Growing Pains

Women hit on the two tall, baby-faced teens in hotel lobbies and shopping malls. Strangers in suits flash business cards and offer to take good care of their money. Fans shove autograph books and scraps of paper at them to sign between bites at restaurants.

Eighteen-year-olds Jermaine O’Neal of the Portland Trail Blazers and Kobe Bryant of the Los Angeles Lakers are getting quite an education as the two youngest rookies in the NBA.

As the season winds down, they’re still not sure if they made the mistake of their lives by jumping from high school to the pros or set themselves up just right for the time of their lives.

Coming out of a draft that featured the greatest leap of early entry players in league history, O’Neal and Bryant have spent much of the season sitting impatiently near the end of the bench, sneaking furtive glances at the coach, awaiting a call.

They have settled for playing a few minutes a game, too often in garbage time, and resigned themselves to watching other hotshots--Stephon Marbury, Allen Iverson, Shareef Abdur-Rahim, Marcus Camby, Kerry Kittles, Antoine Walker--compete for Rookie-of-the-Year honors.

No time equals no points, no assists, no rebounds and no respect. O’Neal and Bryant have comforted themselves by taking a ride with their teammates to the playoffs, and as destiny would have it, against each other.

And, of course, they have made plenty of money--O’Neal $727,000, Bryant $1.02 million.

Yet, as they each readily acknowledge, money wasn’t the chief motivation for the quick jump to the pros. It was more about the challenge, the choices they had, and that dream that lurks in the heart of every serious player--that fortune will tap him on the shoulder to be the next Magic Johnson or Michael Jordan. Then comes the cold splash of reality.

“One of the hardest things this year was not knowing whether you’re going to play or how many minutes you’re going to play,” Bryant said. “But at the same time that kind of helps you, because you just have to be ready every night.”

Unleashed at the Rookie All-Star Game in February, he scored 31 points and sealed the slam-dunk title with a between-the-legs jam.

Bryant and O’Neal have found out what it’s like to fly to freezing Minneapolis one day, practice, play, rush to the bus, take a charter jet through a snowstorm to Denver for a game the following night, and get back on the charter an hour after the buzzer for a trip back home.

They’ve gobbled snacks on the run, tuned out the world with headphones, and thought about checking into hotels under aliases, like some of the most famous NBA players, to avoid calls from groupies and fans.

“Sure the groupies come after you,” Bryant said. “Living in L.A., how could you not be approached by women like that? They tend to be older, but some are younger. You have to handle it in a professional manner. There are these women who want to go out with every player, and you’ve got to worry about disease, about having someone say they’re having your baby. I’ve learned all about that growing up.”

They’ve dealt with injuries and pumped iron regularly in the weight room, trying to bulk up their skinny bodies. O’Neal slurps an athletic version of the geriatric supplement Ensure; Bryant orders apple pie a la mode from room service in every hotel. Life on the road has a comfortable simplicity to it--sleep, work out, watch TV, stay in the room and keep out of trouble.

“I don’t trust people, except friends I’ve known my entire life and my family,” Bryant said. “I think you’ve got to have a protective shield.”

Travel can get old quickly and a kind of loneliness can set in for celebrities retreating from crowds and older teammates. So far, O’Neal and Bryant still feel like kids in a toy shop.

“It’s fun,” Bryant said. “I’m in the NBA. No way I’m bored. In four years, then I’ll probably be like, ‘Oh, God. We’ve got another road trip.’ Right now, it’s great.”

O’Neal lives with a brother and cousin and often calls his mother back home in Columbia, S.C. Bryant’s parents came out West from Philadelphia to live with him in the six-bedroom house he rents in Pacific Palisades. He and his father, Joe, who played in the NBA and Italy, talk hoops and shoot pool at home on days off.

O’Neal and Bryant have spoken to each other often during the season. Neither has any real regrets, though each felt disappointment at times and took comfort in the friendship and experience they shared.

“I read the autobiography of Jackie Robinson,” Bryant said. “I was thinking about all the hard times I’d go through this year, and that it’d never compare to what he went through. That just kind of helped put things in perspective.”

If O’Neal were a better actor or less honest, he might have been able to hide his unhappiness about sitting so much. But it shows in the sadness in his eyes and his pouting lips as he watches from the bench. He finished the regular season averaging 10 minutes, 4.1 points and 2.8 rebounds in 45 games.

He had a few strong performances, particularly a 20-point, six-rebound game in 25 minutes against Seattle in January. But the opportunities have been rare, since he’s been competing for time against Rasheed Wallace and Cliff Robinson.

From O’Neal’s viewpoint, he has two more years to prove himself with Portland or move on. First-round draft choices, like O’Neal and Bryant, sign three-year deals, then become free agents.

College, especially one of the top programs, never was a serious option for O’Neal because of his poor grades, low SAT scores and disinterest in school. He had no chance of going to a North Carolina or a Duke, where he might have starred on the court but would have struggled in the classroom.

“If I had made the test score, I probably would have (gone to college),” O’Neal said. “I don’t know how long I would have stayed. I might have just stayed one year.”

Still growing after entering the league at 6-11 and 225 pounds--he’s closer to 7-1 and 240 now--O’Neal shows the promise of becoming a good power forward or an unusually tall small forward. He has a decent touch from the outside, isn’t afraid to mix it up underneath, is eager to learn, and exhibits court savvy.

“I’m probably one of the smartest 18-year-olds in the United States,” O’Neal said cockily. “I can really catch on to stuff real quick.”

Off the court, he’s had to adapt to a life of fame and the strangeness of living so far from home. Although he says he likes Portland, he finds the gray, drizzly weather depressing and isn’t fond of the most popular local cuisine.

“I don’t like fish, and that’s a problem if you’re in Portland,” O’Neal said. “It’s hard to find a restaurant that has the kind of Southern food I’m used to. So mostly we eat at home.

“But the funniest thing is when me and my friends were hitting the mall and two women just walked up and said, ‘All right, you looking like you need a friend.’ They were about 10 years older, and they just started talking to me and saying they wanted tickets out of town. That stuff happens all the time when I go to the mall or when I’m just traveling around.”

O’Neal brushes off those encounters, saying he’s a one-woman guy who already has a girlfriend.

He felt fortunate to go through the NBA’s rookie orientation program last summer, where he learned about some of the pitfalls he might face and where he deepened his friendship with Bryant. They first met at a summer all-star camp as high school sophomores.

“In the orientation, they told us about some of the stuff you need to be aware of,” O’Neal said. “Bars. People that try to influence you for different things. Women. Diseases. The fact that you might play 27 minutes one night, then maybe three the next, and four games later you haven’t played any.”

Besides the orientation program, the NBA makes officials available to help or guide rookies and veterans. There’s also a group of NBA moms who meet to talk about the problems their kids face. And the NBA Players Association makes retired players available for guidance.

While O’Neal plays forward, Bryant has had to learn to play three spots--small forward, shooting guard and point guard--to take advantage of his size, quickness and overall leadership potential. That gets him a little more time on the court, but also makes it harder for him to fit into the flow in positions that put a premium on finesse, experience and skill.

“You can learn only so much by watching,” said Bryant, who averaged 15.5 minutes, 7.6 points, 1.3 assists, and 1.9 rebounds in 71 regular-season games. “You have to get out there and make some mistakes to really grasp what you’re trying to do.”

Los Angeles coach Del Harris has had a delicate balancing act to perform this season, weaving the talented but restructured Lakers into a championship contender despite injuries--including serious ones to Shaquille O’Neal--and developing Bryant and rookie standouts Derek Fisher and Travis Knight.

Bryant has the most exciting talent of the three but seems at times out of control on the court, like a jazz trumpeter taking off on his own riff in the middle of a classical music concert.

“He can rebound, defend, pass and do it all at a high level,” Harris said. “His only thing is shifting down to where he doesn’t try to dominate the ball all the time and run the show all the time like he did in high school.”

Lakers general manager and Hall of Fame guard Jerry West, who sees Bryant as a potential superstar, put pressure on Harris midway through the season to play him more. Harris tried to find minutes for Bryant but was quick to yank him when Bryant played out of the flow of his teammates.

Harris has been both impressed and frustrated by the depth of Bryant’s basketball knowledge, much of it picked up from watching his father play. At times, Harris wished Bryant would listen to his father less and the coaches more.

“He has taken on a kind of shield as a defense mechanism because he didn’t go to college,” Harris said. “He has too much pride to come in as a wide-eyed kid, wanting to know everything, because he is unique in his talent.”

Bryant came into the league at 6-5, has grown an inch since, and thinks he has another growth spurt in him that might take him to 6-8, allowing him to play in the backcourt with the size of Magic Johnson.

“Everybody on the team sees that he’s very gifted athletically,” said assistant coach Kurt Rambis, who played with Johnson on the Lakers’ championship teams.

“They all seem to laugh at themselves when Kobe does something spectacular to burn them in practice. I remember Elden (Campbell) saying one time, ‘Damn, you should have come out after the 11th grade.”’

Whereas O’Neal is a few months younger and less comfortable with big-city life and nonstop travel after growing up in South Carolina, Bryant has had no trouble socially making the transition to NBA life. If anything, Bryant comes across as a little too sophisticated and worldly for those expecting a teen in the NBA to have a gee-whiz-isn’t-this-incredible attitude. He knew all his life he would be in this position.

“You couldn’t tell me otherwise,” he said. “Like with the camps. They give these speeches about one in a million. I would just sit there, and I’d hear what they’d be saying, and I’d be saying, ‘Hey, I’m one in a million.”’

After living in Italy from the age of 6 to 14, Bryant speaks fluent Italian and decent Spanish. He’s traveled and stayed in fine hotels most of his life. He speaks more intelligently than many of the players who attended college for four years. And he plans to take summer classes at UCLA, concentrating on business courses to learn how to invest the millions he’ll earn.

“It is your money; you have to have pride in handling it,” he said.

Rambis admires that aspect of Bryant, especially after seeing so many players blow their fortunes or get taken in by unscrupulous advisers.

“There’s clearly a looking-after-him attitude on this team,” Rambis said. “Not because he’s a little baby and can’t look out for himself, but because everybody has a real feel for what he’s going through. We all lived away from home for the first time. He’s in this setting where almost every other person is a couple of years significantly older than him.

“You have to protect yourself. A lot of people want your money, your time, your energy,” Rambis said. “They’ll suck it right out of you. That’s kind of a sick, perverted way to be living your life, but that’s the way it is in the NBA.”

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

How they stack up

A comparison of Los Angeles Lakers Kobe Bryant and Portland Trail Blazers’ Jermaine O’Neal:

Reg. season

*--*

Player G Min. FG % Ft % Reb. Ast. Stl. Pts. Bryant 71 15.5 41.7 81.9 1.9 1.3 49 7.6

*--*

Reg. season

*--*

Player G Min. FG % Ft % Reb. Ast. Stl. Pts. O’Neal 45 10.2 45.1 60.3 2.8 0.2 2 4.1

*--*