Life Began in New Jack City for St. John Center : College basketball: Like any collection of New York tragedies, some of Shawnelle Scott’s are more spectacular than others.

“I don’t want to miss nobody,” Shawnelle Scott said.

So he counted carefully: One, two, three, four. “Four in jail,” he said. One, two, three. “Three dead.”

All friends? “Well, people I knew pretty well,” said Scott, a St. John’s sophomore and budding basketball star who managed to avoid the carnage.

Like any collection of New York tragedies, some of Scott’s are more spectacular than others. A guy shot dead for winning too much money in a dice game. Another shot in the head across the street from where Scott was standing. Another who stole a television, then fell five stories down an elevator shaft while trying to escape.

“They found him a few days later, with maggots coming out of him and stuff,” Scott said.

At least Scott was a teen-ager by then. He was only 10 when first approached to work as a lookout for drug dealers in his Harlem neighborhood. “They offered us $10,” he said. “I was like, ‘Ten dollars!’ We didn’t have that much money, so that was a lot. My friend was overwhelmed.”

The friend took the money, and later his paydays grew to $20, then $50, then $100. “He started making fun of me because he had money,” Scott said. Finally, the friend got caught, went to jail, came home, and got caught again.

“That was goodbye for him,” Scott said.

The stories are depressingly similar to those of other basketball celebrities--Scott’s teammate, David Cain, grew up in the same neighborhood, as did Syracuse guard Adrian Autry--but that doesn’t make them less harrowing. The building in which Scott grew up appears in a location shot of “New Jack City,” a movie about a housing project overtaken by drug lords.

“It was tough,” Autry said. “You almost were expected to go in the wrong direction.”

Scott credits several adult influences with keeping him from straying. “It was like a square; four people that guided me,” he said. “If I did something bad, I’d have four people down on me.”

The square included his mother, Sheila; his uncle, Joe Scott; his high school coach at All Hallows in the Bronx, John Carey; and his coach in the Riverside Church AAU program, Ernie Lorch.

His mother and uncle steered Scott through his days as a self-described grammar school troublemaker who once scrawled graffiti on a classroom wall. But by the time Carey got him, he was tall, semi-famous and dangerously impressed with himself.

“He got his way all the time,” Carey said. “He was like a hero at the Millbank (Community) Center.”

What followed was a stormy relationship in which Carey frequently berated and-or benched Scott, even during a senior season that ended with his selection to New York Newsday’s All-City second team.

“Here was a gifted basketball player, and things came to him easily,” Carey said. “He didn’t realize it wasn’t always going to be that way, and I did.”

Carey prodded Scott to get in better shape, work harder, concentrate. “I got mad at him a lot of times,” Scott said. “Being a young teen-ager, I was used to playing, not practicing.”

Scott was shocked by the fact Carey treated stars and benchwarmers alike. Once, Scott had to sleep on the floor during a road trip. “Guys who weren’t even playing got the bed,” he said.

Only now is Scott beginning to appreciate Carey’s work.

“He’s responsible for the player I am now, and Coach (Lou) Carnesecca is responsible for the player I’m going to be,” Scott said. “A lot of the things he said, Coach Carnesecca says. Here’s a coach in the Hall of Fame saying the same thing as a high school coach, so you know he must have been right.”

All Hallows made it to the 1990 city Catholic final before losing, 52-46, to Cardinal Hayes. Scott scored the game’s first basket, then didn’t score again. “I thought it was going to be the best game of my life after the first two (points),” he said. “But it was the worst game of my life.”

The performance illustrated the inconsistency that has marked Scott’s play. After choosing St. John’s over Tennessee, he spent his freshman season as the backup power forward behind Billy Singleton, averaging 5.2 points, 3.6 rebounds and 16.4 minutes.

He began this season as a starter and saw his role expand because of an injury to center Rob Werdann, but was averaging only 7.5 points and 4.5 rebounds when St. John’s midseason slump reached its nadir with a 61-48 loss to Georgetown two weeks ago.

Since then, Scott has been crucial to St. John’s three-game winning streak. He has averaged 17.3 points and 9.7 rebounds during the streak, and in each game sparked an early run with his emotional play.

“He’s been terrific, really, but we hope it’s just a start,” assistant coach Brian Mahoney said. “His work ethic in practice has been a night-and-day difference.”

Said Cain, Scott’s roommate on the road: “We sit in the room and talk about things a lot. I think he’s just more focused now.”

Scott agreed.

“It’s really just being mentally into the game,” he said. “Physically, it takes care of itself.”

Well, not necessarily. At 6-foot-11, 250 pounds, Scott has the tools to be a professional player, but his physique could use some work. “He has to get in better shape, lower his body fat, get stronger,” Carey said.

On the other hand, Scott has offensive skills and a touch from 5 to 10 feet far more advanced than those of other New York big men in the Big East, a group of shot-blocking musclemen that includes Syracuse’s Conrad McRae, Pittsburgh’s Eric Mobley and Villanova’s Anthony Pelle.

Scott admits to looking ahead to the pros--”I think about it all the time”--but said he is concentrating on college. After needing four tries to reach 700 on his SAT, he is doing well academically as a communications major, and appears to be enjoying himself. Like several of St. John’s younger players, and decidedly unlike its five seniors, Scott is talkative and outgoing.

“He’s a big teddy bear,” Carey said. “He’s always been a happy-go-lucky kid,” Lorch said.

Perhaps that’s the biggest accomplishment for a 19-year-old who already has seen too much unhappiness. Under the circumstances, Scott said the pressure to excel at basketball hardly qualifies as a life-and-death matter.

“After you go through all we did, it’s nothing,” he said. “How many players would want to switch places with me?”