SPECIAL REPORT / Final Four / Seattle, 1995 : Brush With Greatness : Beginning Today at the Kingdome, Someone Will Apply the Finishing Touches to Champoinship Picture : Ticking Slowly Toward Big Blast

What must that feeling be like, being carried off on someone’s shoulders? I can still see Tyus Edney now, bobbing along from body to body, grand marshal of a human float. Oh, the grandeur and spectacle of it all. To be hoisted away on muscular arms like Cleopatra, perched triumphantly as the masses give three cheers. Edney got to feel what few will ever feel.

Will he again? Or will Ed O’Bannon? Or even Jim Harrick?

Is anyone from UCLA destined to be the heroic figure of the next 72 hours, to be in for the piggyback ride of his life?

*

Having just hit town, it is getting late. A bunch of UCLA basketball players are in Edney’s hotel room, arguing over what to watch on SpectraVision.

Something called “Warlock,” one suggests, and others quickly go yeah, yeah, give me that remote, turn it on.

Scary stuff.

Ike Nwankwo isn’t sure this is such a hot idea. Falling asleep with the big game facing them today, the big sophomore believes, is going to be hard enough without watching some tale from the crypt.

“Too much blood and guts,” Ike says.

He and some of the other players go use the hotel’s hot tub instead.

“Now we know,” I say.

“Know what?” Ike asks.

“You guys are definitely from L.A.,” I say. “A basketball team in a hot tub.”

“Best way to get ready,” he says.

*

At this same hour, Jim Harrick and hundreds of other coaches from around the country are inside a ballroom at another Seattle hotel, gathered for a big annual banquet. And most of them are laughing in amazement and poking one another because Dean Smith, the coach from North Carolina, is up on a dais in front of the room, being uncommonly wacky.

Someone congratulates the NCAA tournament’s selection committee on doing a good job.

“Oh, I don’t think they did such a good job,” Smith says with a phony snarl.

“You don’t.”

“Nah. They (disappointed) Georgia Tech.”

And so on and so on.

“This should be a great tournament!” someone else raves.

“Oh, I doubt it,” Dean Smith deadpans, breaking up the whole room. Dean’s own team is in the tournament.

“What’s got into Dean?” a coach at Harrick’s table asks.

“A couple of tall ones, I think,” another coach says.

After a while, the UCLA coach himself is asked to step up, front and center. Soon as he does, the master of ceremonies mentions seeing him at last Monday night’s Academy Awards, where Harrick was a guest of one of the producers of “Forrest Gump.”

“Maybe next Monday night, Jim, you’ll be a winner just like Forrest Gump,” the master of ceremonies says.

“Probably more like Andy Gump,” Harrick replies.

He has a good time, goes home and tries to catch some sleep.

Can’t.

This really is a town where men go sleepless, this Seattle.

*

Next morning, the players are up early. Ed O’Bannon is taken over to the Seattle Kingdome, site for the Final Four, where he is presented an award from Chevrolet as its player of the year. Ed gets his acceptance speech down pat on the TV director’s third take.

The game against Oklahoma State is a day away. UCLA and the other three teams have one last day to practice and get a feel for the dome.

O’Bannon likes it fine.

“Floor shining. Glass shining,” he says. “Beautiful.”

Except for the glass that has been shattered by Bryant (Big Country) Reeves, the gigantic Okie from suburban Muskogee who plays center for Oklahoma State. He has just smashed a backboard in practice.

One by one, UCLA players are approached and asked about this, as though the Kingdome’s roof has just collapsed or something.

George Zidek, UCLA’s own 7-footer, makes a joke about smashing a backboard being a dream of his.

People take it seriously.

“What about Big Country smashing that backboard?” Zidek is asked, over and over.

“What about it?” Zidek asks.

“What did you think of it?”

“It was an accident.”

“George, didn’t you just say that smashing a backboard was a dream of yours?”

“Yes?”

“Well, Jerry Stackhouse from Carolina says he thinks Big Country was trying to send UCLA a message. What do you think, George?”

“What do I think? I think if something’s an accident, how can you be sending a message?”

The interviewer walks away, satisfied.

I look up at George and shrug.

“Do you know what is the hardest part about the Final Four?” Zidek asks.

“No,” I say. “The dumb questions?”

“The waiting.”

*

Through a maze of curtains, UCLA’s coach and three players are led by an NCAA official, who promptly gets them lost. They retrace their steps and try another hall.

“You able to sleep, or you tossin’ and turnin’?” I ask, keeping on that sleepless theme.

“I sleep, but not hard,” Harrick says.

“How come?”

“Something always wakes me up in the middle of the night.”

“A warlock?” I ask.

“A what?”

“Your players were watching something on TV about a warlock,” I say.

“No, but something worse wakes me up,” Harrick says.

“What?”

“Big Country,” he says.

*

Zidek, Edney and O’Bannon are led into a room by themselves, sealed off by blue curtains. They are to wait here until Oklahoma State’s people are done with their news conference.

The NCAA official escorts them in, invites them to sit.

“George, Tyus, Charles,” he says, gesturing toward some empty cups. “Get you anything?”

“Ed,” O’Bannon says.

But the guy is out of earshot.

O’Bannon turns to me and says, “Would you go tell him I’m Ed?”

“You’re Ed?”

“Everybody keeps calling me Charles. I was outside before and somebody called me Charles. Now this guy’s calling me Charles. Tell him I’m Ed.”

“He’s Ed,” I say.

“Of course he is,” the NCAA guy says.

The curtains part and in walks Eddie Sutton, the Oklahoma State coach, done talking for the day.

Harrick rises to meet him and Sutton extends a hand, saying: “I just want to tell you again, great, great job getting here.”

“Thanks.”

“Hey, Jim,” Sutton says. “What the devil got into Dean last night?”

Edney was carried off the floor after the Missouri game, which he won with a last-second shot.

“That must have been the greatest feeling in the world,” I tell him.

“So far.”

“So far?”

“The only greater feeling in the world,” Edney says, “would be next Monday.”

*

Bruin players are in their dressing room now, a few minutes before practice.

Kris Johnson is prostrate on the carpet, headphones strapped around his head.

“Another laid-back L.A. guy,” I say.

“That’s me,” the freshman says.

“Good luck tomorrow,” I say.

Flat on his back, he flips me the V sign with two fingers.

I can hear UCLA players all over the room, being asked the same thing. I keep hearing “smashed the backboard,” again and again.

“Think Big Country was sending you a message, Tyus?”

“I hope not,” Edney says.

“Think Big Country was sending a message, Charles?”

“I don’t know,” says Charles, who really is Charles this time and not Ed. “But I’ll promise you one thing. He won’t do that to us in the game.”

All of a sudden, the lights in the locker room are flicking on and off, on and off.

It is Kris Johnson, on his feet now, standing at the switch.

“Time to leave!” he calls out.

A few people move toward the door.

“Let’s go!” Johnson urges, flicking the light. “Time to play basketball now. Everybody out! Time to play basketball now.”