Lakers’ Gamble on Peeler Looks Like a Winner : No. 1 Draft Pick Overcomes His Past and Shows He Can Play Against Former Idols

An hour before game time, 11 Laker players sit in their dressing cubicles. The 12th pulls his chair into the middle of the room alongside assistant coach Bill Bertka to watch videotape of the opposing team.

Surprise, it’s Anthony Peeler.

The highest Laker No. 1 pick since James Worthy is not merely the left-handed headliner of the Big Eight highlight films. He handles the ball well enough to be a backup point guard, passes it, rebounds it, chases it down when it’s loose and shoots it well enough to lead the team in three-point shooting at 45%.

He is studious, soft-spoken, engaging, cheerful and so bashful he giggles his way through interviews. In other words, for the Lakers, who bet that last spring’s spate of arrests represented youthful indiscretions and bad luck rather than a more ominous pattern, so far, so good.

“I think he’s a smart player,” Coach Randy Pfund says. “Jerry West said that from the beginning. He said he’s a good basketball player. He passes the ball, drives the ball to the basket, shoots it well, gets in the fray. I think that’s very true.

“I think he’s been able to do a little more than I would have thought, but the consistency is always the thing with the young players. He’s been up and down.”

At least, he has been up and down on a high level. In his first three starts, after injuries to Byron Scott and Tony Smith, Peeler averaged 17 points, five rebounds and four assists while shooting 55%.

In his fourth game, he posted a goose egg at San Antonio--no points, no rebounds--and in his fifth, at Dallas, threw a behind-the-back pass on a two-on-one break into the Laker bench and later drew his first NBA ejection.

“I’m still experiencing games,” Peeler says. “It’s a lot of hard work still to be done. This is only the first part, two months of the season.”

Peeler’s start is the more surprising, considering how lost he looked in training camp. He had the advantage there, though, of being a little-noted sidelight, lost in the circus surrounding Magic Johnson’s return.

Suddenly that ended, and Peeler, who was looking at perhaps 10 minutes a game as the No. 4 guard, was bumped rudely upward.

“When (Johnson) retired, there was no room for mistakes,” Peeler says. “There was a lot of room for mistakes when Magic was out there playing with us.”

Then there was the problem of squaring off against his idols.

Was he intimidated, or what?

“Before I play a guy, I would be,” he says, “But when I get out on the court, I just say, ‘Wow, he’s the same size as me!’ You always think they’re bigger on TV when you’re growing up, maybe ‘cause you’re smaller. But when I get out on the court, I’m not scared at all. Before I was. Now I’m not.”

And who was he most afraid of?

Silly question.

“Michael Jordan. No doubt about it. I had always grown up trying to establish my game like his and then getting a chance to go out and play him. . . . I think that was probably one of the greatest moments I’ve had as an NBA player. But I was able to get it out of my system fast. I’m glad we played them early.”

The first time Peeler got the ball, he beat Jordan off the dribble for a layup.

“It was a surprise to me,” Peeler says, “but not a surprise to him.”

Jordan, never blind to the arrival of a new challenger, returned the favor. Moments later, Peeler beat another Bull on a drive, but Jordan came flying across the floor to spike his shot.

Aside from that, they exchanged pleasantries, and Peeler had a memory to treasure.

“He told Sedale (Threatt), ‘Tell this kid I’m going to score on him,’ ” Peeler says. “I said, ‘I know that.’

“Then I asked him, ‘How did I do?’ He said I did pretty good for not having played against him before.”

Peeler was a prodigy from the time he left Kansas City’s Paseo High, a prospect worthy of playing in the McDonald’s Classic alongside Alonzo Mourning, Billy Owens, Shawn Kemp, LaPhonso Ellis and the rest of the class of ’88.

But his wasn’t to be an easy trip. He entered an alcohol detox program after his freshman year at Missouri.

“I came in as a freshman and started hanging around with seniors,” he says.

In his senior year, he was arrested on an assault charge. Police in Columbia, Mo., said he had held a gun to the head of a former girlfriend. Shortly after Peeler had pleaded guilty, there was another incident, in Kansas City with another former girlfriend, but that case was dismissed when the complainant changed her story.

All this came down on the eve of the draft, when teams are as skittish as colts. The Lakers had little to show for their rare gambles on such problem players as Spencer Haywood and Quintin Dailey. But West, noting the large dropoff between Peeler at No. 15 and the rest of the field, decided to trust the angelic look on Anthony’s face.

“It’s just something I’ve got to live with,” Peeler says. “When people know me as a person, they tend to like me more than what they read about.”

So that Peeler wouldn’t have to cast about for role models in faraway L.A., his father, Larry, moved into Anthony’s Marina Del Rey apartment with him for the first two months of the season.

Anthony did well, on and off the court, and Larry was home for Christmas.

All in all, the project is going nicely. Peeler ventures a bold prediction, for him: If he keeps working, he can be a good NBA player.

Teammate James Edwards, listening in, laughs. “He ain’t got a clue,” Edwards says.

At Peeler’s current pace, he will soon enough.