Ceballos Not Ready to Play Everyday : Suns: Former Titan standout must improve nearly all aspects of his game in order to play regularly, Fitzsimmons says.

Cedric Ceballos has proven himself as a dunker. He still needs to prove himself as an everyday NBA player.

Ceballos won the league’s annual dunk contest in February, and has come off the bench to spark the Phoenix Suns to some victories.

But when Coach Cotton Fitzsimmons was asked to assess the performance of the former Cal State Fullerton standout before the Suns’ 109-104 loss to the Lakers Sunday, he sounded a lot like the boy in the movie “Airplane,” who took Kareem Abdul-Jabbar to task for not working hard enough on defense.

“When Cedric wants a defensive rebound as bad as he wants an offensive rebound, he’ll be pretty good,” Fitzsimmons said. “He doesn’t want that yet. Until he wants that, it will be hard for him to play on a regular basis.”

Fitzsimmons described Ceballos’ play as “up and down,” and said he needs to work on “all the fundamentals of the game” outside of scoring.

“I’m a patient guy,” Fitzsimmons said. “If he shows the right attitude and works hard, I have no problems, and he’s done that.”

Ceballos is averaging 6.2 points per game for the Suns, having played in 60 of 76 games. As a rookie last season, he averaged 8.2 points in 63 games.

“It’s kind of hard with a lot of All-Stars and great players on your team,” Ceballos said. “If I can just sit here and learn off of it, when their time is up and my time is to come, hopefully I can step into a role and contribute.”

In his two seasons with the Titans, Ceballos averaged 22.1 points, the highest career figure in school history. But the transition from being the player to a reserve has not been difficult for Ceballos.

“If I was from a big school with a lot of media hype, it would be different,” Ceballos said. “The only hard adjustment from playing to not playing is when the game is getting intense and you have to sit there. You have a lot of energy burning that you want to use, but you just have to sit there.”

Ceballos, a 6-6 1/2 forward, was the Suns’ second of three second-round choices in the 1990 draft. On a 12-man NBA roster, a second-round draft choice is ordinarily an underdog to even make the roster. The Suns’ glut at forward didn’t bolster Ceballos chances, either.

Ceballos beat the odds, but felt he spent much of his rookie season “trying to stay in the league.”

“I wasn’t really out there to succeed or excel,” he said. “Now, I’m starting to relax more and not be intimidated. I think I’ve strengthened a lot of things in my game. My defense has picked up. I’m shooting the jumper much better. I’m getting a sense of learning the game better.”

Ceballos emerged from obscurity with his victory in the dunk contest, which was punctuated with a dunk that he did while wearing a blindfold. He received a perfect score of 50 and the $20,000 first prize for his effort.

Despite speculation, Fitzsimmons was “not nervous” before Ceballos executed what he dubbed the “Hocus Pocus” slam.

“I was glad to see him win,” Fitzsimmons said. “He worked at it. He didn’t go there just to compete. He went there to win and that was the good part of it. He showed a bit of courage. He made a dull dunking contest exciting at the end.”

Besides the money, the only tangible rewards from the title has been increased notice. No endorsement or marketing opportunities have come his way.

And for those who believe Ceballos could see through the piece of black cloth he used as the blindfold, he said, “You have to believe what you see.”