Little Kansas Guy a Regular Adonis

To mature into being a handsome young man named Adonis or to mature into being a basketball player named Jordan--which would be the blessing, which the curse? Neither, possibly, but this was the ID on the baggage of someone who left behind the neighborhood homeboys from Brooklyn for the valley dudes of Reseda and later for the prairie folk of Kansas, where all along the worst part was wondering when everybody would discover that his middle name was Adelecino.

“Did you like being called Adonis or were there times you would have preferred something like Joe or Jack?” Adonis Jordan was asked here Sunday.

“Absolutely,” he said.

“Which?”

“Joe or Jack,” he said. “Adonis . . . oh, brother. Growing up, people couldn’t pronounce it. I’d phone somebody and say: ‘Tell him Adonis called.’ They’d say: ‘Tell him who called?’ It wasn’t until I got to high school that I found out where my name came from. Then I liked it. A Greek god. I can live with that.”

Josephine Jordan, reading a book on mythology, underlined the name of a handsome young man who was loved by the goddess Aphrodite and bestowed it upon her fourth son.

“My brothers, they have normal names,” Adonis said. “Anthony. Patrick. Orlando.”

He lowered his eyes, shook his head, spoke his own name with a groan.

“Adonis.”

Yet it is distinctive. The kind of name people remember. A keeper. And a hell of a basketball name. Magic Johnson. Pearl Washington. Spud Webb. One that trips off the tongue. Long after others who played for the University of Kansas in college basketball’s national championship game of 1991 are forgotten, the name of Adonis Jordan will be remembered, and not just because he was a mere 5 feet 11 or a mere sophomore or the guy who looked Duke’s little Bobby Hurley right in the eye.

“I’ll tell you what I always say,” Jordan said. “I always say: ‘If my name could take me, I’d take that.’ ”

Meaning, if his name is his calling card, catches someone’s eye, gets Adonis’ foot inside their door, then his basketball playing can do the talking.

“So how about this Adelecino thing?” Jordan was asked. “Where did your mom come up with that?”

“Man, to this day,” he replied, “I have no idea.”

One Christmas, Adonis’ mother took a two-week vacation from her job as a secretary at an insurance company to go visit his aunt. When she came back from California, he sensed something had happened to her, that she no longer cared to live in New York. His first clue was when she said: “Start packing.” His second clue was when he found her actually packing the family china.

Adonis was dazed. For one thing, he had just made All-City for Roosevelt High. He and Kenny Anderson were the only sophomores who did so. California? It was like moving to Mars. But all Adonis knew was that his mother was tired of seeing him car-pool 45 minutes each way to Yonkers every day for school, tired of having her boy commute to a school in a better neighborhood. Tired of snow, too.

His brothers were older. They could stay, but he had no choice. He was stuck, same as with his name. So, suddenly young Adonis found himself in the San Fernando Valley, wondering what a back-alley guy like him was doing in a back-yard place like this.

“Well, for one thing, Reseda’s a quiet place. You don’t see a lot of people outside, hanging around on the street. I went to California and found myself inside a lot. Now that was strange. Go where the weather’s nice and stay inside.”

Grover Cleveland High was fine. He liked the coach, Bobby Braswell. He liked the freedom that allowed him to score 24 points a game while also averaging 13 assists. The hard part was getting the “street game” out of his blood, the impulse, as Adonis recalled it, to play to the crowds, to do something fancy, to whip the ball behind his back when a simple bounce pass would do nicely.

The attitude was as different as the atmosphere. These California guys played basketball whenever they felt like it. “At times, they took it for granted,” Jordan said. “They’d go to the beach and lay out. They didn’t live for basketball the way they did (in New York). They had a park or an open gym any time they wanted. Back in New York, if you could play, you played. You know?”

Then the colleges called. Time to head back east. Seton Hall. Providence, maybe. Kansas.

Kansas?

“I’ll tell you why I chose Kansas, and this is the truth. It was more of a family-type thing there than a business. By that I mean, the other places I visited, it didn’t feel like home. In Kansas, the people there welcomed me with open arms. Even now, we go to the coach’s house, watch TV, his wife cooks dinner. Some teams, once practice is over, everybody goes their own way. At Kansas we do things as a team.”

Including sticking together. Which is why Adonis changed his mind at the last minute about calling P.J. Carlesimo at Seton Hall to tell him he was transferring there after Kansas was put on probation.

Including winning together. Other teams don’t even care what outsiders are saying about them, Jordan says, but the Jayhawk players read the papers together, read aloud to one another, laugh about the good stuff, wonder about “the Rodney Dangerfield stuff, never getting enough respect and all.”

Including losing together. When Jordan missed the team bus, his coach benched him for the Oklahoma State game and Kansas lost, in overtime. “That’s the night I realized how much I meant to the team,” Adonis said, “and how much the team meant to me.”

He likes being part of it.

Likes the team’s chances tonight.

Likes being an Adonis.

Likes being a Jordan.

“Any relation to Michael?” he was asked.

“Hey, I wish,” Adonis said. “I’d have better shoes.”