Polynice’s Mutual Admiration Society : Pro basketball: The former Clipper returns as a Piston and will be received by a fan club that gets as much as it gives.

A group of students at Pasadena Poly High formed a fan club for Olden Polynice last season, largely because he played with such emotion. That was the big appeal--the notion that the Clippers’ starting center at the time seemed so sincere and personable.

The kids sat high in the section behind the basket closest to the Clipper bench and brought signs to cheer on their favorite player. They went to four games and the Clippers won each, including Game 4 of the first-round playoff series against Utah at the Anaheim Convention Center.

Polynice responded in kind, talking to the group before or after games and acknowledging them in the stands with a point or wave after a dunk. Last summer, he spoke at a basketball camp at Pasadena Poly.

A bond formed.

“We liked his playing style, but that’s not why we picked him,” said David Fauvre, co-president of the fan club along with Victor Oviedo. “He’s an emotional player.”

Polynice was most prominent to the students on one of their most emotional days. It was the day their friend, a member of the club, was buried.

Ochari D’Aiello was handsome, smart, a poet, an actor, an athlete and described by those who knew him as very caring. He held the E card to help spell O-L-D-E-N at Clipper games. But last June, while attending the Summer Scholars Program at Morehouse College in Atlanta, the Altadena resident was in a car with some new friends and was shot to death by a high school student in another car.

Authorities said the shooting apparently was provoked by an exchange of words that, according to Lt. Mac Worthington of the DeKalb County sheriff’s department, was “very trivial . . . certainly not worth the life that was taken.”

A crowd estimated at 700-800 students, friends and relatives attended D’Aiello’s funeral in Glendale. It was held the same day Polynice spoke at the camp at Poly that was run by Coach Brad Hall, also the faculty adviser for the fan club.

Two members of the club, Cameron Murphy and Steven Liset, went by the gym to say hello to Polynice and told him what had happened. After concluding his presentation, Polynice accompanied them to D’Aiello’s home.

Once there, Polynice met Ochari’s parents and spent time in the young man’s room, noticing the walls adorned with posters of sports heroes, rap stars and Martin Luther King. He spent about an hour at the house

“Ochari would have loved to know he was there,” Fauvre said. “He got us all in a circle and said a prayer. It wasn’t something he could make up. It was real sincere.”

Said Oviedo, “It made all of us feel a lot better.”

Polynice broke down and cried and was consoled by Charon D’Aiello-Sandoval, Ochari’s mother.

Five days later, Polynice was traded to Detroit for Don MacLean and William Bedford. Tonight, averaging 9.6 points and nine rebounds and shooting 52.9%, he will start for the Pistons in his only Sports Arena appearance of the season.

The fan club will be ready. They bought 40 tickets at $10 each to sell for $15, trying to raise money for a scholarship fund in D’Aiello’s name. Supported by private donations, it will provide financial assistance for one African-American student at Poly a year.

But the fan club will be ready in other ways. This is a night they have waited for since summer, a night to root for Polynice again and break out the signs. Good thing he still wears blue and red.