THE FRONT ROW WITH MARK NELKE: Sunday, June 12, 2016

A little over a year ago, while in Louisville for my (nearly) yearly fix of NCAA hoops, a friend and I visited the Muhammad Ali Center.

I snapped a photo or two inside the museum honoring “The Greatest,” before I noticed a sign asking patrons to kindly refrain from taking photos in that portion of the building.

I half-expected a replica Ali fist to emerge from the wall and pop me on the chin as punishment, then hear a voice taunting me, as only the champ could.

UNLIKE TODAY, when you can plunk down anywhere from $50-$100 to watch a fight on TV from the comfort of your living room, the first Ali-Frazier fight in 1971 was available on something called “closed-circuit” broadcasts, shown in places like theatres. There was no Internet back then, so obviously no social media like Twitter to provide real-time updates on the fight.

Not quite 12 at the time, I settled for huddling around my clock-radio and listening to somebody provide updates after each round. Then the station went back to regular programming, perhaps playing another Jackson 5 record, or something by The Osmonds (we were living in Salt Lake City at the time), before cutting in with another update after the next round.

So you half-listened to the radio, mostly wondering what these two unbeaten heavyweights were doing to each other a couple thousand miles away, at Madison Square Garden.

Fun, huh? After a while they started replaying the fights the following Saturday afternoon on ABC’s Wide World of Sports (just before the telecast of the Pro Bowlers Tour, if I recall), with Howard Cosell and the two combatants analyzing the bout.

Then sometimes, they would show a heavyweight fight on network (free) TV — something that would never happen now, since they can get away with gouging people now. When Ken Norton broke Ali’s jaw in their first fight in 1973, it was on a Saturday afternoon on Wide World of Sports. When Ali beat Leon Spinks in 1978 in their rematch to win the heavyweight title for the third time, we watched on TV between bites of supper.

But, aside from that, many Ali fights were followed, again, by waiting for someone to come on the radio and tell you what happened.

Plus, could you imagine a major boxing match these days taking place in a place like Kinshasa, Zaire, as was the “Rumble in the Jungle” between Ali and George (pre-grilling machine) Foreman in 1974, a fight that started at 4 a.m. local time?

Then again, aside from his boxing accomplishments and humanitarian work, perhaps the lasting image of Ali was at the opening ceremonies of the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta. No one knew who was going to light the Olympic torch, until Janet Evans handed the flame to ...

... who else but “The Greatest?”

COUPLE THOUGHTS about the NBA:

A basketball legend recently came to the defense of LeBron James, who is playing in his sixth straight NBA Finals and seventh overall, because he has had the audacity to only win two of them, telling the naysayers to essentially knock it off.

Jerry West played in nine NBA Finals, winning only one. His likeness became The Logo for the NBA. Don’t remember him taking a raft of you-know-what for not winning the big one enough. Who knows, maybe he would if he was playing during the current, overanalyzed times, and if that’s the came, perhaps it’s a good thing he didn’t.

And the half tongue-in-cheek comment by Klay Thompson (of the NBA squad Klay Thompson and the Warriors) that his current squad could beat the Showtime Lakers of the 1980s (of which his dad, Mychal, was a member for a few seasons).

Who knows, and who really cares? The game is so much different now.

In the 1980s, the 3-point shot wasn’t anywhere near the big deal it is now. In 1980, when the Lakers beat the 76ers for the title, L.A.’s leader in 3-pointers made during the regular season was Magic Johnson with ... seven! In 1985, when the Lakers finally beat the Celtics in the finals, their leader was Michael Cooper with a whopping 35!.

In 1988, when the Lakers won the last of their five NBA titles that decade, Byron Scott pumped in 62 3s, Cooper 57. The 3-point line seemed such a long, long way away from the basket in those days.

By comparison, this year Steph Curry made 402 3s in the regular season for the Warriors, Klay Thompson 276.

Some would say the 1980s were the glory days of the NBA, but there was an ugly side that needed to be cleaned up. You could clothesline somebody on a fast break, and the result was only a two-shot foul. Fights were not unheard of.

These days, the little guys might think twice about fearlessly driving to the basket, if there was the risk of them getting their face rearranged. These days, you could get T’d up for looking at somebody the wrong way, though apparently it’s OK to kick a man in his privates not once, but twice, with minimal punishment.

So yeah, maybe these Warriors could beat the Showtime Lakers, in part because it would be tough for guys like Kareem to get up and down the floor at the breakneck pace in which Golden State plays.

After all, he’s 69 years old.

Mark Nelke is sports editor of The Press. He can be reached at 664-8176, Ext. 2019, or via email at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter@CdAPressSports.