Tightly Rapt : Toronto’s Stoudamire Won’t Come Unwound, Not After All He Has Been Through in Life

This is how it goes on the expansion trail. . . .

The early-season cheering has faded. It’s a month since the Toronto Raptors won their first game and Damon Stoudamire took it to Michael Jordan for 22 points in their third. It’s a week since they won their last game. They’re on their first Western trip, learning.

Stoudamire is nine for 27 on the trip. He went six for 17 in his Portland homecoming. A night later, he’s up to his neck in Lakers, who are ahead by 15 points by the end of the first period. Stoudamire’s contribution: three missed shots and a turnover.

Nor is his new fame any consolation. For a while, it was fun, talking about being booed by Toronto fans on draft day, or about his Mighty Mouse tattoo (“He’s a cool person”).

Actually, it’s a rodent. If the truth be known, Stoudamire never saw the cartoon show or read the comics. He just wanted something on his right arm to go with the Old English “DAMON” on his left and saw it on the wall in a tattoo parlor.

It’s starting to run together: nights, games, losses, questions. The only time he shows any emotion in an interview now is when someone mentions he has lost as many games in a month as he did in his last two seasons at the University of Arizona.

“Close,” he says. “Yeah, it’s difficult. It’s very difficult ‘cause you hate losing. ‘Cause some of the games have been close and I think we should have won some of them.

“We’re sitting around wondering why we’re not 12-6, because we think we can just as easily be 12-6 as 6-12. It’s hard. It’s really hard for me, but I’m trying to manage and maintain.”

By midnight Friday, they’re 6-13. The Lakers beat them by 17, but not before the Raptors cut a 20-point deficit to four. Stoudamire plays 44 minutes, scoring 20 points and handing out 10 assists.

Maintain? His whole life has been maintaining.

*

Maybe you need to come from Stoudamire’s neighborhood, or Isiah Thomas’, to understand “maintaining.”

“The things that jumped out at me,” says Thomas, the general manager who drafted Stoudamire, “he was a very competitive person, and he was able to overcome obstacles.

“In an expansion situation, you’ve got to have people on your team and in your organization who understand failure, who are not going to be defeated by failure. Damon was that kind of person. He didn’t get defeated by life, and he didn’t give in.”

What everyone says, now that it has worked out, is that Thomas saw himself in Stoudamire. Thomas was the prototype for little point guards--small (5 feet 11 rather than his listed 6-1), gifted and indomitable.

If Stoudamire is cute, Thomas seemed like an angel from heaven with his cherubic countenance and ready smile. Raised by a mother he revered, in a grisly neighborhood on the west side of Chicago, Thomas was an angry choirboy, indeed, picking fights with behemoths such as Rick Mahorn, even quarreling with his best friend on the Pistons, Bill Laimbeer, who once knocked him out of a practice, leveling him with an elbow on a pick.

Stoudamire was raised by his mother, Liz, in a poor neighborhood in Portland, Ore. Damon’s father, Willie, a high-scoring Portland State player, never married Liz, never lived with them and finally left town altogether.

Young Damon was a bundle of fury. In youth basketball, he kicked over benches, picked fights, accused referees of cheating, blasted teammates. At home, he was no less tempestuous. He once got so angry at his mother, he stomped out of the house, obliging her to chase him down in her car.

Instead of attending a high school in the neighborhood, however, Stoudamire picked Wilson High in the suburbs, partly for basketball, partly because he wanted to stay away from trouble.

Feeling estranged, a young black student who had never been in a predominantly white environment, he resolved to reform and did.

“I still got a temper,” Stoudamire says. “I’m not going to never lose the fight I have inside of me. I learned how to control it a lot more, but I still got a temper. That’s just the way I’ve always been. I always had a fire inside of me where things don’t go right, I’m always angry.

“As you get older, you got to handle that better ‘cause you get labeled. You get labeled as either a head case or someone who’s not coachable or things like that.”

He wouldn’t be derailed. He had figured out he was going somewhere and it wasn’t just to the big guys’ game on the Portland playgrounds. At Arizona, he was a revelation, off the floor as well as on. He practiced hard, went to school, almost graduated in four years without going to summer school.

Coaches, fans and press doted on him. He was personable and down to earth. He was a three-time All-Pacific 10 Conference selection but, as a junior in 1994, he hit an inopportune cold spell in the Final Four loss to Arkansas.

As a senior when it was his team, he had to sit out his final game, when Willie, who was back in Portland, was found to have accepted airline tickets from a prospective agent named Steve Feldman. (Damon used to say he hated the Wildcats’ annual trip to Los Angeles, which was like an agents’ bazaar, and chose Fred Slaughter to represent him, rather than Feldman).

Then Arizona was ousted in the first round of the NCAA tournament by Miami of Ohio. The tournament is a huge promotional vehicle for the NBA draft, but Mighty Mouse had struck out.

Thomas, doing his homework, scouted Stoudamire for weeks in the Goodwill team’s practices in Los Angeles and stayed with him. However, the new fans in Toronto hoped for someone they had seen in prime time, someone like UCLA forward Ed O’Bannon. When Stoudamire’s name was announced at the draft in SkyDome, boos cascaded from the stands.

“That didn’t bother me,” Stoudamire says. “It just gives you more incentive, but nah, it didn’t bother me. It doesn’t bother me at all because, regardless of them booing me or not, they were still going to have to take me.

“To me, it didn’t really make a difference because it was my day. I wasn’t going to let anything get me down.”

And he hasn’t.

Raptor Coach Brendan Malone calls Stoudamire a throwback to the days before rookies arrived with big contracts and attitudes. If the veterans had any questions, Stoudamire answered them early.

“I played with his college buddy [Khalid Reeves],” John Salley says, “and I didn’t think he was going to be as good, but he really surprised me.

“First thing you saw was this young cat taking off. He had some competition and he was feeling his way, but the first scrimmage against Philadelphia, against [Vernon] Maxwell, 20 in the first half. Inside, outside. And was diming it--giving a lot of assists to everybody.

“I look at him, I say he has the same talents as [Orlando point guard] Penny Hardaway. Probably shoots a little better. And his heart is as big if not bigger. And I guess it has to be because he’s 5-10. He makes up for it with his heart.”

The decision was Thomas’ first big one as a general manager, and it was widely second-guessed. Now it’s a coup.

“I think Damon’s going to blaze his own path in this league,” Thomas says. “What I saw in Damon, I saw a guy who makes other people better. He has no problem accepting leadership. He’s done that all his life.

“If you say those are qualities that I had when I played, then I say thank you.”

Don’t mention it. Stoudamire is among the NBA’s top five in assists, leads the Raptors in scoring and is--catch this--second on the team in defensive rebounds. If he had any more heart, they’d need a bigger airplane.

So what if they lose 60 or so? This is Damon Stoudamire’s career, and nothing’s going to get him down.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

First Steps

An NBA rookie’s first month is trying, especially when the top five picks include four sophomores and a high school player. Here’s how first-round selections are doing:

1. Joe Smith, Warriors--Averaged 16 points last five games but has to grow into a power forward. Karl Malone toasted him, 51-4.

2. Antonio McDyess, Nuggets--Gifted, trying to figure out which way is up, still getting 10 points a game, eight rebounds, 1.4 blocks.

3. Jerry Stackhouse, 76ers--The other horse in two-man rookie derby: 21 points, four rebounds, four assists, five turnovers a game.

4. Rasheed Wallace, Bullets--As advertised, mobile, agile and infantile. Had an early crack at starting but lost job to Gheorge Muresan.

5. Kevin Garnett, Timberwolves--General managers were leaping over each other to draft him, but now everyone is being reminded what a leap it is from preps to pros: six points a game in 20 minutes, shooting 36%.

6. Bryant Reeves, Grizzlies--Woeful start, but trading Benoit Benjamin helped. Averaged 12 points and eight rebounds in his first three starts.

7. Damon Stoudamire, Raptors--Averaging 15 points, nine assists, five rebounds. Third in the league in minutes, playing 40 a game.

8. Shawn Respert, Bucks--Shaky start after preseason injury. Isn’t in their rotation.

9. Ed O’Bannon, Nets--Even after trading Derrick Coleman, he’s No. 4 forward. Hasn’t made jumper. Classic quandary: He needs minutes to gain confidence, can’t get them because team doesn’t have confidence in him.

10. Kurt Thomas, Heat--Only rare rookies can play for Pat Riley. So far, he isn’t one.

11. Gary Trent, Blazers--At 6-6, 255, the rap was he had no position, but he won starting small forward spot.

12. Cherokee Parks, Mavericks--Young big men often struggle and he is: not in rotation, two points a game, shooting 29%.

13. Corliss Williamson, Kings--Injured, hasn’t played.

14. Eric Williams, Celtics--Averaging 11 off the bench.

15. Brent Barry, Clippers--Bill Fitch has him on a tight rein, but he’s shown a lot. Amazing 52% accuracy on three-point shots. If they re-drafted tomorrow, he probably goes in top 10.

16. Alan Henderson, Hawks--After a good exhibition season, screeched to a halt on opening night.

17. Bobby Sura, Cavaliers--In rotation but not doing much.

18. Theo Ratliff, Pistons--Five points, five rebounds and 1.5 blocks in 20 minutes a game.

19. Randolph Childress, Blazers--Backing up Rod Strickland, hasn’t shown he’s really a point guard. Think they don’t wish they’d taken Tyus Edney?

20. Jason Caffey, Bulls--Not in rotation.

21. Michael Finley, Suns--Another great low-round pick by a talent-savvy team, he’s starting and averaging 16 points.

21. George Zidek, Hornets--It was a surprise he made the first round. Then he scored 34 points in his first two games. Has averaged five since but has started half their games.

23. Travis Best, Pacers--Not in rotation.

24. Loren Meyer, Mavericks--See Cherokee Parks.

25. David Vaughn, Magic--Not in rotation.

26. Sherell Ford, Seattle--Not in rotation.

27. Mario Bennett, Suns--Hurt, hasn’t played.

28. Greg Ostertag, Jazz--Pleasant surprise. Before he was hurt, he started 10 games and showed he can, in fact, walk and chew gum at the same time.

29. Corey Alexander, Spurs--Just back after an injury.