Still No Worthy Successor : After 10 Years of Titles, Trade Talk, He Remains a Laker

Ten years later, he sees kids frisky as colts and remembers the way he was.

“I could watch a guy coming in, right out of college, with a lot of energy, just like he’s been let loose to just go after it,” James Worthy says in his basso profundo voice, smiling.

“I see a guy take off from the free-throw line, I say, ‘Golly, I used to be able to do that.’ ”

Ten years is a lifetime in his business, if you’re conscientious, as Worthy is, and take care of yourself, as he has. In 10 years you can play in seven NBA finals and seven consecutive All-Star games. You can go from poor to rich, talented to accomplished, kid to captain, bumpkin to sophisticate, bionic to human, invaluable to trade bait.

Ten years ago, James Worthy, the minister’s son from Gastonia, N.C., who thought Chapel Hill was a lot to deal with, arrived in L.A.

“I was blown away,” he says. “I was overwhelmed. Getting lost, not knowing the freeways. Culture shock, the ethnic background, everything. Restaurants. It was too much for a North Carolina guy.”

For the first two years before he got married, he had a two-bedroom apartment in Westwood, which he rarely left except to practice, play or travel. He says his biggest expense was his phone bill. Now he looks sober, but in those days he seemed dour. He said he wanted to be an undertaker when he retired.

His game, however, was psychedelic. Remember his 360-degree-spin layup against Golden State his rookie season? Ten years and hundreds of eye-popping moves later, when you think you’ve grown accustomed to the wonder of him, you still see him smoke a defender, going past him so fast with one of his whirling dervish moves that he’s laying the ball up before the guy figures out he’s gone.

Worthy’s career was eight seasons old before he ever shot less than 53%, but things changed. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar retired. Pat Riley left. Magic Johnson retired, returned and retired again. Dozens of teammates moved on.

Worthy’s minutes increased along with the burden on his shoulders and the double-teams against him in the low post. He had arthroscopic knee surgery and sat out the last two months of last season. Although Laker President Jerry West denied it, Susan O’Malley, president of the Washington Bullets, said her team turned down an offer of Worthy last spring for their No. 1 draft pick.

“It happened all of a sudden,” Worthy says of the changes, “but that’s the way it happens in this business.

“I can remember when we never saw the fourth quarter. Guys played 35 minutes a game. That was in the first three quarters. The fourth quarter we were sitting on the bench. I can remember that happening a lot. I can remember looking at the schedule and pretty much setting a goal--where we were going to be after 30 games or after 50 games: ‘We can beat this team. OK, this is a tough game. This is a back-to-back, but we still should win.’ I can remember going through our schedule that way and always coming up with 58-60 wins.

“I’m just fortunate to have experienced that.”

The arthroscopy on Worthy’s right knee shortened his exhibition season and led to his recent uncharacteristic slump: three games in which he scored 27 points and shot 29%. That was followed by his scoreless first half against the Chicago Bulls, in which he took only two shots. In Coach Randy Pfund’s new diversified scheme, this was not alarming, but it was too much for Worthy, who broke character again, calling it “a continuing nightmare.” He came out firing in the second half against the Bulls and scored 23 points in the upset victory.

“My knee has reached a point where I can tell what it can take and what it can’t take,” Worthy said. “In the beginning, it was tougher to tell. I just didn’t have enough games under my belt. Now the battle is to keep it strong. It’s tough to do on the road, away from our facilities, like weights that isolate that area.

“I still feel like there’s room for improvement. I don’t feel like I have the mobility sometimes, particularly after a lot of practice time.”

Ten years later, he says he is “very content” in Los Angeles. Soft-spoken and unfailingly polite, he is a favorite in the Laker inner circle. He, wife Angela and their two children have a home in Pacific Palisades. He won’t discuss his 1990 arrest in Houston for soliciting prostitutes, but he went into counseling and friends say he and Angela have worked through it.

At 31, he can handle winning, losing, L.A. and injury. He knows how to turn a deaf ear to trade talk, which is fortunate because there may be more. He has a $6-million balloon salary payment coming in a couple of seasons and the Lakers, ready to retool, might not mind getting out from under that.

If it isn’t the romp and pomp it once was, it’s OK.

“I think it’s a different experience,” Worthy said. “Having played for a team that was pretty successful before I got here, being part of that success for six or seven years, seeing new faces come and leave . . . it’s obviously not the same as it was.

“But it’s definitely not less fun. I look at it from an aspect of trying to get this team back to that point. When we were once expected to win it was nice, but now maybe the expectations might not be as high, so that makes the victories much more enjoyable.”