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Something tells me it’s safe to hint the new-car smell has vanished from the post-Jim O’Brien Pacers — tonight’s victims at the Hanging Garden.
Having begun the Frank Vogel era with four consecutive wins and seven-of-eight, Indiana has dropped 10 of its last 13 — including the last six by a total of 95 points, margin of defeat 16 points per game.
You do realize the eighth team in the East is going to be so offensive the Wisconsin teachers union already is planning protests — unless the Bucks somehow overtake the Pacers and Bobcats.
It says here Larry Bird, who has sold his Indianapolis home and is moving back to Florida where his son plans to finish college, general manager David Morway and Vogel are on the precipice of becoming ex-Pacers.
I’m not saying owner Herb Simon won’t try to re-enlist Bird, though that’s a distinct possibility. Should an offer be extended, however, it definitely won’t be remotely near the $5 million he will have banked for eight straight seasons — more like $1 million, tops, per year for three or four.
And, you know what? Larry Legend is liable to accept such a proposition with pleasure.
When the lone steady job you could get after dropping out of Indiana University was working on a garbage truck, you quickly learn to appreciate that every NBA player, coach and executive is overpaid, it’s just a matter of how much from year to year.
What’s more, during Bird’s lengthy withdrawal from the NBA following his Hall of Fame playing career, he didn’t like it one bit when his young kids would ask him all the time, “What do you do for a living?”
For whatever reason, if Simon and Bird do part ways, the natural progression is for Donnie Walsh to return from whence he came and where his wife, daughter and dogs still live on adjoining properties.
Regardless whether James Dolan wants Walsh back next season or not, it’s easy to conceive the Knicks’ president concluding his health would be better served by escaping New York’s laboratory and its microscope-wielding multitude, and perhaps re-stake his claim to his former Pacers position, if not re-control of Conseco Fieldhouse.
And if that’s purely fantasy it’s certainly not hard to imagine the 70-year-old day-dreaming boy dreaming about coming home to his bundles of joy, for more than sick leave, a stolen weekend or a harried vacation.
I have no idea what Walsh is thinking these days. Our three-decade personal connection got abruptly pre-empted by our increasingly edgy business relationship. For the most part during his three years on the job, I don’t ask and he doesn’t tell. And if I do ask what’s going on about this or that by e-mail, he rarely responds.
Nevertheless, Still, I love Donnie dearly. He is one of the few people in my life who always speaks the truth. He is one of two men (former Nets owner Joe Taub is the other) The Mysterious J never has minded me spending time with — encouraged, actually — no matter how late into the evening, if that doesn’t say it all..
The point being, I’ve been around Walsh long enough and know him far too well to think it will be Dolan’s choice whether he stays with the Knicks past June 30. That decision will be made solely by Walsh.
* THE NBA finally acknowledges — or at least illuminates — the Moses Malone double-double streak “record” Kevin Love chased with great fanfare and exceeded (now 53 straight) somehow failed to take into account Wilt Chamberlain’s pre-merger 1976 NBA-ABA mark.
How could that happen? Why would that be glossed over? It’s not as if Wilt Chamberlain played in the ABA. Moreover, whenever triple-doubles are mentioned (like every time a player records one) Oscar Robertson always gets credit from the league and TV monitor readers for distancing the pack in that category and averaging one in 1961-62.
In fact, The Big O was just 0.3 assists shy of accomplishing that feat the previous season as a rookie.
At a time when we’re being bombarded with the claim Joe DiMaggio’s 56-game hitting streak is the greatest last-standing sports record of all-time, one that purportedly will never be broken, here we have Oscar’s unreal triple-double achievement and Chamberlain’s 227 consecutive double-doubles.
That’s right, folks: 227 games in a row with double figure points and rebounds. Oh, yeah, incidentally, Wilt also went on two other minor binges of 220 and 133 during his otherworldly, unrivaled career.
Not that Love lags behind by all that much. He merely needs to post double-doubles in the Timberwolves’ 15 remaining games this season, all 82 during the 2011-12 season and the first 78 of 2012-13 to surpass Dipper.
But first things first: Love must overhaul another guy whose name you may recall if you’re, say, Stan Love. Elvin Hayes strung together 55 straight double-doubles during the 1973-74 season with the Capital Bullets.
Not that Love is undeserving of the big ups he’s getting. As futile as the Timberwolves often are, I make sure to check out Love as much as possible on TV to treat myself to his demonic desire to slap the air out of every ball that’s up for grabs.
Currently on pace to become the first to average at least 20 points and 15 rebounds since Malone in 1982-83, Love also has compiled 11 20-point/20-rebound games (Dwight Howard and Zach Randolph are next with five), prompting speculation his real parents may be Barbara Walters and Hugh Downs.
Though Wilt is in another stratosphere altogether, there is nothing about Love’s brains and brawn he wouldn’t happily celebrate.
How many coaches does it make now that Jeff Foster has run through?
peter.vecsey@nypost.com