Smith’s Test Helps NBA’s Best Settle Debate

The idea, Charles Smith explains, was hatched in the back of the Clippers’ team bus, rooted in some not-so-idle conversation.

“The players were talking about who the fastest guard in the league is,” Smith remembers. “Some were saying Kevin Johnson. Others were saying Kenny Smith. And it was, ‘Well, he’s the fastest with the ball, but who’s the fastest just running?’ ”

On and on the debate went, going absolutely nowhere.

Smith had some time to think.

“Why not hold a ‘Superstars’ event with the players from the league,” Smith asked himself, “and finally put it on paper?”

Smith heard no objections, so Smith did just that.

Sunday, the races were run at Irvine’s Taste of Orange County summer fair. The results are in.

And the fastest guard in the league is . . . Charles Smith.

And the most mobile, agile, well-coordinated athlete in the league is . . . Kurt Rambis.

And the best long-range jump-shooter in the league is . . . Winston Bennett.

OK, so the Charles Smith Battle of the Basketball Stars isn’t an exact science. Last year, the overall competition was won by Gary Grant, who immediately went on to lose his starting job with the Clippers. This year, the event was won by Morlon Wiley, a reserve guard who averaged 3.8 points for the Atlanta Hawks.

Make that little-used, so-therefore-very-well-rested Morlon Wiley, who raised his scrawny, skinny right arm to fling a football farther than the roundish, moundish Wayman Tisdale and would have aced the obstacle course if he had been able to spell the word BATTLE .

Normally, this isn’t a difficult assignment, but understand that Wiley attended Cal State Long Beach. So when he reached the part of the obstacle course where he had to spell a word out of six oversized building blocks, Wiley stacked them frantically and sped off to tackle the blocking sled, leaving behind his handiwork for all to see:

BATTEL

“Good thing they don’t have to spell ‘potato,’ ” said a voice in the crowd.

Wiley completed the course in the fastest time, but those two transposed letters disqualified him. The victory went instead to Rambis, a plodder, yes, but always a steady speller.

“That’s me,” Rambis exclaimed after weaving his way through the course without falling once. “Speed, quickness, jumping ability. Numero Uno, right here.”

Wiley also outran the rest of the competition in the 40-yard dash, or so it seemed until a late, unlikely burst by Smith caught him at the tape. Wiley is a 6-4 guard. Smith is a 6-10 center. Little guys are supposed to win this kind of race.

Wiley figured he had as he thrust up his arms in triumph, only to be informed by officials seconds later that Smith had outleaned him.

“Nooooo, nooooo!” Wiley yelled as he ran to Smith’s side.

“I put my hands up now. Take the gun out of my back, Charles. I got robbed.”

Very possibly, but the close calls always go to the home team. And nobody was calling this the Morlon Wiley Battle of the Basketball Stars.

But with a third-place finish in the obstacle course, a second in the 40-yard dash and a spot on the winning six-man tug-of-war team, Wiley was racking up the points. He put the field away with the football toss, cranking up a 61-yard (183 feet) bomb, one hellacious outlet pass.

No one else came close, least of all Tisdale, the Sacramento Kings’ 6-foot-9 bruiser who talked a much better game than he threw.

“I come from a football school, you know--Oklahoma,” Tisdale announced as he squeezed the football in his monstrous paws. He yelled to a couple of cameramen standing beyond the 220-foot marker. “You might want to move back a little.”

Tisdale’s first pass swooned at 120 feet.

“Does your husband throw a football, too?” J.R. Reid asked Tisdale.

Tisdale wound up for his second and final toss--and spun an end-over-end knuckler that gave out before the 100-foot sign.

“And he wins the ladies’ division,” Jack Haley roared.

“Thank you, thank you,” Tisdale said as he bowed in front of colleagues hurting from the pain of laughter.

“I’m a screen-pass guy, not a deep-pass guy. I guess I didn’t tell you that.”

Clipper Ken Norman won the weight-lifting contest by bench-pressing 100 pounds 37 times in 30 seconds, but Wiley had the overall title clinched entering the final event, the basketball shoot. This consisted of six NBA players engaging in the activity that puts Dom Perignon on the dinner table.

The first attempt was from 15 feet. Two players missed.

Second attempt, 18 feet. Three more missed.

That left Winston Bennett, the last man on the Miami Heat’s bench, as the only man standing. Two-for-two. Not much to ask, but more than Bennett usually manages. In 54 games with the Heat last season, Bennett averaged 3.6 points.

Wiley’s overall victory earned him a check for $5,000, to be donated to the charities of his choice. That, and a very nice gold-plated plaque.

“I just came out here to have some fun,” Wiley said. “No strings attached. It’s Southern California, a beautiful day. Why turn this down?”

When your name is Morlon Wiley and they let you off the bench long enough to run and pass with the best of them, why ask why?