MOVING FORWARD : Bernard King of Bullets Says He Not Ready to Leave the NBA

Washington Bullets forward Bernard King recently traveled to New York for the premiere of “Joe Turner Come and Gone,” a new play by Pulitzer-prize winning playwright August Wilson. King is an investor in the production (along with National Basketball Assn. players Ralph Sampson and Norm Nixon, among others), and his excursion may not be the stuff headlines are made of, but it does represent something of a departure for a player who rarely mixes his vocation--basketball--with his avocation--life.

“They’re two different worlds,” King said. “As an athlete I enjoy this arena--the games, the being in the locker rooms--but they’re two different lifestyles and I try to disassociate one from the other. I don’t like to talk basketball away from the arena. When I leave (retire), it will be a difficult task enough without always having to talk about basketball.”

It is hard to envision Bernard King doing something he doesn’t enjoy, just as it is difficult to picture him missing out on something in which he wants to take part. Like basketball. It was nearly three years ago that King, then a member of the New York Knicks, almost totally destroyed his right knee in a fall during a game against the Kansas City Kings.

After missing the better part of two seasons, the 10-year veteran has shown that he’s not ready to walk away from this particular set of bright lights, especially not now, with the Bullets making a run at a playoff spot. After getting a 2-year, $2.2 million investment from the Bullets, King has been boffo for much of the season, scoring at a 20-points-per-game clip.

Despite his fame, King, 31, may be one of the most reclusive talents in the NBA, a player perhaps more at home in an art gallery in Italy than at the latest local hot spot.

“ ‘B’ picks and chooses, you’ve got to understand. He’s his own man, always has, always will be,” said Bullets guard Darrell Walker, who was a teammate of King’s on the Knicks.

When Walker adds that he’s fairly sure he and King “aren’t real, real, real close but (are) close in our own little way,” you don’t scratch your head because it makes sense. Unless you’re family or what his brother Albert, a guard with the Philadelphia 76ers, calls “a small circle,” chances are you’re only going to get so close to Bernard King.

“There is a sense of privacy that I prefer in my life. My life isn’t an open book,” he said. “There are people who want 30 or 40 other people around--I’m not one of them. Take the time I was injured. I heard from everyone I love and was close to in those two years. There are others who have been through similar things and wonder where everyone went.”

King’s duality, developed in part because of the uncertainty of his future in basketball following his injury, has been called into play of late. When he recently missed eight games because of a lower back strain, he returned to rave reviews and standing ovations by scoring 21 points in 16 minutes in a victory over the Phoenix Suns on March 9.

Two nights later, he struggled against the Utah Jazz, missing his first 5 shots from the field en route to a 3-for-10, 10-point effort. In his next outing, the normally steady, 79% free-throw shooter missed 4 of 7 free throws against the Philadelphia 76ers.

Reaggravating his back, King sat out the next six games. For a man accustomed to being in the spotlight of postseason play, the timing has been askew, to say the least.

“There’s a month left. This is the time that competition comes to bear,” he said. “Every game’s a big game--those are the types of games that I haven’t been in for the last two years.”

King’s last experience with postseason play came in 1984 and was unquestionably one of the most spectacular sustained efforts in playoff history. In the first round, the Knicks came from behind to beat the Detroit Pistons in a five-game series, then pressed the eventual NBA champion Boston Celtics to seven games in the Eastern Conference semifinals. Leading the way was King, who averaged almost 35 points per game despite being double- and triple-teamed on virtually every possession.

Now though, King is really the fifth forward on the team (behind John Williams, Charles Jones, Terry Catledge and Mark Alarie) and despite his output with Washington (he is the only Bullets’ player with a 50% mark from the field), time is getting scarce for him to gain ground before the playoffs.

“I’m just planning on letting it happen,” said Coach Wes Unseld when asked how he’d go about reintegrating King into the lineup. “ ‘B’ has been a 20-point scorer for us, but he’s not that right now. He has a long way to go.

“He’ll let me know--I’ll know. I’ve watched him for almost a year now. I know when he’s in a groove and doing his thing. That’s in contrast to what it is now--a guy whose timing is off and who’s trying to get back in the flow.”

When he does return, King will resume a season that is almost sure to end with his receiving the NBA comeback player of the year award. The honor might have been won before the start of the regular season. He scored 33 points in 36 minutes during an exhibition game against the Cleveland Cavaliers in his Washington debut Nov. 2, but stressed that he should be judged on the entirety of the season, not just a handful of games.

But that has proven to be hard because the player in question is Bernard King, recovering from an injury that no one else has been able to overcome and trying to do it in the harsh glare that has followed him down to Washington from New York.

From that standpoint, perhaps one of the worst things King might have done was score a then-season-high 32 points in a 122-107 victory over the New Jersey Nets on Dec. 12. The game was played at the Meadowlands, in the shadow of the Manhattan skyline, and featured King at his best: jump shots as well as the slashing drives to the hoop from the wings.

Afterward, though, more than one New York writer sniffed that had it been the “old” King, he would have finished the game with at least 50 points. It was just one more measure of what King has lacked in his comeback. Others have added that he doesn’t have the same explosiveness as before his injury; that he doesn’t leap as well, and thus, can’t play against taller, shot-blocking teams.

Unfailingly polite and civil under most circumstances, King is able to keep his voice level when the subject is discussed but it’s obvious that the topic generates irritation.

“It’s very easy to pick apart anyone’s game in the league--(Larry) Bird’s, Magic (Johnson’s) -- anyone’s,” King said. “Regardless of what I do now, a percentage of people will say things like that, but it’s baloney.

“I don’t have time for doomsayers or pessimistic individuals. I gave up two years of my life to get back to the NBA. You take any player away for two years, even without an injury. From day one, will he be the same player he was before? No way.

“I don’t have to be as quick as I was in high school or even earlier in my NBA career. I think I’m more effective now. Who’s to say I have to jump as high? I know the game inside and out and that acumen allows me to play the way I play.

“Should I become bothered? Should I allow those thoughts to enter my thinking? No. I deal with positive feelings. I try to create an environment in my personal life and my profession that’s positive. . . . I don’t think of anything that’s negative.”

So strong is King’s pursuit of excellence that he has virtually disappeared from the locker room immediately after sub-par performances.

“When he plays it looks like he’s always trying to create something, some masterpiece of beauty,” said Unseld. “My feeling is that he approaches the game as if it were some sort of art form.”

As stylish as he might have been beforehand, King admits that, in some ways, his injury helped provide a measure of focus to his life.

“I really would not wish that experience on anyone, but when something like that happens you can look upon it as totally negative or perhaps as a kind of special experience,” he said. “Had I sat on the sidelines for two years just thinking about not being able to play, it could have been devastating. Instead, I took the time that I was injured to myself and for myself.

“It was freedom and a chance to grow with one’s self. Over the course of a basketball season, you don’t get out as much and there’s not much that you really want to do anyway. During the injury, I wasn’t traveling and I had more control over my life.”

What he calls “expanding his horizons” also gave King a release from the intensive rehabilitation that was necessary for his return to the game. During the time he was out of action, King usually worked six hours a day, six days a week.

That, save for a few token appearances at Knicks games, was it as far as basketball was concerned. Reportedly, team officials were upset that their star player was rarely around to provide leadership and inspiration for young players like Patrick Ewing, but King disagrees.

“I could’ve gone to games for two years or done things the way that some people thought I should have, but if I had, I honestly don’t think I would have ever played again,” he said.

“The result (his coming to the Bullets as a free agent before the start of this season) would have been the same, and the bottom line is that I can live with the end results of how I did things.”