We snickered. We scoffed. We rolled our eyes.

But what if Stan Van Gundy really did quit as coach of the Miami Heat because he wanted to spend more time with his family? Why do we find that so hard to believe? Do fame and fortune always trump family?

Well, yes, we’ve seen example after example of coaches, athletes and management-types quitting or retiring to be with their families, only to go back to 16-hour days at the drop of a job offer. At his second retirement news conference, Michael Jordan said he was looking forward to driving his kids to school. Then he became an executive with the Wizards. Then he tore off his business suit like Clark Kent, believing he could fly, and began playing for Washington.

So we laugh.

But some of us who work long hours – maybe a lot of us – felt an immediate twinge of guilt when Van Gundy said he would have seen his family only 49 out of 170 days this season because of travel, games and practices. The mind can rationalize those numbers, but the heart knows better.

The heart knows that every business trip and every extra hour on the job is time away from family that can’t be recouped. The mind says that duty calls, and it does, but the heart doesn’t have to feel good about it.

But what if everyone had 9-to-5 jobs? Where would we be? What would get done? Would the client get the best from his attorney? Would the race for the cure to cancer get slowed to a walk? Would Jordan have been the best ever? Greatness would be replaced by pretty-goodness.

This is where the inner struggle comes in. Is it possible to be a family man or woman and still be excellent at something? Or are the two mutually exclusive?

There’s a part of us that doesn’t care how tough it is for athletes and coaches to have a home life. We just want them to be there for our entertainment. We want our heroes to be bigger than our lives. We don’t want them bogged down by responsibility.

But, despite evidence to the contrary, they’re human too.

“As my kids get older, I’ve come to realize how much being (with) them is valuable to them,” the Heat’s Alonzo Mourning said the other day. “I constantly hear on the phone, ‘Daddy, when are you coming home, when are you coming home, when are you coming home?’ That’s what truly matters.”

The convenient rationalization for athletes is that they need to provide for their family. With most of them already fabulously wealthy, it’s nonsense, but without that justification, where are they? They’re looking in the mirror at a driven, self-absorbed person.

It’s not just athletes. I know a writer who probably needs a nametag when he walks into his home, so rarely is he there. And it’s his choice to be on the road so much. Maybe his wife and children believe his absence is good for the family, but I doubt it.

In the past 16 months I’ve missed two family weddings because of my job, and if I can’t figure a way to weasel out of covering the Bears-Packers game, I’ll be working Dec. 25. What says “Christmas” more than a 4 p.m. kickoff in Green Bay?

Van Gundy has a wife and four children. He said that fact, and not Pat Riley’s breath on his neck, was why he stepped aside. If that’s the reason, good for him.

According to the Palm Beach Post, he spent his first day of freedom taking his children to school, picking them up, driving his son to an appointment and playing basketball with him. He did not watch the Heat beat the Bulls that night.

I did.