Of all my memories of Muhammad Ali, the most revealing wasn’t in the ring, where he was so often brilliant, or laughing with him at his training camp at Deer Lake, which was always a treat, or even driving back from Harlem one fall afternoon when he shocked a carload of young African-American kids next to us at a red light by rolling down the window of his limo, popping his head out, then watching with glee as they fell out in shock as he drove away.

No, the most revealing was in the kitchen.

I was sitting in the front of a bus in Miami on a Friday night before the Super Bowl, waiting to take a ride to the annual Commissioner’s Party, when a familiar voice said, “Hey, brother, someone wants to say hello.’’

It was Howard Bingham, a well-known L.A. photographer and Ali’s closest friend. He was climbing up the bus steps with Ali in tow. We sat down to talk but before any of that, Ali did what none of us, including me, thought to do. He shook the bus driver’s hand.

When we got to the site, the place was crawling with people, including a group waiting to whisk Ali off behind some velvet ropes. Among them was Don Shula, the legendary Dolphins’ coach. Ali suddenly veered off course, as he often did in life because his course wasn’t the world’s.

Shula reached out and said, “Muhammad! This way. There’s some important people over here.’’

“Important people in here, too,” Ali replied.

Then he walked through a service door into the kitchen to greet the folks working so hard to feed those “important people.” Most of them were black, as he knew they would be. Pandemonium broke out. He loved it more than they did.

That was the Muhammad Ali I was privileged to know. In a lifetime around world-class athletes, he was the Greatest Of All Time. Unlike so many who try to claim that title or have it thrust upon them, he really was.

Ali is arguably the greatest heavyweight champion in boxing history even though politics stole his prime years. Or perhaps he just sacrificed them for a higher cause.

Prior to his 3 1⁄2-year exile for refusing the draft in 1967, there had never been a heavyweight with his speed, agility and fluidity. He moved like a welterweight and hit like a heavyweight. When he upset Sonny Liston to win the title in 1964, making Liston quit as much by baffling him as battering him, Ali was only 22. Until that moment he was just some brash kid boxing dismissed as a loudmouth.

He may have been a loudmouth, but ultimately he spoke for racial equality, religious freedom and social justice. He spoke for a people long ignored. Spoke for those who had no voice and he paid the price but accepted that without allowing hate to poison his message.

Ali could be cruel at times, especially in his youth, both inside the ring and with cutting comments that made Joe Frazier, his noble opponent, hate him for most of his life. Over time those sharp edges smoothed out though, and Ali became an international symbol for justice and understanding. But understand this, too. When it was time to fight, few ever fought better or with more purpose.

Much of his speed was gone by the time he returned to boxing in 1970, so now he won with guile, hand speed and a cast-iron will. Frazier tested that in arguably the biggest fight in history, knocking Ali down in the final round at Madison Square Garden on March 8, 1971, to win a decision half the country felt supported the old ways and half mourned as far more than a boxing loss. It was a societal loss.

Ali twice avenged that defeat, became the only fighter to hold the lineal heavyweight title three times, won both the “Thrilla in Manila’’ against Frazier and the “Rumble in the Jungle’’ against George Foreman. After winning the title for the third time in a rematch with Leon Spinks in 1978, the nearly 37-year-old Ali looked as if he would leave the stage a champion, but few do in boxing.

Two years later he came back to face Larry Holmes, his former sparring partner and now world champion. He was a spent shell by then but he was Ali and so we believed in one last miracle.

There was none. He was just another old fighter that night whose storehouse of skills was used up. After his loyal liege, Angelo Dundee, stopped the fight with a defenseless Ali sitting on his stool, Holmes came to him in tears and later told a friend that every time he hit the man he idolized, he wished someone could cut his arms off.

Finally diagnosed with Parkinson’s in 1984, Ali fought that slowly debilitating disease as ferociously as he did his opponents inside the ring and out. He fought to the end, which came in an Arizona hospital at the age of 74.

The Greatest Of All Time is gone but no one will forget him. Not simply because he was a great fighter but because he was a great man who kept reminding us time and again that the important people aren’t just behind the velvet ropes.

They’re in the kitchen, too.