Rick Pitino will never escape his Christian Laettner torture — but Dylan Darling’s magic just helped

SAN DIEGO — This is always an odd time of year for Rick Pitino. As a basketball lifer, a gym rat to his soul, March is paradise. It is wall-to-wall basketball. It is end-to-end basketball. For the hoops junkie it’s an endless fix.

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In good years — and this has been a very good year at St. John’s — most of his hours are occupied with practice, breaking down film, guaranteeing his team will be prepared and on point. It’s taxing work for a 43-year-old man. Pitino is 73.

The other day, he pulled out his iPad. There was basketball on four different channels. Everything about his wiring screamed: “Watch the games!”

But these past 34 years, it’s not quite so easy for Rick Pitino to just watch the games. Sometimes it’ll be a commercial. Sometimes, the grainy footage backed by the opening credits. Always — always — there’s an immediate portal waiting to take him back to March 28, 1992, the old Spectrum in Philadelphia, 2.1 seconds left on the clock and a basketball about to drop into Christian Laettner’s hands on its way to forever.