It’s an old joke:

The guy loses 20 straight football bets. He’s on such a losing streak even his bookie feels sorry for him, so much so that the book suggests that he do something to change his luck.

“Like what?”

“Try betting a hockey game,” says the bookie.

“Hockey?” says the loser, “What do I know about hockey?”

To that end, basketball, what does Lou Lamoriello know about basketball?

Imagine if in 1995, when the Dolan/Cablevision Gang seized control of the Knicks — the start of the team’s downward, costly, embarrassing run — Jim Dolan appointed Lou Lamoriello to run the Knicks, as opposed to firing the starter’s pistol signaling the Knicks’ 17-year run of bad ideas, bad-fits and those who could no longer suffer Dolan’s dysfunctional dominion.

Since 1987 Lamoriello quietly, firmly and frugally — both his nature and his management style — has made the Devils into the most consistently successful, never-down-for-long pro franchise among our winter teams. The Devils, for the last 25 years — since Lamoriello entered — have indisputably been the region’s best fall-through-spring franchise.

NHL? What did he know about the NHL? Not much. On the day John McMullen named him president and general manager, his NHL experience in any position was zilch. His background was college hockey, at Providence, his hometown.

And now, an “off” season by the Devils, as in the song “Anything Goes,” is looked upon as something shocking.

Even if he didn’t know the difference between a point guard and a poodle, you think it would have taken Lamoriello 15 years to make the Knicks, a far more financially and territorially advantaged team than the Devils, a steady contender? You think it would have taken 10 years for the Knicks to win a playoff game?

Lamoriello, through blue eyes that penetrate like X-, Y- and Z-rays, is known as fully controlling, thoroughly and relentlessly practical, the Depression-era parental kind who would scold you for leaving the lights on after leaving the room.

When a marketing exec was hired by the Devils, his story goes, Lamoriello saw that he had brought a box of photos — photos of himself posing with sports stars — to hang on his office walls. Lamoriello gave him the ix-nay — originally interpreted as forbidden because it placed an individual ahead of the team.

In time, the exec changed his mind. He figured that, “Lou just didn’t want to pay to have the walls spackled and repainted after I was let go.”

How can you argue with that?

Put it this way: In 2005, based on scant evidence that Jerome James was better than ordinary, one can’t imagine, unlike the Knicks had, that Lamoriello would have agreed to sign him for $30 million.

Meanwhile, as he scarcely has seen and rarely heard, Lamoriello’s Devils keep doing what they do — winning the big, close ones. This time of year, every year, the Knicks are lucky to still be playing, even luckier to be in any close ones, let alone win one.

Basketball? What does he know about basketball?

Yanks go to great lengths for secrecy

Listening to the Orioles’ radiocast of O’s-Yankees on Monday night — one does what it takes to avoid John Sterling — play-by-player Joe Angel, once a partner of Sterling’s on Yankees radio, noted that Russell Martin, having walked to the mound, had left his mask on yet was covering his mouth while having a conversation with Hiroki Kuroda, a Japanese who doesn’t speak much English.

Hey, if the Orioles’ espionage team is good enough to cut through those barriers and instantly relay the info, they deserve to know all about the next pitch.

Speaking of Sterling, with Robinson Cano batting Thursday night in Kansas City, he reported that, “The Royals are playing Robby straight away, even though he hits the ball all over the place.”

Huh? Guess the Royals should have shaded Cano toward all over the place.

* Joe Benigno’s grasp of the subject matter, well, ever try picking up an ice cube from the kitchen floor?

Monday on WFAN he lamented the fact that the Knicks got stuck playing the Heat when, after all, playing the Bulls, now that Derrick Rose is out, would have been easier. Either way, Rose would have been hurt? What a visionary!

Wednesday, in the midst of reading a commercial for a florist’s Mother’s Day offer, Benigno personalized the come-on to include word that his mother is deceased. Geez.

* Roger Clemens’ perjury trial is an active vestige of baseball’s steroid era, one that grew then exploded on Bud Selig’s watch. Yet, Selig’s now selling himself — and some are buying it — as the dogged cop who cleansed The Game. That’s like Eliot Spitzer claiming to have exposed a prostitution ring.

SUNY pay$ price for firings

What are the long- or short-term social and/or financial benefits to New York if SUNY-Binghamton has a winning basketball team? I can’t think of any, either, but in firing first-year coach Mark Macon last week, the school has now, over the last two seasons, paid $1.5 million in going-away money to its past two basketball coaches.

* Good, practical question from ESPN-NY’s Michael Kay on Thursday, to Marian Gaborik, who scored the winner late in triple OT Wednesday in D.C.: “When you got back to the hotel did you pass out, or just go to sleep?” Gaborik said he ate then still was too pumped to fall right to sleep.

* Doesn’t matter if the puck dribbles over the goal line, rather than say that a player “scored” the new substitute among studio anchors and analysts is “put the puck into the back of the net.”

* Though Prohibition ended in 1933, Connecticut reader John P. O’Brien notes that in the Budweiser commercial re-enacting the end of Prohibition, a bottle of Bud is opened via twist-off — more than 30 years before such caps were introduced.

* Leave it to a Nike exec Jason Petrie to Tweet wisecracks that Derrick Rose’s injury was the result of choosing “poorly,” meaning wearing and endorsing adidas instead of Nikes.

* Good ol’ Mike Francesa. In his Friday Kentucky Derby preview, he mentioned Zenyatta as one of the greats, failing to note, of course, that he expertly touted her, two seasons back, as just a load of hype.

* Want to start every day with a good laugh or even just a smile? Go through MLB box scores and see what it takes be awarded a “hold.”

* From reader Bob Yanofsky: “If the Lakers and Clippers meet in the playoffs, will the NBA still have three days for travel between Games 2 and 3?”