Oakland is no place for Baron Davis

“I’m the king of L.A.,” Baron Davis likes to say, with a smile on his bearded face.

But he doesn’t even play here. He plays in Oakland. And it’s not right. They don’t deserve him.

We do.

“Comfortable everywhere,” he likes to say, grinning some more. There is a chuckle in his voice. “From Compton to Malibu.”

Everybody knows, after all, that Davis was a stud at UCLA before he became an NBA star in New Orleans, then was injured, barked at coaches, got traded, and came back to California, but to the wrong place.

Oakland.

He’s pure Los Angeles. Up in Oakland, you can’t even see his Aston Martin. Too much fog. They don’t have that kind of fog in Malibu.

People who love him, who have been there from the start, they’re not from Oakland. Snoop Dogg. Kate Hudson. Penny Marshall. Jessica Alba. Owen Wilson. Brian Grazer. Those kinds of folks aren’t Oakland. They’re not even San Francisco. They’re pixie dust. Hollywood.

Other folks around here love him too. They’re not pixie dust. He has fans in Long Beach and Orange County and the San Fernando Valley and downtown Los Angeles and on the street corners south of downtown, where he grew up.

Last season, Baron Davis worked like a snake charmer. He lifted the Golden State Warriors, Oakland’s team, from their perennial pit. Then he led them to the postseason for the first time in more than a decade.

He steered that undersized team to one of the most stirring upsets in NBA history: a cold-hearted drubbing of title-favorite Dallas.

It was the Twilight Zone.

Those games up north looked like Lakers games during the best of times. Wall-to-wall crazies. The pixie dust had star-trekked north to watch their boy do his thing.

In the wrong town.

Now it’s 8 a.m. Thursday, and he’s down here -- in the right town.

Dressed in loose jeans, he is standing next to Paul Pierce of the Boston Celtics, in a studio at radio station KJLH, promoting their gig this weekend for LA Stars, a charity they’ve taken over from Magic Johnson.

The highlight comes today, with a community carnival at USC that starts in the late morning followed by an NBA and celebrity all-star game that tips off at 5 p.m. in the Galen Center. The proceeds go to inner-city neighborhoods.

From his KJLH interview -- with Stevie Wonder -- he’s off to a daily workout he refuses to miss. His beefy black SUV pulls up at a gym populated mostly by men with biceps the size of volleyballs. But he notices a middle-aged mother struggling with a weight machine.

“Can I help you?” he asks.

For 10 minutes, a star NBA point guard becomes her personal trainer.

Back in his SUV, he mentions his Aston Martin DB9, a two-seat rocket that lists for about $200,000, the kind of car most of us see only in James Bond movies.

“Draws too much attention,” he says. “I think it’s time for a Prius.”

He might be from South Central and help middle-aged ladies in the gym and have misgivings about his Aston Martin, but Baron Davis can’t entirely escape the other part of his heritage: Crossroads High in Santa Monica.

It’s a tony, Westside school, where athletic talent helped him win a scholarship, and where he met Hudson and Dustin Hoffman’s kids and Denzel Washington’s too.

It was where, for better or worse, he became more than just a regular guy.

He carries two cellphones. They ring about once a minute. This time it’s a live interview with a Los Angeles sports show, and the host starts pressing for juicy details about some of his friends.

Especially Alba, the starlet who was, until recently, the girlfriend of Davis’ manager and best friend.

Davis yanks the cellphone from his ear. He presses a button to hang up, and he tosses the phone down onto the seat of the SUV.

“I’m not,” he says, “going to talk about my friends.” He grows angrier. “Those questions aren’t about basketball.”

He composes himself. He’s still angry, but he calls back. It’s about helping poor kids. With skillful articulation, he confines the interview to sports.

Maybe it will help the gate grow at the charity game.

During a stopover at the Beverly Wilshire hotel, where he irons a white T-shirt in his room, he’s on a cellphone again. This time it’s the man he considers his mentor, Magic himself.

The two have been close since Davis was 15 and they met at Pauley Pavilion. On the phone with Magic Johnson, this 28-year-old star with an $85-million contract becomes a kid again.

“Hey, big bro, I miss you, big bro,” he says. “I need to see you. We need to talk, because I have to pick your brain about something. . . . I can’t wait to see you, man.”

Next stop: a street corner on Pico Boulevard. I know this place. The last time I was here, I wasn’t covering sports. I was covering a drive-by shooting.

Baron Davis is comfortable here. He climbs out of the Yukon at a corner with a hot dog stand. Around him gather men with oak-tree-sized arms and large tattoos. They watch the streets with seasoned eyes.

For half an hour, Davis stands with his friends, slapping backs, pumping fists, hugging and high-fiving. As professorially articulate as he can be in an interview, he can talk on the street with the heat and salt of a dockworker pulling a double shift.

The men thank him for cash he has given to a neighborhood football team for kids.

“Baron Davis, you be good.”

“Brother Baron, we’ll see you again.”

“We love you, man. You are for real, baby.”

Now it’s off to Staples Center for the X Games. Here he stands in private suites, one of the few brown-skinned faces in a cascade of supermodels, actors, musicians and skateboarding icons. He walks up to Grazer, the Hollywood producer.

Grazer, it turns out, is another confidant. They talk about movie projects and how Davis, who has formed a film company called Verso Entertainment, plans to return to UCLA. He wants to know more, take more classes.

Grazer turns to me. That guy, he says, is one of the most remarkable human beings he’s ever met.

“He’s just fluid,” Grazer says. “A chameleon in his ability to be with people from all walks of life. The guy has a totally unique ability to sample other cultures, take from them and use them for practical purpose in his own life.”

That’s a pretty good description of an L.A. guy.

Wasted in Oakland.

Baron Davis isn’t perfect. He can be hot-headed. He’s had his injuries. But he says he has matured.

The way he played last year, it’s hard not to believe him. His best years could be coming, as they came for Steve Nash and Jason Kidd when they approached 30.

I say we get this guy. He has two years left on his contract, but an option to leave sooner. If he stays healthy and the Warriors do as they always do and botch talks on a new deal, an L.A. team should swoop in.

Doesn’t matter which team he’d play for.

And, aside from Kobe, it doesn’t matter who we’d have to lose.

This is someone who could wow us on the court and help bring us together off of it. We need that.

It’s time to bring the king of L.A. home.

--

kurt.streeter@latimes.com