallace had gotten snookered, and by the time Tayshaun Prince went charging toward the killer, like a man trying to save a dog from a speeding bus, it was too late. The killer lined it up. The killer got it in his sights. The killer fired. The killer hit.