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“Mom, can you drop me off at the park for basketball?”

“Not now, honey, I’m on a business call.”

“People are waiting for me! YOU’RE KILLING MY TEAM!”

It was like a ghost town yesterday. The Lakers were playing a close-out game. It’s Finals Week at the local high schools. Everyone young and old had something to do.

My own 10th-grade boy spent 12 hours Saturday studying at the Barnes and Noble cafe at the Marketplace, followed by an Extreme English Breakdown session yesterday at Starbucks on Culver . . .

Good luck, students!

Fellow Trojan Randy Johnson won his 300th game last night.

I miss the good old days when starting pitchers actually won games on the mound, not in the dugout after throwing six innings and handing it off to the bullpen . . .

USC wins its 17th national championship in men’s tennis.

FIGHT ON!

My son’s roller hockey team is going to Toronto in July for NARCh. We’re batting around fundraising ideas to help defray the cost of the trip.

How about an old-fashioned kissing booth? Kiss a hockey mom for $10!

Or a pie toss! Throw a pie in the face of a hockey mom for $10!

Better yet — dealer’s choice! Kiss a hockey mom or throw a pie in her face — $10. And we’ll throw in a package deal: A kiss and a pie — in either order! — for only $15!

Surprisingly, only one of the moms thinks this is a good idea . . .

• RT @USCTrojans_com: Track. USC Sweeps Dual Meet For The First Time Ever http://cli.gs/3sDpya #
• RT @Lileks: Swine flu now goes from person to pig. http://bit.ly/xHgwj Finally, one for our team. In! Your! Snout! #

Spring season just started for high school roller hockey. My son’s team has two goalies, one who’s really good and a backup who’s not ready yet to play at this level.

The coach started the backup goalie at this week’s game. He gave up eight goals and the team lost.

His mom was sitting next to my wife during the game. “I wish they’d take him out,” she said. She was almost crying.

I am so glad my son doesn’t play goalie.

Every kid makes mistakes and every kid has bad games but the highs and lows for goalies are too extreme.

My son tells me that when he has a hockey game, he’s now going to start getting pissed off as soon as we leave the house so he’s in the right frame of mind for the game.

I can’t see how being pissed off is going to help anyone play better, but I think he’s sort of kidding.

Anyway, we’re leaving for the rink . . . his mom made him a bowl of beans and rice to eat on the drive over.

He takes one bite and says, “This meal SUCKS!”

“Is this part of your new ‘get pissed off’ strategy?” I ask him.

“The rice is SOGGY!”

His phone buzzes.

“Who is sending me a friggin’ TEXT message?”

I like this photo. USC spring football with the downtown L.A. skyline in the background.

I was shooting some hoops at the park this afternoon with my boy, sort of guarding him so he could try out some moves.

I suggested that when he drives past a defender, he should cut back into him to keep him from reaching out and making a play on the ball. He tried it again but still didn’t cut back into me with enough gusto.

The third time, he overcompensated. Before he even got past me, he drove his shoulder into my solar plexus and knocked me off the end of the court.

Did I mention he’s the same size as me and a lot younger? Ouch . . . I’m still feeling it right now.

Nick Adenhart pitched six scoreless innings for the Angels last night but took a no-decision as the bullpen came in and blew the lead.

A few hours later, Adenhart was killed in a car smash in Fullerton by some drunken idiot who ran a red light.

He was 22 years old . . .

P.S. My son says Adenhart’s dad had flown out from Baltimore and saw his son pitch a great game, that Adenhart was “buzzing” in the locker room after the game, despite the loss, so maybe it wasn’t a bad day. Except for the dying part.

P.P.S. The Angels postponed their game the following night, April 9. The local Angels TV station instead replayed the April 8 game — the Adenhart game. It was sad watching him walk off the field, not knowing it was the last time . . .

The IHF post-season honors have been announced. My kid was selected to play in the all-star game on April 18, and to receive a Special Achievement Award, sponsored by the Anaheim Ducks and bestowed by the IHF on kids who’ve distinguished themselves off the rink, via academics, community service and extracurricular endeavors.

It would be nice if modesty prevented me from mentioning this stuff, but I’m happy to see the boy coming into his own as a well-rounded young man.

Northwood High School dominated the Special Achievement Awards. The IHF has 30 high schools participating, 53 teams and almost 600 kids, of whom 11 were selected for this award. Four of the 11 were from Northwood, showing once again why Northwood owns all other high schools in Orange County and probably the nation . . .

The Devil Dogs played in the WIHA tournament in Irvine last weekend, losing in the Bantam AA finals to the Reebok Blades.

Wild Wing, the Ducks mascot, was there.

Two of the Power Players were there too. You can’t see the girl on the right because I’m a bad photographer, but there are better pictures of her here.

My son is the taller boy with the crooked sneer he likes to be photographed with. I hope he outgrows that.

Someone said to me, “I bet you wish that was you in the photo.” I must be getting old because I hadn’t thought of that.

I did get to fist bump the Duck mascot though . . .

My son’s one-eighth Japanese on his mom’s side and the student body at his school is about 40 percent Korean, so when he comes into my room yelling, “YES! I am going to shove it” — punctuated with a fist pump — “at those Koreans tomorrow,” it doesn’t take long to figure out that Japan must have won the World Baseball Classic . . .

He said it was “an AYSO 10-and-under caliber trophy.” He doesn’t really care though. He doesn’t display the trophies he already has.

He had a great season though, and a great game in the finals.

The coach asked him to play defenseman this season — which he’s never played — because they had too many forwards. He made a few mistakes but it turned out to be a great coaching move because he’s probably the strongest skater in the league and the best forwards on other teams got frustrated when they couldn’t just skate around him like they could with all the other defensemen.

He’d get my MVP vote, if I had an MVP vote, and if the league had an MVP award, which it doesn’t . . .

Northwood won their IHF final game against El Dorado, the number one seed, 5-2.

I saw this team at the beginning of the season and said to my son, “You guys are going to lose every game.”

He said, “I think we’re going to go undefeated.”

It turns out he was closer to being right than I was . . .

My son’s got a hockey game tonight. His mom is going to bring him to the game; I’m going to bring the hockey gear and meet them there.

There’s a risk when we do it that way that the boy gets there and isn’t able to play because I don’t show up with his equipment, but that’s never actually happened. In fact, I’m almost always there first.

In spite of that fact, he says to me this morning, “Get there early tonight so we don’t have a situation like last week.”

I say, “We didn’t have a ’situation’ last week. I got there exactly the same time you did.”

“Just get there early,” he says.

It’s 7 p.m. and my son’s ready to make a deal . . .

“If I study for an hour,” he says, “can I go play basketball at 8?”

His mom is skeptical. “You just played Xbox for five hours,” she says.

He shakes his head vehemently. “Four-and-a-half hours,” he says.

To give you an idea of how pathetic the NBA’s Eastern Conference is this season, The Cavs and the Celtics have both clinched playoff spots!

I know what you’re thinking: Wasn’t the All-Star Game just last weekend?

Cleveland still has 22 games left to play. They could lose all of them — a 22-game losing streak — and still make the playoffs . . .