Ollie Shows What His True Calling Is : Basketball: North Hollywood center tried football, but is concentrating on his bread and butter.

North Hollywood High’s Damon Ollie made more than a few people nervous last fall when he donned pads for the Husky football team.

Ollie, at 6-foot-5, 210 pounds, perhaps the most sought-after junior basketball player in the area, has a promising basketball career. Playing football for the Huskies seemed trivial, not to mention dangerous.

Husky basketball Coach Steve Miller crossed his fingers during every football game and hoped no harm would come to his star center. Even Ollie’s half-brother Dana Jones, now a junior standout on Pepperdine’s basketball team, had reservations about his only sibling taking up the physically demanding, career-threatening sport.

“He didn’t think I should play,” Ollie said. “He thought I would get hurt.”

But, that didn’t stop Ollie. He thought it would be fun, “an experimental type of thing.”

Football season came and went, and Ollie emerged from it injury-free with plenty of accolades for a first-year player. Ollie, a defensive end, recorded an area-high three safeties in 10 games.

Now--if he cares to--Ollie can say that he scored in a way Jones never did.

Some say that Ollie took up football to get out from the omnipresent shadow of Jones, a former Times player of the year who averaged 23.4 points and 12.7 rebounds a game in three seasons at North Hollywood (1988-90). But, Ollie dismisses that and contends he doesn’t mind the comparisons.

The two brothers are very close and talk to one another by phone nearly every day. Ollie and Jones never played on the same basketball team, but occasionally play friendly games of one-on-one. Jones always wins.

“But not by much,” Ollie said.

It was Jones that got his brother involved in basketball about four years ago. And Ollie has been progressing ever since.

Ollie scored 39 points and grabbed 32 rebounds in two Valley Pac-8 Conference victories last week. His game-high performance (20 points, 18 rebounds) against Poly helped North Hollywood (22-1), The Times’ top-ranked team, clinch the East Valley League title.

Ollie, who leads the team in scoring (17.4) and rebounding (12.3), said he probably won’t play football next year. Not because he didn’t like it, but because it’s not that important to him anymore--and everyone, including him, knows his game is basketball.