King’s Brother Waits for the Call

Ten minutes before the scheduled tipoff, the visiting team still was 716 miles away. Not to worry, fans inside Knickerbocker Arena here were being told. Hang around. The Cedar Rapids Silver Bullets finally had gotten off the ground at O’Hare Airport so there would be a game after all.

Sort of a game. A Continental Basketball Assn. game. A game that started three hours late on March 13 and ended 23 minutes into March 14. A game played before a couple of hundred fans, a 25-foot replica of a Valvoline 10W40 motor-oil container and a turn-of-the-century bread truck complete with a life-sized wooden horse.

“I’ve never had this kind of midnight madness,” Albert King said when the final shot of a surprisingly competitive show had been hoisted. “Most of these guys are usually sleeping by now. At least I know I am.”

Yes, this was that Albert King. Maryland’s second-most prolific career scorer. Little brother (by an inch and three years) of Brilliant Bullet Bernard. Holder of a double-figure scoring average during eight NBA seasons. A King, these days, among basketball’s commoners.

Truth be known, King’s surroundings are not all that bad. Home games are played in a 15,000-seat arena less than 2 years old that has its luxury boxes low enough so preferred customers can see the action without resorting to binoculars.

Also, King’s Albany Patroons all but lapped the CBA field, winning the regular season by an astonishing 45 points. In the league that includes the Sioux Falls Skyforce, the Pensacola Tornados, the Oklahoma City Cavalry and the Yakima Sun Kings, three points are awarded for winning a game, one point for winning a quarter and a half-point for a quarter tie.

Out of a maximum seven points per game, the Patroons averaged better than five. They did not coast through many quarters. Their traditional numbers: a league-record 50-6 overall and zero losses in 28 games at home.

“We play the game for the right purpose,” said the coach, George Karl. “We don’t want to win; we want to beat somebody. We’ve had the best team all year long. Great talent and great professionalism. This team is so much not like the CBA. Unselfish. Defense oriented. We run the passing game. The other night we had 21 assists by halftime.”

This both pleases King and frustrates him.

Appealing to King are walking off the court victorious nearly 90 percent of the time and having teammates who pass up decently free 17-foot jumpers to feed someone available for a can’t-miss layup.

King’s respect for his craft is obvious long before a game begins. Warm-ups for him are exactly that. While others grab a basketball and immediately fire from three-point range, King has a routine: layups on either side of the basket, then shots from increasingly wider arcs. In five minutes or so, he finally is out among the gunners. And comfortable.

“Unbelievably cooperative,” Karl said. But not unbelievably happy.

The trouble with being virtuous on the CBA level is that you might get planted there. Being unselfish, on court and off, does not produce the holy-smoke numbers that would pave the escape route to the NBA.

Like Karl and every other CBAer, King is grabbing for the next -- and highest -- rung. That’s one reason he has lived in an Albany hotel all season.

“Don’t want this to seem that permanent,” he explained.

King’s numbers do not immediately demand attention. His average of 14 points a game is not among his own team’s top four. But his scoring has been mustered during a playing average of only about 22 minutes.

“I’m convinced I can play,” he said (and in the first round of CBA playoffs, he’s scored a team-high 24, game-high 28 and 15 points, and rebounded strongly, to help the Patroons to a 2-1 edge over Grand Rapids). “I think I’m proving that.

“It’s a matter of people seeing you and feeling the same way. ... One of the unfortunate things is not getting 40 minutes a game, because we have 10 guys who can play. Sometimes you wish you could (get more playing time) but a record like ours makes it hard to argue.”

King knows that former Golden State Warriors coach Karl is as eager as he to return to the NBA -- and that the quickest way is a gaudy won-lost record.

Karl: “He came into our team (late in training camp) when we kind of had everything set. I talked with him earlier in the season and said: ‘There are teams in the league that want you. I can’t guarantee you 30 minutes. Do you want to go someplace else, where you’d be one of the top two guys?’ He said no.”

King: “I thought it was going to be that type of (30-minutes-a-game) situation here. I didn’t think Albany had that much talent when I came. You wouldn’t expect a CBA team to have this much talent.”

With his 22-point, 9.5-rebound and 5.5-assist averages, Vincent Askew is the Patroon who commands immediate attention. What works against King is age. He turned 31 on Dec. 17.

“I don’t know if Al’s a great scorer, even at this level,” said Karl. “He’s a momentum scorer. He can come in and, all of a sudden, he’s got 12 in about eight minutes. He’s not a consistent shooter, not in the 50s. But he can roll it. He’s had 11-for-12 games.”

In 23 minutes against the travel-weary Silver Bullets, King was nine for 13 and had four assists. He was effective on jumpers, and also isolation plays against Roy Marble.

In a way, King at 31 is rather like King at 13: close to the superior player in games watched by few. On Brooklyn playgrounds, he got famous remarkably young, being mentioned in one book before becoming a teen-ager.

“I try not to deal with what was,” he said. “It’s surprising sometimes, to sit back and think about it: 12, 13, 14. I never thought about all the attention at the time. It was just there.

“I’ll go around the country and people mention: ‘Oh, I knew you when you were 12, 13.’ These people aren’t even living in New York. It feels good. But a little strange too. That was 18, 17 years ago. Don’t want to age myself too much.”

Bernard’s inspirational comeback from knee surgery with Washington has nothing to do with his own attempt, Albert insists.

“We don’t deal with ball off the court,” he said. “He’s into reggae, I’m into soul. If he has his wife, his music and his clothes, he’s all right. Fashion was always big for him. He’s past GQ.

“I can probably count on both hands the number of times we played against each other until the NBA. When I was 12, he was 15. When I was 14, he was 17. That’s a big gap. No matter how well you played, you still were someone’s little brother. Now, three years difference doesn’t seem like much.”

What does seem like much was his opting, nearly two years ago, for Europe when his coach at San Antonio, Larry Brown, suggested it.

“The season was winding down” in early March, King said. “Larry came to me and said a team in Milan, Bob McAdoo’s team, was looking for a player. Larry said it was a good chance, so I left.

“But you can get lost” in basketball abroad. “You go overseas and people don’t know about you. Don’t know where you’re at. It was a very bad decision.”

King couldn’t hook on with the Bullets after an extended tryout this past summer and called Karl late in the CBA preseason. Ensconced in Albany, he eventually missed most of three weeks with a twisted knee and suffered a sprained ankle about a month ago.

“His chance (at the NBA) this year is a playoff team that gets that one injury and doesn’t want to see a young guy down there” at the end of the bench, said Karl. “For a situation, five to 10 minutes, Al King would be fine. Off the bench. Bam-bam. He’s been a three-point shooter for us. I don’t remember that in the NBA. I sometimes wish he’d do more dirty work on defense. He’s an excellent rebounder for his size” (6 feet 6).

Does Al King belong in the NBA?

“I’ve forgotten how to figure out who belongs in the NBA,” said Karl. “But I’ve got two or three players who are better than two or three players on almost every NBA team. Teams have different philosophies. Youth versus experience. When I coached, I wanted that 12th man to be my buddy. An older guy who understood when I told him: ‘Hey, I couldn’t get you any (playing) time.’

“Al’s got time working against him.”

Al knows it.

“I don’t love playing till I’m stretched out,” he said. “Sometimes when you travel -- plane, hotel, bus -- you’re tired. ‘Oh boy, why am I out here?’ Once you get out there, on the court, it all changes. It’s something to sustain you. Competition.

“The CBA is different than it was five or six years ago. It’s not bad. But it’s not where I want to be. I don’t want anyone to shed any tears for me at all, because there are other people also trying to get back. I’m not sad. I’ll keep the faith. I have no time limit.”