Name NBA's Mount Rushmore. Last day to vote!; plus lunch with Dennis Hickey, more from Richie, freaky Westminster dogs & more

1) It is FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 14. Happy Valentine's Day to the ladies. To the romantically challenged gents, this is your reminder. 2) I'm back up at Random Evidence Laboratories today coaxing Sunday's notes-column package. 3) In The Previous Blogpost (ITPB): Ryan Tannehill short-leash poll, Michael Sam, LeBron's dunks, topless Olympian, the Beatles and me, Puig's dogs, Dumb Starbucks & more. 4) Follow us on Twitter @gregcote and also on Instagram, Vine and Facebook.

LeBron sends a message to Durant: That is what LeBron James' eventful week was all about. Click on The King's Proclamation for today's latest column by me.

HELP LEBRON JAMES PICK NBA'S ALL-TIME MOUNT RUSHMORE: The Heat's LeBron James was asked to name his all-time NBA Mount Rushmore in an NBA TV interview to air this coming Monday. With some ease he named Michael Jordan, Larry Bird and Magic Johnson. After some thought he added Oscar Robertson. Pressed to consider himself, a refreshingly immodest James said, "I'll be one of the top four that's ever played the game for sure. Somebody'll have to be bumped." OK, your turn. Who, right now, in 2014, would make your personal NBA Mount Rushmore of four greatest players? To form my 13-man (alphabetical) ballot I pulled 10 names off the 50 Greatest Players list selected in 1996, and arbitrarily added three more recent stars: Kobe, LeBron and Tim Duncan. Plenty of terrific players didn't make the cut; neither did current young stars such as Kevin Durant whose careers are still taking shape. Scan the ballot, vote for your top four (4) and say why.

LUNCH WITH NEW DOLPHINS GM HICKEY: A little peek behind the curtain. This week the Miami Herald had a luncheon with new Dolphins general manager Dennis Hickey, at the team's invitation, at Bin 595 at the Plantation Renaissance. The Herald reps consisted of myself, Dolphins writers Adam Beasley and Armando Salguero, and Buzz impressario Barry Jackson. With Hickey were Dolphins media-relations legend Harvey Greene and his two able lieutenants Jason Jenkins and Fitz Ollison. The affair was casual and off-the-record, which is why there isn't much meat in this item, just general impressions. Hickey, between bites of Caesar salad, deftly parried questions to provide as little real info as possible, even off-the-record. Example: I asked him how many starter-caliber offensive linemen he thinks he has on the roster right now. "What do you think?" he replied. I told him one (his center) or two at most. He responded expertly, meaning he didn't really answer the question. Nevertheless, I found Hickey to be affable, relaxed and media-friendly -- words rarely used to describe predecessor Jeff Ireland. Hickey (married father of two, devoutly religious, relaxes on a 22-foot boat, gives you a firm shake and a look in the eye) seems like genuinely nice guy. Now we'll see if he's a genuinely good GM. My Cobb salad was delicious, by the way.

DEAR RICHIE: SHHH...: If I were Richie Incognito's agent or his lawyer or the PR firm hired to reshape his image -- if I were anyone who cared at all about Richie -- my advice to him, in language he might understand, might be: "Dude, bro, #STFU." This week brought another fusillade of Twitter rants by Incognito that meant to make adversary Jonathan Martin look bad but hurt Incognito's cause instead. In one, Incognito confided that Martin once "told me he thought about taking his own life." That's a low-blow Tweet, whether true or not. Incognito needs to STFU as he awaits the NFL Bullygate report, because right now he is Tweeting out red flags to every team that might be his future employer.

Poll result: Trust and patience for Tannehill: We asked in last blogpost if you thought Dolphins QB Ryan Tannehill should be on a "shorter leash" in 2014, and 68.3 percent said no. Only 22.7% said yes, and the other 9.0% were undecided.

WESTMINSTER KENNEL CLUB: DOGS GONE WILD: I raptly watched the final of the 138th Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show this week, rooting in vain for a bloodhound named Nathan. The whole event is absurdly comical without meaning to be, an annual reminder why Best In Show is one of my favorite movies ever. The real Best In Show, last night, went to a prancing 5-year-old wire fox terrier named Sky, pictured left, but what caught my fascination was the second-place dog, the outrageously coifed standard poodle named Ally pictured right. Sky, except for the meticulously groomed beard that makes him look like an old English gentleman, looks like a fairly normal dog. Like a pet. Ally, not so much. No offense, Ally -- thank God dogs can't read -- but you have been given a fur-cut that makes you look ridiculous. Even Nathan the bloodhound opened his sleepy eyes long enough to ogle you and shake his giant head.

ON SHAUN WHITE'S OLYMPIC HALFPIPE CHOKE: Yeah, sorry, I do call it a choke when the master of a particular discipline gets on the biggest stage and fails to even medal. Honestly, I don't even know why the halfpipe (or slopestyle) are Olympic events at all. It's skateboarding gone wild, X Games stuff. You can turn the halfpipe from concrete or wood to ice and it's still something I'd sooner expect to see dope-smoking 15-year-old slackers doing, not Olympic athletes. I know the preceding makes me sound like I'm a thousand years old. Whatever. The halfpipe is the IOC pandering for a younger demographic. To be fair, I'd eliminate other Olympic sports, too. Curling? Outta here!

Click back. Will be updating/adding to this latest blogpost with ferocity...