Ed Stokes Has the Tools, Now Must Show He Can Use Them

Ed Stokes isn’t sure who started the rumor.

“It’s going around that I can’t play inside,” he said from his home in Ladera Heights, “but I can play there when I’m into my game. Sometimes, when I’m not playing the way I should, I won’t do what I have to do inside, but in my head I know I can play there.”

As a 6-foot-10 center at St. Bernard High averaging about 11 points and 8 rebounds a game, Stokes has little reason to worry about rumors.

Tendinitis in his right hip prevented him from practicing for all of November and early December. But Division I colleges continue to send the junior more mail than he can shelve. He might still be growing and most observers agree that he won’t blossom until his senior year.

It’s not where Stokes will play that’s in question. It’s how.

“The ingredients are there, but it’s entirely up to him whether he becomes a dominant inside player,” said Don Mead, who provides prep scouting reports to major colleges. “After a player’s junior year, it doesn’t happen very often that he’ll become a different player. Everybody dreams of it happening, but it all depends on how much he wants to develop.”

Every couple of days Stokes picks up a new stack of letters at school encouraging him to attend Arizona, the nation’s top ranked team, Syracuse (12th) and Iowa (18th), among others. The stack keeps getting bigger, totaling almost 700 letters, Stokes said.

Meanwhile, wins over Servite and Bishop Montgomery and last Friday’s 70-65 upset of Bishop Amat balanced against road losses to Amat, Mater Dei and St. Paul--three of The Times’ top five Southern Section 5-A teams--have left No. 6 St. Bernard in fourth place in the Angelus League heading into Friday’s rematch at Servite.

Last Friday’s win over Bishop Amat kept St. Bernard in contention for the league title. However, to win the league the Vikings must beat Servite (away), St. Paul (home) and Montgomery (away) and hope Amat and Mater Dei falter.

The Vikings lost by just one point, 75-74, at Amat despite losing Stokes and Eric Nelson, their best scorer, to early foul trouble. Stokes turned in 11 points in the first quarter and finished with three swishes from three-point land, but he picked up his fourth foul one minute into the second half and was unable to play aggressively.

Still, the opinion of Amat Coach Alex Acosta didn’t change. “He’s 6-10 and has a great touch. You can’t teach that,” Acosta said. “He’s got ungodly potential.”

But Mead feels “potential” can sometimes be misleading. “Unless he changes his game some, I don’t think he is going to be a really big-time player. Right now, he is nowhere near as good as he thinks he is.”

Stokes doesn’t consider himself a star. He wants his performance to speak for itself.

He also wants an NBA career preceded by four years of power forward in college. So it’s likely he’ll have to develop his lanky 220-pound frame, improve his inside game and maintain his touch from outside.

Is he destined for the perimeter?

“Not if I have anything to do about it,” said his father, Ed. “I think he has a tendency to develop (Golden State Warriors’) Ralph Sampson’s skills . . . to drift outside. His game should be in the low post. He has the post moves, but he gets lazy and fires the jumper instead.

“Ed has the most potential for a devastating inside game, and unfortunately that is the part that requires the most development.”

The elder Stokes, an orthopedic surgeon who played for the 1963-64 Indiana team, wants his son to mature in an athletic environment free of NCAA violations and far from athletes who win more often than they graduate. He reads all college mail addressed to his son before Stokes reads it himself.

“I hope to have our choices down to 10 by September,” said the elder Stokes, “and then we can choose five finalists.”

Next November, Stokes can agree early to attend a particular school or he can wait until April, 1989, to sign a letter of intent.

His priority now is a victory in all three of St. Bernard’s remaining league games. After lambasting Bishop Montgomery, 100-58, last week at home, the Vikings’ league finale on Feb. 12 against the Knights should be a cakewalk, but a rematch with St. Paul is likely to be more contested after St. Bernard lost, 98-92, at St. Paul two weeks ago.

Stokes, who became a starter midway through last season, tossed in 15 points and grabbed 18 rebounds in the St. Paul loss. “Everything inside was his,” Stokes’ father recalled.

But at age 16, said St. Paul Coach Mike Dineen, Stokes’ inside game may not be the factor everyone believes.

“Once he’s fully grown into his body, he’ll be a total player,” Dineen said. “We bumped him around inside and he moved out and hurt us. He has great form on his shot for a guy 6-10. He plays really good facing the basket and he’ll learn the other stuff.”

Opponents know he’ll bury his jumper. But St. Bernard Coach Jim McClune sees a dilemma in Stokes’ long-range eye.

“He’s as good a shooter from 18 feet as anyone on the team, but, unfortunately, we don’t need him out there,” McClune said. “Once we get the idea in our heads that we should be a little more conservative on offense, we’ll go to Ed more inside. Right now, our shooting percentage isn’t as high as it should be.”

Stokes can’t be faulted when he scores from the perimeter. It’s Stokes’ on-again, off-again concentration that bothers McClune.

“He knows it all, but it’s just a question of focusing it all and putting it all together in one game and playing hard for the whole game,” McClune said. “He loses concentration sometimes. He’s just not as aggressive as I think he will be.”

Stokes realizes he plays poorly when he’s not aggressive. But his ideas about what it takes to play pro ball--and his liking for the power game of Charles Barkley of the Philadelphia 76ers--suggest how determined he is to overcome his deficiencies.

“Barkley is agile,” said Stokes, the NBA aspirant. “That’s what I want to be like. He shoots and plays inside. I don’t have that kind of body, but with weights I can get stronger.”

A 260-pound Stokes?

“Colleges will take him in a second,” said Acosta, “because they all think they can put 50 pounds on him.”

That’s a rumor Stokes doesn’t mind going around.