It’s No Wonder He’s the Center of Attention for the 49ers : Basketball: Chris Tower’s laid-back style sometimes rankles the coach or campus officials, but his love of the game shines through.

The tattoo, blood-red from intricate needlework, was unveiled first at New Mexico State prior to an important Big West Conference basketball game. Much to the chagrin of Cal State Long Beach Coach Seth Greenberg, Chris Tower proudly wore the replica of a wild wolf on his lower right leg.

“Tower, why do you have to be so different?” asked Greenberg of the 6-foot-10 center with the sullen eyes and disarming smile. “There are people starving in Somalia and you got to waste 90 bucks on a . . . tattoo.”

Tower marches to his own drummer.

He said he especially enjoys “messing with Greenberg’s head.”

In the Kansas City airport the January morning after he scored 15 points and grabbed eight rebounds in a 64-49 victory over then top-ranked Kansas, Tower sat patiently after the final call to board the plane back to Los Angeles. As always, he was the last person to get on, just as the door was closing.

Music from Jane’s Addiction, the Red Hot Chili Peppers and Beastie Boys blares from the headsets of the pocket stereo he takes on basketball trips.

Campus police know this free spirit well. Monday, for the umpteenth time, they caught him riding a skateboard to class, a violation of university rules.

“Chris likes to have fun,” said his teammate and best friend, reserve guard Eric Kutas. “He’s a laid-back kind of guy. He loves basketball, but he’s not one of the guys (to whom) basketball is everything.”

The “Boss,” as Tower refers to his coach, is not laid back, so Tower often gets under his skin.

When Tower made a series of bad passes at a practice before the game at New Mexico State, Greenberg shouted, at the top of his lungs, “Tower, how many times are you going to throw the . . . ball away?”

“Two or three times” was the center’s deadpan answer.

Tower provides a way for the hyper Greenberg to vent frustration.

“Every coach has a guy he yells at, and Greenberg yells at him,” Kutas said. “He’s the only one who can take it.”

Despite obvious differences, the center and his coach get along well.

“He’s like no man I have ever been around before,” Tower said of Greenberg. “He’s crazy, fanatical about basketball. That’s why I mess with him so much, to lighten him up some. I love it.”

An all-Sunset League selection in 1988 at Westminster High School, Tower signed to play at the University of New Mexico. Greenberg, then an assistant at Long Beach, had heavily pursued Tower before he signed.

A week after Tower committed to New Mexico, Coach Gary Colson was fired. Tower wanted out of his letter of intent, but New Mexico refused. Tower played in 15 games for the Lobos as a freshman.

During the summer after his freshman season, Tower often stopped by Greenberg’s Long Beach home to talk.

“We’d rap and he’d give me advice,” Tower said. “When a kid is supposed to make a decision that will affect his life for five years and he’s unhappy, it’s tough. It’s hard to make it when you are that young.”

Tower didn’t return to New Mexico in the fall of 1989, choosing instead to redshirt at Long Beach. The next season--Greenberg’s first as head coach--Tower earned a starting berth in the final 12 regular-season games. And he has started every game since, averaging more than 13 points and six rebounds over two seasons.

Basketball has always been the constant in Tower’s life. His parents were divorced in 1975 when he was not yet 5. His mother, Julie, moved to East Los Angeles, where she taught school. His father, Len, remained in Huntington Beach and later remarried.

Chris Tower and his two sisters spent much of their early years with their mother, who says she felt it was important to expose them to a more diverse climate.

“I was a product of the ‘70s, very liberal,” Julie Tower said. “Politically, for me, moving where I did was right. I feel very strongly about that area.”

Chris Tower, whose height has always caused him to stick out in a crowd, remembers those days in East Los Angeles well. Once, he was held up at gunpoint for $10, but he still returns to visit friends he made growing up there.

“I got to see a whole different world,” Tower said. “The majority of kids were Hispanic, and that has helped me see things a little differently than others.”

The three children eventually moved in with their father so they could attend school in Orange County. Chris was in the seventh grade.

“He was real quiet, pretty shy and kept to himself a lot,” Len Tower, a regular spectator at Long Beach games, said of Chris. “He has always been pretty responsible. You tell him what to do and he does it.”

Julie Tower said Chris was a joy to raise, but, much like a wolf, he would fight back when cornered. During an argument with an older sister, Holly, he stabbed her forehead with a fork.

“He was a pleasure, until crossed,” she said.

On the basketball court, Tower has kept his cool, even though he has been targeted by student cheering sections, especially the one at UC Santa Barbara.

“It’s really pretty sad, like a waste,” Tower said. “All these people have to do is say negative things. It seems so pointless.”

Tower is well-equipped to handle such taunting, Greenberg said, adding, “He knows who he is and he likes who he is.”

The other day, Tower pulled his red pickup truck into a fast-food restaurant near his home and ambled inside. He wore a surf T-shirt, loose-fitting jeans and a Beastie Boys baseball cap over his short blond hair. He hadn’t shaved in several days, and a fuzzy goatee covered his chin.

“I want to be a kid forever,” he said.