More proof that I should never, ever be relied on as a sports prognosticator: no sooner had I finished and posted a piece praising the Atlanta Hawks, then sporting a perfect 6-0 record, than they tripped over their egos and proceeded to drop 5 straight. I never thought they’d go 82-0, but I kind of assumed they wouldn’t succumb to the rare air of success and immediately go into a tailspin.

They remind me of cartoon characters like Wile E Coyote, who’s always running off a cliff but continues to stand on the thin air. Then he looks down, sees the chasm below, and immediately plummets. As long as the Hawks didn’t KNOW they were supposed to be good, they were. When reality set in, and they looked down, they face-planted. . . . splat.

They’ve recovered somewhat, and still look to be a solid, talent-laden, playoff-bound team. But not a top seed. Not this year, and maybe not ever.

What I take from it all is that although this kind of idle speculation helps sports talk show hosts fill countless hours of air time on slow news weeks, it’s insane to project either monumental success or abject failure from incomplete data. Eight straight wins or even 8 straight losses early in an 82-game season isn’t enough of a data sampling for any kind of prognostication. I mean, c’mon. Half the teams in the NBA are “on pace for” an 82-win season after Game 1, every year. It’s meaningless. Doesn’t stop people from talking about it endlessly, but it’s meaningless — even more meaningless than fantasy sports leagues.

Nor, by the way, are even record-setting streaks in the middle of a season predictive. The year the Angels won their only World Series, the Athletics went on an ungodly 20-game win streak that had observers thinking World Championship. As we know, the Angels managed to hang in their rear-view mirror throughout that streak, and were the ones playing the best ball when the playoffs rolled around, while the Athletics couldn’t even get past Minnesota. And let’s not forget last season’s Rockets and their second-best-ever 22-win streak last season. All THAT got them was the opportunity for another First-Round exit.

For the sake of my argument, I’m conveniently and unfairly ignoring Yao Ming’s annual season-ending foot in jury — this one coming with 10 games to go. But that shows that win streaks in and of themselves don’t provide any assurance of future performance. There are lots of things that have to be factored in — such as, in the Rockets’ case, the near-certainty that Yao will be injured and unavailable by the end of the season. Or the almost equal certainty that Tracy McGrady will go down for an extended period. Oops, there he goes again.

And don’t even get me started about how even 18-game win streaks and undefeated regular seasons in the NFL don’t assure a Super Bowl win . . . .

Speaking of teams that need to face reality — your Los Angeles Lakers. They started out 7-0, including back-to-backs on the road against Dallas and New Orleans, and brain-dead Lakers honks were talking about 82-0, or at least equaling or surpassing the Bulls’ 72-10 all-time record. (For the record, and for laughs, they’re still “on pace for” a 76-win season.) It would have been impolite to prick the balloon by pointing out the embarrassing facts that (a) they’d played only 2 teams with winning records; (b) in all but one of those games, they started slower than my old Dodge Dart in a Canadian winter; and (c) no matter what the quality of the opposition, they managed to fart around enough to keep their opponents in all but one of those 7 games.

And that’s forgetting just how fragile a lot of the Lakers’ players are. To expect them to be able to play with energy and determination for even 70 of the 82 regular-season games is a pipe-dream.

So I wasn’t all that surprised that they lost their next game. What disturbed me was that it was a HOME game, against a far-from-prepossessing Detroit team that went out 2 nights later and lost to the Suns by 18 points, managed a whopping 70 points in losing to the Celtics, and even managed to lose to the Timberwolves by 26 — conjure with that image for a while! — at home.

The insults to the injury were that Kwame Brown — Kwame effing BROWN — outscored and outrebounded the Next Big Thing, Andrew Bynum, and that the Lakers’ alleged newfound toughness and commitment to defense evaporated faster and more completely than Fred Thompson’s Presidential campaign. The Lakers let the Pistons score 106 points, for Pete’s sake. By contrast, the Lakers’ eminence grise, the big, bad Celtics, have held the Pistons to 76 points — 30 fewer — in a game played in Detroit, and to 70 in Boston.

I’d like to say it was a fluke, but the Lakers’ subsequent performance, a home win against the Bulls, didn’t quiet any doubts. Yeah, they won, but they allowed the Bulls to score 109 points, and played matador defense. Ditto for their more recent home win against a Sacramento Kings team missing three key players, but was still allowed to score 108.

So much for winning the NBA championship in the first few weeks of the season, as the blinkered, pig-ignorant Lakers faithful believed. Until they prove otherwise, the Lakers are still talented, still very deep, still solidly in the championship mix — I mean, despite my negativity they are, after all, 14-1 and sporting the NBA’s best record as of this writing (which is just before their road game against the Pacers) — but STILL softer than the current stock market. Even Jerry Buss has stated publicly that we won’t really know about this team until it’s been on one of those long road trips in the dead of winter.

I’m tired of hearing the minions of USC faithful bemoan their fate. (To his credit, Pete Carroll has generally been upbeat, and has acknowledged that it’s his and his team’s own fault.) It’s unfortunate that there’s no NCAA D-1 football playoff that would allow them to atone for the embarrassing loss to Oregon State that put them out of the BCS Championship calculus, but I don’t recall any great cry from these parts for a playoff when, just for example, Auburn went undefeated and was still unable to play for a national championship. Of course not, ‘cause the Trojans did. Sour, sour grapes.

Not that there shouldn’t be some kind of playoff system. Any system where a team can win the mythical poll-voters’ National Championship without even winning its own league — right, Texas Longhorns? — has to have its head up its fundament.

The Trojans WOULD be in the championship picture, despite the universally acknowledged weakness of the Pac-10 this year, had they simply taken care of business and won all the games they were supposed to win. Whose fault was that loss, exactly? Yeah, Oregon State was and is well-coached, and came up with an outstanding game plan that worked to perfection. But we’re talking about a team that had lost 3 games before USC hit town, including a conference loss to Stanford, and out-of-conference losses to Utah and Penn State. Sorry, all damage to USC’s championship hopes was self-inflicted.

And not for the first time. Despite a talent stockpile that’s the envy of just about every other program, the Trojans always manage to lose at least 1 game a season to lesser opposition and, not infrequently, 2. Either the talent isn’t as good as it’s cracked up to be; or the talent is all body, no brain and/or no heart; or, as I strongly suspect, the coaches who are supposed to prepare their youthful charges to play at or near their peak every game aren’t always bringing their own A-games.

Not to overreact, mind you. USC’s run under Coach Carroll would be the envy of just about every other program. Who else is in the Trojans’ class for sustained excellence during the same period? Texas, probably, although they stumbled last season (10-3); Florida under Urban Meyer, maybe, although they, too, stumbled — nay, tumbled — last season (9-4, including an ugly Gator Bowl loss to, ugh, Michigan); Ohio State, maybe, except that they crap out in their bowl games; LSU, I guess, though they’ve been pretty ordinary at 7-4 this year, with bad losses to Florida and Georgia, a close loss to ‘Bama, and an inexplicable not-even-close loss to Ole Miss — which, to be fair, also upset Florida and hung tough against Alabama, and is more than just bowl-eligible. Oklahoma’s had a few pretty good years, including this one, but they do have trouble with Texas, don’t they? Anyway, it’s a short list, with a high barrier to entry and pretty strict standards.

When a program is at that level, it’s allowed to lose to primo opponents — although not too often — but is expected to be able to beat the mediocre ones, as they say, like a drum. That’s what USC fails to do, more than those other programs.

I know, I know, Carroll’s never lost in November, and the Trojans always get better as the season goes along — except maybe when a barely .500 UCLA team beats them and prevents their appearance in a National Championship game. And they do tend to win their bowl games. But that’s not quite the big deal it might appear to be, since the wins seem to come against Big Ten teams, which have been perfect patsies in the big bowl games; when the Trojans had a chance to make a statement against a flawed Texas team in a National Championship contest IN THEIR HOME TOWN, they couldn’t close the deal.

So but me no buts. Coach Carroll is one helluva recruiter and deal-closer, and his Trojans deserve to be praised as one of the most consistent top programs of the past couple of decades. But they, and their head coach, are still overrated by the special standards that have to apply at that level.

Although, if we really want to talk about “overrated,” how’s about Charlie Weis, who’d gladly swap records with Coach Carroll? It’s not his team’s record that’s overrated — 6-6, and yet another blowout loss to USC, isn’t anything to crow about. It’s the coach himself. He came in blowing a lot of smoke about how he was going to lead the Domers back to glory, because, after all, he was a genius, had a Super Bowl coaching pedigree, and was an epigone of the great Bill Belichick, so the Irish were going to have — I believe this is a direct quote — “a decided schematic advantage.”

The thought was that he was going to be able to recruit like a mother, since he had all those pro credentials, and therefore (in theory) knew how to get his players to the “next level.” How’s that been working out for you so far, Charlie? Not too many pros coming out of South Bend these days, despite three straight (allegedly) top-5 to top-10 recruiting classes. Either the players he’s been recruiting are all a lot less than they’ve been cracked up to be, but inflated because the national recruiting services always pump up Notre Dame — this is Colin Cowherd’s theory — or Weis isn’t quite the molder of men he’s touted himself to be.

Oh, yeah, and about that “decided schematic advantage”? ND almost lost to Navy, and DID manage to lose to hopeless, hapless Syracuse, after Weis grandiosely declared that he was going to take over the play-calling duties. Oops.

It’s not just that El Corpulento — the final nail, I think , in the stereotype of the “jolly fat man” — hasn’t transferred that well from the pro to the college game. He’s hardly the first. Just ask Dave Wannstedt, Bill Callahan, or UCLA’s own Karl Dorrell. There are enough differences between the two games that make such maladjustment more than a rarity. And, although Weis has a couple of Super Bowl rings that he likes to show people, the reality is it’s not all that clear how much he, personally, deserved them. I mean, Paul Hackett — a name no true USC fan can ever say without spitting — probably has one from his time with the 1984 ‘Niners, where he was promoted as the coach who “developed” Joe Montana as a QB. Slight gap between “cause” and “effect” there, I’m guessing.

I see that the Washington Wiz just fired coach Eddie Jordan after his team’s execrable 1-10 start to this season, coming off three straight First-Round playoff losses. Interesting how chickens come home to roost. Jordan, after all, was one of Byron Scott’s former assistants with the Nets when Scott was unceremoniously fired after a so-so start, coming off two straight trips to the NBA Finals. That “so-so” start, just by the way, was 22-20, which, although I’m no math whiz, sure seems a lot better than 1-10.

Scott has resolutely refused to point fingers, and many believe that the prime and immediate cause of his firing was a locker-room shouting match between him and J-Kidd after a blowout loss. In between bouts of domestic abuse and some of the best point guard play in the NBA for a fair number of years, Kidd was known as a consummate egoist and backstabber, who engaged in power plays against any coach he couldn’t control, and pushed to get coaches who’d be more amenable to letting him have his own way. Like current Nets’ coach Lawrence Frank, who may be quite competent, but who owed his elevation to head coach to Kidd’s endorsement — and treated Kidd accordingly.

But Kidd wasn’t the only one who greased the skids for Scott in NJ. He had some henchmen, including Frank, who’s rumored to have supplied some of the anonymous background “information” that led to the media’s characterization of Scott as a lazy, out of touch, irrelevant and clueless figurehead — a rah-rah guy who couldn’t be bothered to watch game film or read scouting reports, while the assistants were the ones who were really responsible for any success the Nets had (and none of the failures).

There’s no hard evidence that Jordan, the head assistant during Scott’s tenure, stuck in his own shiv, though it’s certainly no secret that he and Kidd were tight. Jordan was hyped — perhaps even self-promoted — as the real “brains” behind the version of the Princeton Offense that the Nets used with some success for a few years under Scott. He rode that hype all the way to his job with the Wiz, where he was far from the worst coach there’s ever been, but didn’t exactly set the NBA world on fire, either.

All of the criticism of Scott may well have been true, and may still be true. Nonetheless, facts are facts, and they can be troublesome things that get in the way of theories. The undeniable fact is that the Nets team Scott had taken over had posted the third-worst record IN THE NBA the previous season, and within 2 years he had them at 52-30 (Nets’ franchise best-ever NBA record) and in the NBA Finals. He had a few bad records with the Hornets — not surprising, given the gooey, feculent mess he stepped into — but even when his teams went 38-44 and 39-43 just before their 56-26 breakout of last season, they had a reputation for being undermanned but scrappy and hard-working. Heck, he was voted Coach of the Year after his 38-44 season in recognition of just what a monumental achievement it had been just to get back to the outskirts of genteel mediocrity.

True, it hasn’t hurt Scott that for the past couple of years he’s had Chris Paul, who’s been far better than anyone thought he’d be, and that David West has blossomed into a premier player. No one can win without players. But it sure doesn’t seem like Scott’s been just a potted plant in his new job. He surely has SOMETHING to do with whatever success the team’s had. It can’t just be about the assistants.

Meanwhile, “genius” Jordan, with a roster that has more talent “on paper” although it looks like a bagel with a big hole in the middle, has managed records of 45-37 and a loss to the Pistons in the 2006 Eastern Conference semis, and then 42-40, 41-41and 43-39 and First-Round losses the past three seasons to their “kryptonite,” the Cavs. Not a terrible “body of work,” but not exactly deserving of the “genius” accolades or of a long rope, either. Especially when you consider that, had the Wiz played in the West, they wouldn’t even have qualified for the playoffs in 2 of those years. Think Jordan will be applying for a job in New Orleans any time soon?

Chris Erskine had an interesting column in the L.A. Times a couple of Sundays ago on his nominees for the “All-Ego” Sports Team. I can’t really fault his choices — among them Al Davis, Barry Bonds, Charlie Weis, Mark Cuban, Jim Rome, the two football “Bills” (Belichick and Parcells), and a host of other “un”worthies. But what, exactly, was the point? Like Diogenes’s fruitless quest in ancient Athens to find an honest man, the tougher task would have been compiling a list of star athletes and athletic figures who AREN’T narcissistic possessors of bloated egos. News flash: Erskine’s next columns will discuss the stunning news that water is wet and that bears relieve themselves in forested settings.

I’m certainly not pleased at how top athletes, coaches, agents, announcers and their ilk bask in the glow of their own perceived greatness, but why should it be such a shock to anyone that they do? We seem to accept that kind of mind-set from music, film and media stars, politicians, and captains of industry. Has there been any athlete, ever, more in love with himself or more convinced of the perfumed nature of his excrement, with less reason, than Donald Trump — who’s about to default on a $51-Million interest payment — or any of the top execs of the Wall Street firms that recently collapsed?

So it’s hardly surprising that the world of athletics should have a surfeit of egoists. And, while I’m sure there are a few — a very, very few — who are comparatively level-headed about it all, I’m also convinced, as Colin Cowherd says repeatedly, that if we knew the real story on any popular athlete, we’d cringe.

Or maybe not. After all, what counts these days is celebrity, not character. When society rewards pond scum Joey Buttafuoco, Amy Fisher (the “Long Island Lolita”) and their worthless ilk, or fawns over “celebutards” who are more famous for being famous than for actually accomplishing anything, I don’t want to hear about spoiled, bad-role-model athletes. At least some of the people on Erskine’s list — in fact, a lot of then people on his list — produced against tough competition, in endeavors where they actually keep score and play defense. What contributions, exactly, have all those other “famous” people made, other than pedophilia, attempted murder, public displays of genitalia, boorish, loutish behavior, and the like? As far as I can determine, their sole “value” to society is that they provide jobs for paparazzi, tabloid publications, gossipmongers and other parasites who feed off society’s dung heaps.

Notwithstanding, feel free to talk all you want about Plaxico Burress and his stupid, self-inflicted gunshot wound. I’ve said before, and I reiterate: forget about the morality of carrying around unlicensed loaded weapons or driving cares with expired plates; concentrate instead on the combination of stupidity and penurious behavior. With all the money those top athletes are making, it’s utterly inexcusable that they don’t pay a few bucks of it for “go-fers” who can make sure that the licenses and insurance for their tricked-out vehicles, and their own driver’s licenses — are current and in force, and ditto for any weapons they feel obligated to carry. Better still, maybe they could pay just a few bucks more, and have people with valid driver’s licenses drive them around in licensed, insured vehicles, and bonded bodyguards to obviate the perceived need to pack their own heat. But they just won’t do it. Millions for bling and flash, but not a penny for prudence. But what the Hell do I know? I’ve never walked so much as a yard in their shoes.

Please send comments and criticism — especially criticism — to thonglaw@sprynet.com, where it will be dealt with appropriately.