By MONTE DUTTON

I have concluded that actual names are going out of fashion, particularly among the showboats who tell us all about them on television.

The Most Valuable Player in the NBA is SGA. Do fans even know his full name? I didn’t. I never hear it. SGA slams! A steal by SGA! SGA has a triple double!

His name is Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, which I know because of a web search.

It occurred to me that no one ever referred to KAJ. Everyone said his name, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.

If it’s not an initialism – it’s only an acronym when it makes a word – it’s a nickname. The Joker, Nikola Jokic, is about the least likely athlete imaginable to be called a joker.

I miss the days when reliever Don Stanhouse was Stan the Man Unusual, and George Hendrick was Joggin’ George. Cecil Fielder was not only Cecil Fielder; he was a sessile fielder because he had little range at first base.

I saw most of the Eastern finals, and it was about as easy to read as a comic book. If the Knicks could slow down the game, they won. Twice. If the Pacers could speed it up, they won. Four times.

My professional opinion is that the Oklahoma City Thunder is much better defensively than the New York Knicks, but I could be wrong.

College baseball regionals have almost chased me away from NASCAR. Oregon got eliminated Saturday. Clemson, Texas, Georgia, Ole Miss and Vanderbilt all dropped into the losers’ bracket of their host regionals. I’m anxious to see which teams respond with their backs to the wall.

I wonder how many jobs college-baseball replay reviews brought to the home office in Pittsburgh, Pa. With 16 regionals going on, undoubtedly several were going on at the same time. Maybe the NCAA will cut back for the super regionals. Maybe the NCAA can afford an on-site staff in Omaha.

Clemson played the early innings against Kentucky as if it were Columbia High.

Wake Forest stayed alive wearing the smallest script (“Demon Deacons”) I have ever seen on the front of a baseball uniform.

I’m switching back and forth between watching Clemson and Georgia stink it up in the field. It made me think of one of the funnier lines I ever heard from a coach. I was covering the ACC baseball tournament, and Clemson lost to North Carolina, meaning the Tigers had to play again the following morning at 10.

The late, great Clemson coach, Bill Wilhelm, turned to the assembled media and said, “Some of you fellers been writing about the Tigers’ bats eruptin’. I told our guys, ‘No eruption today. No erection tonight.”

I expect Wilhelm made that crack secure in the knowledge that no family newspaper would print it. Times have changed. Society has declined, and I now feel confident I can print it close to 40 years later.

The fan bases are markedly different in the major sports. Football has the most. It’s a relatively easy game to understand and one doesn’t have to be an expert to be entertained by it.

A baseball fan pays attention. It’s almost a religion, which makes it similar to soccer worldwide.

Football, whether high school, college or pro, is king in most American states. Indiana, North Carolina, Kentucky and Kansas are basketball states. Cross the border from South to North Carolina, and if it’s a tranquil day and the wind isn’t blowing, one can faintly hear the sound of dribbling.

It’s always going to be difficult for Clemson to be better than North Carolina and Duke in basketball. Why? It‘s simple. Basketball is more important there.

If North Carolina State defeats the Tar Heels in football, the UNC fans says, “We’ll get ‘em in basketball.” If someone say that in the Palmetto State, the fans of the other team say, “Who cares?”

There’s more community discussion in South Carolina about college baseball than there is about basketball, with the possible exception of Dawn Staley’s women’s juggernaut in Columbia. I find it kind of surprising that the men’s games at South Carolina are broadcast on statewide radio and the women’s games are not.

The Carolinas are more closely aligned over NASCAR. I’ve written two NASCAR-themed novels about an outrageous young driver named Barrie Jarman, Lightning in a Bottle and Life Gets Complicated.

A wide variety of books by me are available on Amazon. Nine of them are novels.