A FIRST-RATE FIRST CLASS : Sudden Impact : Freshman McCoy Is Such a Force in the Middle, He’s Already Being Compared to Bruin Legends

There is the legacy, and there is the lunacy.

With Jelani McCoy, a shot-blocking prodigy with the NBA emotional repertoire and teenage on-court energy, UCLA’s basketball team has gotten everything it has ever dreamed of--and outrageously more.

More passion, more attitude, more drama, more everything. Decades after Bill Walton and Lew Alcindor won a combined five national titles in six seasons as dominant Bruin big men, McCoy is the heir with a glare.

But McCoy has always been an overflowing talent and personality, so should anybody be surprised that even playing under Pauley Pavilion’s 11 national title banners, his is an out-sized, overwhelming presence?

“He does stuff that you can’t even believe in practice,” said Bill Peterson, who coached McCoy for his junior year at St. Augustine High in San Diego.

“Here’s a 6-10, 6-11 kid, he’s driving down court, spinning around, moving the ball to his left hand, back to his right. . . . And I’m screaming at him one day, ‘Jelani, quit acting like you’re 15!’ He says, ‘Coach, I am 15.’ ”

McCoy has worn a UCLA uniform for only about three months, and he turned 18 in December.

But even before he enrolled in school, the veteran Bruins were dutifully adjusting their games to fit his, and only six games into his freshman campaign--after his monstrous, 11-block performance against Maryland--he was being measured alongside Abdul-Jabbar and Walton. Already, he is the most dangerous UCLA front-court player since David Greenwood left in 1979--and the big man with the most potential since Walton, 22 years ago.

“You come here as a center, you know a lot of great centers have come to this school, and I think people are going to automatically assume that I’m the cornerstone to get a national championship,” McCoy said. “But there are so many good players on this team that I don’t have to be a cornerstone.

“I don’t have to be that one, dominant player. We’re all cornerstones for a national championship.”

Through 14 games McCoy, who has started all of them but rarely has a play called for him, is averaging 10.1 points, 7.8 rebounds and 3.9 blocks a game, and in the Bruins’ four Pacific 10 Conference victories, has averaged 11.8 rebounds.

The threat of his shot-blocking--his 54 blocks already rank him fourth in the school’s single-season record book, but the statistic has been kept only since 1978--is a key reason UCLA has held its opponents to a conference-leading 39.4% field-goal percentage.

“You talk a lot, ‘Boy, look at that guy, look at Marcus Camby, man, he just blocks everything, he’s so tall . . . ‘ “ said UCLA assistant coach Lorenzo Romar. “Now we have one.”

That was first apparent--to players and coaches--in exhibition games when in a battle for the starting center job with omm’A Givens, McCoy’s unit dominated the opposition. “I’ve always said you could fool a fool and you can con a con, but you can never kid a kid,” UCLA Coach Jim Harrick said. “The players know.”

McCoy’s sometimes goofy, sometimes ferocious personality has spread to the rest of his team, which won a national title last season but eagerly embraced both his skills and his scowls.

“I remember another time this happened is when Magic [Johnson] was a rookie with Kareem [on the Lakers],” said Romar, who recruited McCoy. “And there that famous hook shot Kareem hits against the Clippers in Magic’s debut, and he’s hugging Kareem, and Kareem’s like, ‘What is this?’

“But before it’s all said and done that year, Kareem’s waving his fists in the air--it was just contagious, even though Magic was a rookie. And Jelani has had the same effect on our team.”

After last season’s dignified attitude, the new Bruin rowdiness has not been universally praised, and for many, McCoy’s showmanship and occasional taunts amount to the ugly NBA-ization of UCLA.

“What they’ve got to understand is this kid just turned 18,” Peterson said. “That’s not very old, especially when he’s watching Shawn Kemp run around on TV doing the same thing.”

Fred McCoy, Jelani’s father, says his son’s personality developed because he was always so much taller than the rest of his classmates.

“If you go back and look at his early childhood, going to school, he was shoulders above--not heads above--shoulders above the rest of the kids,” the senior McCoy said. “You have to figure out how you fit in with that. You end up working at being the class clown.”

And the court temperament?

Said Jelani McCoy: “It’s just something I always had. I’m very intense, I have a lot of fun. I get in a lot of trouble for it, but that’s just because I’m intense and I want to win every time out.

“You’ll get a little bit of ‘You’re a jerk,’ and you get a couple bumps after you do it. That’s just something I have to accept because that’s something I’m always going to do.”

The giants of the past have noticed.

“He’s got great physical promise, but he’s a little immature,” Abdul-Jabbar said. “He’s worried about what the other team thinks a lot. But he’s very talented. I expect him to do well. I hope he stays in the program a couple years and he matures there.

“He should work a little bit more on his offensive game, both facing and with his back to the basket. That will really make him a great player.”

Said Peterson, the high school coach: “Kareem is right. Right now, his offensive skills are very, very raw. But I have never seen anybody dunk the ball harder.”

McCoy has gotten most of his points on thunderous dunks--either off offensive rebounds or running the floor on breaks, when he sometimes beats Charles O’Bannon and the other fleet Bruins downcourt.

But McCoy, who is shooting 68.6% from the field and made 87.5% of his shots as a high school senior, also has displayed flashes of fluidity with the basketball, including two breathtaking 360-degree spin moves that concluded with soft layups.

“I think I have [the offensive moves], I just haven’t shown them yet,” McCoy said, when asked if he is working to develop a signature shot. “I’m definitely [working on it], but I don’t want to reveal it yet. It’s not time.

“I think people have to realize how many scorers we have on this team. It’ll be a surprise to people when I start doing those things, but I just think you have to wait your turn.”

Walton, who grew up in San Diego, lives there now and has heard the McCoy comparisons since McCoy was in junior high, says this season’s UCLA team is better than last year’s 31-2 team for one reason: McCoy.

“I think he’s the guy that makes the team so special,” Walton said.

“The other guys are all really good, don’t get me wrong. But with Jelani, with the size and the quick jumping ability, his ability to just explode to heights--he’s above the rim in a fraction of a second--it’s just so special.

“In high school, he really had no teammates. So now, he’s got terrific teammates. You put them all together and the size and the presence that he creates in the middle, which is where games are won and lost. . . . The history of basketball is big guys dominating in the middle.”

So how does McCoy, through just half a season, compare with the twin towers of UCLA tradition?

“It all comes down to the winning and losing,” Walton said. “He has a totally different game than mine; my game was totally different than Kareem’s. He’s much more of a shot blocker. He’s a raw player at this point, but the potential is unlimited.

“Does he have the offensive repertoire of a J.R. Henderson? No way, but the physical presence and the intensity is just incredible.”

And so comes the inevitable question for any player who makes this big an impact this quickly: Is there any way McCoy will turn down the NBA and stay at UCLA for four, or at least three, seasons?

Peterson said McCoy has murmured about leaving school after two years, but points out that McCoy’s mother, Bettie, is eager for him to get his degree in communications.

“They’re going to dangle some money in front of this kid that’s going to be unreal,” Peterson said. “But he’s a pretty good friend of Kevin Garnett [who went to the NBA this season directly from high school]. And Garnett’s been saying some things in the newspapers that I’ve been clipping out and sending to Jelani, about how this is not fun and games, this is a job, like a steel mill. . . .”

All the accolades and the talk of tradition and dynasties and NBA millions has come suddenly, and Fred McCoy acknowledges that it’s a bit much to digest.

“That’s a little frightening,” the father said. “First of all, he just turned 18, and he’s got all the pressure of coming to school that would like to repeat. Then all of a sudden, he not only has to live up to helping win a championship, he has to be like Kareem and Bill, who were just all-time powers.

“And I’m thinking, ‘Wait a minute. Hold on. Maybe in his sophomore year let’s try and do some of that.’ But I have every confidence that he should be able to exceed doing it. You’ve just got to look it over and you look at the talent that he has, and if he continues to develop, it’s quite reasonable to expect that.”

McCoy paused, and laughed quietly before adding, “I guess I don’t have to worry about him coming up to his parents later and saying, ‘Look, I could use a little help here to buy a house.’ ”