For Washburn, Life in a Mercedes Can Really Be Heck

Chris Washburn, like so many of us in California, can attribute most of his current problems in life to his car.

Chris Washburn is the Golden State Warriors’ rookie forward who has his own live-in baby-sitter, to help him get to games on time and remind him to take his vitamins.

His car is a Mercedes-Benz 500 SEL, with a Rolls-Royce interior and a stereo sound system about as large and powerful as the one used at Woodstock. The windows are tinted and the car is painted metallic black, with red trim. The emblems are accented in red.

In short, it neither looks nor sounds like a Mercedes-Benz that might be driven by, say, an IBM executive. It looks, to many cops, anyway, like a car that might possibly be driven by a pimp, at best, or an illegal drug distributor, at worst.

Until recently, Washburn was living in a hotel in East Oakland. In that part of town, if you’re determined to score some drugs, you won’t blow the whole day on the project.

“The cops stop me a lot,” Washburn says, during an explanation of why he has already been late for seven practices or games in his first month as a pro. “The windows are so dark, they think it’s a drug dealer.”

So how many times has he been stopped by the cops in Oakland?

“A lot,” he says. “It’s in the 20’s now.”

I ask Washburn, who is black, if he sees anything racial here.

“Oh, no,” he says. “There’s a lot of drugs in Oakland, and they just want to stop to see who it is driving. They’re always nice. One stopped me the other day. When he saw who I was, he said, ‘You play for the Warriors.’ He wanted to talk, but it was about 10 minutes before I was supposed to be in the locker room, so he gave me a semi-escort to the arena.”

Before bringing up the subject of baby-sitters, I have to ask Washburn the burning question. Why a Rolls-Royce interior in a Mercedes-Benz?

“I thought it wouldn’t be smart for a rookie to come into the league and buy a Rolls-Royce,” he says. “So I did the next best thing.”

Now, about the baby-sitter. The report is that Washburn’s agent hired a man named Jackie Knowles to hang out with Washburn and acquaint the 21-year-old rookie with alarm clocks and calendars.

Why bother?

Because Washburn is 6-11 and 255, with good speed and very nice moves. Because he was the No. 3 player selected in the draft, behind Brad Daugherty and Len Bias. Because he’s a potential franchise-maker, the kind of player the perennially floundering Warriors have lost so many of.

The Warriors knew they weren’t drafting Andy Hardy. Washburn’s brief college career--two years at North Carolina State--was marred by a grade scandal, a car-buying scandal and separate convictions for assault on a female and theft of a stereo.

“We knew when we took him we’d have to be patient in a lot of areas,” says George Karl, Warrior coach. “Unfortunately, one of those areas has been discipline and dedication.”

Before the baby-sitter came on the scene, Karl assigned veteran forward Greg Ballard to be Washburn’s big brother/baby-sitter. Ballard has three children of his own and quickly wearied of the job. So Washburn’s agent called in Knowles, a youth worker in New York City and an old friend of Washburn’s. Knowles agreed to leave his job for a while and hang out in Oakland.

It’s not a new concept. When John Lucas was having drug problems, the Washington Bullets hired a baby-sitter and instructed him not to let Lucas out of his sight. The Bullets went on a trip the next day. They checked into a hotel. Five minutes later, the baby-sitter was walking around the lobby asking, “Anyone seen John?”

The L.A. Clippers have run relay teams of baby-sitters at Benoit Benjamin, their young center. The sitters have been players or assistant coaches, and none have been effective. What Benjamin needs is a real baby-sitter, the normal kind, the teen-ager who comes to your house and eats everything in the refrigerator.

Washburn, apparently, just needs a friend. He’s had some hard times in life and could use someone around to help him adjust to a new world. People with the team, from Karl to newspaper reporters, say he’s a nice young man, unfailingly pleasant but short on guidance.

Washburn is so easygoing he doesn’t even mind when people refer to Knowles as Chris’ baby-sitter. So far, the sitter has worked out well.

“Chris has been much better (since Knowles arrived),” Karl says.

Washburn started feeling more squared away when he moved out of the downtown hotel recently and into a home in a fancy Oakland suburb.

“It’s a nicer area,” Washburn says. “The police there are used to seeing Mercedeses and Rolls-Royces.”

Yes, but not both on the same set of wheels.