Celtics Rookie Ron Grandison Has All the Tools, but So Far He’s Kept Them in a Box Next to the Bench : Ex-St. Bernard Flash Sits and Waits

Despite the emergence of a younger, quicker Celtics team, unwritten rules of the National Basketball Assn. are making Ron Grandison’s rookie season a quiet one.

The former St. Bernard High School standout, one of three first-year players to earn a Celtics uniform this season, fits neatly into new Coach Jimmy Rodgers’ scheme--he is big (6-8, 217), fast, loves to run the floor and leans on his rebounding and defense. But he’s had about as much chance to prove himself as Gaston Green has with the Rams.

In the NBA a rookie’s path to stardom, or simply seeing more than zeroes beside his name in the box score, usually requires a thankless apprenticeship. Veterans aren’t about to yield minutes to unproven players, nor are first-year coaches about to force proven players onto the bench.

So, though Rodgers often has called on former UC Santa Barbara guard Brian Shaw and three other more experienced bench players to spell the lethargic starters with trapping defense and jack-rabbit offense, Grandison is cheerleading more often than not. Even foot surgery that will sideline Larry Bird until March hasn’t provided Grandison with decent playing time.

“There is nothing I can do about the situation,” Grandison said recently after practice at Hellenic College in Brookline, Mass. “I just have to keep myself ready and, when the time comes, produce.”

Grandison, who played on a St. Bernard team that featured Oregon State’s Eric Knox, Cal’s Leonard Taylor and former USC forward Rod Keller, would have reason to worry if this were last year. Former Celtics Coach K. C. Jones rarely used his bench--and it showed. When forwards Brad Lohaus and Reggie Lewis came off the pine, Boston lost its edge. Neither the team nor the bench players benefited.

Jones has been kicked upstairs and Rodgers is intent on getting significant contributions from more than his starting five.

“Right now we are using 9 or 10 and that is a lot, but that doesn’t mean Ronnie won’t enter into the picture,” Rodgers said. “It is a long season and it’s just hard to predict how the minutes are gonna fall.”

Some might say that merely becoming a Celtic is more than enough for Grandison to ask, that he shouldn’t expect to have a uniform and play in it too. Shouldn’t he just be thankful that he outplayed journeyman Ennis Whatley and third-round draft choice Gerald Paddio in the preseason? Hardly, says Grandison, who is logging more minutes on the bench than on Boston Garden’s parquet floor.

“I think the game is changing for the Celtics and for the whole league,” Grandison said. “We played some games early in the season where we played really slow basketball and we just got run off the floor. They are gonna need young guys like me, Reggie (Lewis) and Brian (Shaw) who can keep up. The opportunity is there and if I just wait and be patient, it’ll come.”

If Grandison, 24, could survive his rocky pre-NBA career, logic says he can make a living in the NBA.

He spent four years at St. Bernard and won a CIF 3-A Division championship in his senior year, when he averaged 14 points a game. But his basketball career deteriorated a year later.

After averaging 6.1 points and 3.6 rebounds in 28 games in his freshman year at UC Irvine, Grandison expected to be a pivotal Anteater the following year. He felt more like an ant. He played in 29 games but never started and averaged just 4.4 points and 3.1 rebounds.

“I started out doing well but all of a sudden (Coach Bill) Mulligan sat me on the bench and kept me there, and I couldn’t understand it,” Grandison recalled.

Grandison said Mulligan told him that his attitude was suspect, that five guys would play most that year and that Grandison was the sixth man. “I played 2-3 minutes of every game the whole year. I accepted that role but it was like (Mulligan) still wanted to bring me down as a person, and I didn’t accept that,” Grandison said.

Mulligan recently remembered Grandison as a “front-line sub, a guy who would have started his last two years.” The problem with Grandison, Mulligan said, was his patience. He didn’t have enough for an underclassman. “We beat USC one night and that was a pretty big win around here, and the next day he came in bitching about playing time. It just got down to that,” Mulligan said.

At the end of the 1983-84 season, according to Mulligan, Grandison and his mother Myra walked into Mulligan’s office and told the coach that Ron was contemplating a transfer. “The deal with his mother--I had a problem with him after that,” Mulligan said, “but I think a guy like that can make it in the NBA as an 11th or 12th man. I don’t think he’ll ever be a starter.”

For the record, Myra Grandison believes her son has plenty of patience. Since he was a child, Myra said, Ron started at the bottom and worked his way up. Transferring out of UC Irvine, however, wasn’t the quickest way to move up in basketball. Especially when Grandison decided to transfer to Tulane. At the time he was thinking more about academics than basketball: I didn’t even look into basketball and that was a big mistake.”

The oversight proved painful. St. Bernard Coach Jim McClune helped Grandison obtain a scholarship to Tulane and joining a program led by John (Hot Rod) Williams seemed like a blessing. But within months, Grandison’s new school was embroiled in a point-shaving scandal. Grandison, though unable to play because he had transferred and had to sit out a year, was still subpoenaed as a character witness. He never took the stand but soon was searching for a new school.

“It was a weird year,” Grandison said. “At first I was afraid the school was going on probation. I was really nervous. I had two years left and I wanted a chance to go to the NCAA tournament. On probation you don’t get that chance. Then when they dropped the program, I was kind of relieved because it let the rest of us go and be eligible to play somewhere else immediately.”

He took recruiting visits to Washington, Arizona State, Memphis State and Loyola Marymount. Finally, he settled on the University of New Orleans and the Southern drawl of fatherly Coach Bennie Dees. Grandison had family in New Orleans, and once Dees became involved the cross-city move to UNO was simple.

“Ronnie and I got so close,” Dees, now Wyoming’s coach, said by telephone. Since that first season, Grandison has twice stayed with Dees while traveling. “He is like one of my family,” Dees said.

Dees insists now that the day Grandison told him he was coming to New Orleans was the day New Orleans’ basketball program turned around. After an 11-19 season in 1985, UNO finished 16-12 in Grandison’s first year. Its newest standout averaged 16.9 points and 9.7 rebounds. A year later, Grandison and current Washington Bullets reserve Ledale Eccles guided the Privateers to a 26-4 finish and a berth in the NCAAs, where they lost to Alabama in the second round.

“Ronnie is not a great talent,” said Dees, “but he’ll have a long career in the NBA because of his attitude and the way he works. He is the hardest working basketball player ever to be put on this earth.”

Dees must have known something. Following an impressive end to his college career, Grandison was drafted by the Denver Nuggets in the fifth round of the 1987 draft. European basketball--and the promise of a comfortable salary--beckoned. But Grandison decided to pursue a job in the NBA, and although he was Denver’s final cut that year, he didn’t quit. He joined the Rochester, Minn., Flyers of the Continental Basketball Assn. Apparently the move paid off.

Last July, Denver invited Grandison to its 2-week mini-camp, as did the Milwaukee Bucks. Neither offered a contract. Then the Celtics called.

“We didn’t even realize the Celtics knew he existed,” said Myra Grandison, who reluctantly added that her longtime allegiance to the Lakers now rests with the Celtics.

After impressing the Boston brain trust enough to win a job, Grandison continued the trend early in the season, averaging about 10 minutes a game. The Celtics, however, were losing. Rodgers tried to develop a consistent lineup and Grandison’s playing time diminished. With 19 games under his belt, he was averaging just 2.2 points and 1.2 rebounds a game. But Rodgers is quick to discount the numbers.

“A guy like Ronnie right now isn’t playing as many minutes, but in my mind he is just as important as any other player because each day he challenges our people on the practice court,” Rodgers said. “That means he is adding to and helping this basketball team develop, and that’s extremely important.”

As it was earlier in Grandison’s career, it’s a question of patience.

“I feel good about the Celtics organization,” Grandison said, “and I feel like maybe not this year but next year or the year after I will be a major contributor.”