Sunrise, Sunset : Everyday Role the Goal of Phoenix’s Ceballos, Labeled an ‘Up and Down’ Player by His Coach

Cedric Ceballos has proven himself as a dunker. Now he 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 Ventura College standout before a recent Suns’ game against the Lakers, 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 averaged 7.2 points a game for the Suns, who will begin postseason play tonight against San Antonio. He played in 64 of 82 regular-season 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.”

Ceballos played at Ventura College for the 1986-87 and 1987-88 seasons and was a junior college All-American his final season. He transferred to Cal State Fullerton and averaged 22.1 points a game in two seasons with the Titans.

But the transition from being the player in college to being a reserve in the NBA 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-foot-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 team. 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 for that shot and a $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 reward 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 black cloth he used as the blindfold, he said, “You have to believe what you see.”