LONG & WINDING RHODES : USC’s Leading Scorer Has Found Happiness After Leaving Kentucky and the Hype Behind

The legend that is supposed to be Rodrick Rhodes is happily lost. He is a New Jersey guy--wearing a New York Yankee cap tilted up and slightly to the right--but on a December day is walking across the USC campus under a blue California sky.

“This is the best place for Rodrick Rhodes,” he said.

Rhodes has been talking about himself in the third person since ninth grade. He was having to do “what’s best for Rodrick,” back in 1988, when he became only the second freshman to start at famous St. Anthony’s High in Jersey City, when Dick Vitale started pouring superlatives on him, when he was so good that one NBA scout recently recalled: “We thought he was going to be either the next Magic Johnson or the next Pete Maravich.”

Instead, Rhodes, once the best high school basketball player east of Jason Kidd, once a star at the University of Kentucky, is a fifth-year senior at a football school, no more famous than guys named Brad Otton and Delon Washington.

He ended up here, playing in front of about 3,000 sometimes interested fans at the Sports Arena, for a school that hasn’t been good enough even to make the National Invitation Tournament in recent years. He will play today at the Bren Center against UC Irvine, a far cry from where most thought Rhodes would be.

“Everybody knows about Rodrick Rhodes,” said USC freshman guard Danny Walker. “He’s a legend.”

*

When Rodrick was 10, his brother Reggie would wake him at 5 a.m. and walk him to the courts at Virginia Park near their home in Jersey City. He would blindfold him, set cans on the ground and make Rodrick dribble among them.

One day, Rodrick dribbled off the court and ran into a telephone pole. Reggie told him he should have had the court awareness to know the pole was there.

*

Gladys Rhodes, Rodrick’s mother, died of a stroke when he was 8, and Reggie 12. The two boys moved in with their sister, Gail Adams, in Jersey City, sometimes visiting or living with their father in Maplewood.

While Gail supported the boys, Reggie watched over his younger brother and, not having much else to do, led him in basketball drills at the park.

“When he came in here as a freshman, he was already as talented as anybody I had seen,” said St. Anthony’s Coach Bob Hurley, who has coached NBA players Terry Dehere, son Bobby Hurley and David Rivers. “He could do so many things well and was the best athlete I ever coached.

“Before there was Kobe Bryant, there was Rodrick Rhodes.”

Rhodes’ nickname at St. Anthony’s was SOTA, for Smoothest of Them All. He helped the school to the No. 1 spot in USA Today’s national ranking in 1988-89 and No. 2 the next two seasons. He graduated as the school’s all-time leading scorer with 1,843 points.

“I remember there were games where he was absolutely brilliant,” said Sonny Vacarro, a recruiter for top-level summer basketball camps. “Early on, he was equal with Jason Kidd. He has that kind of skill. But the difference between the two was that no one had to tell Jason he was good. Jason thought that about himself through the whole process. Rodrick needed someone to tell him that he was that good.”

He also needed a college coach to provide discipline; at least that’s what Reggie and Hurley told him, and they advised him to choose a college with that in mind.

He liked Seton Hall. He liked Ohio State Coach Randy Ayers. He liked Arizona. But he also visited Kentucky, because of the reputation of Rick Pitino, who was a disciplinarian and because Pitino had coached in the NBA.

Rhodes, 6 feet 7, visited Lexington on the night of Midnight Madness, the opening night of practice. They told him he would be the next king, and by 12:01 he was in love with the place. He called Reggie that night and said: “It’s over. This is the place for me.”

*

At halftime of a game against Louisiana State his sophomore year, Kentucky trailed by 25 points and Rhodes and Pitino had a shouting match in the locker room. Rhodes said he was yelling at teammates, not Pitino, but the coach told Rhodes to “shower, get dressed.”

Just before the start of the second half, Pitino found Rhodes in the shower, crying. He led him back to the court and together they rallied Kentucky to victory.

*

His start at Kentucky was all he and Pitino hoped it would be. Early in his first season, he was named most valuable player of the ECAC Holiday Festival in New York as he led a Kentucky team that included Jamal Mashburn to the title.

But soon Rhodes faded. He wasn’t the player Mashburn was. He didn’t have a three-point shot, but shot anyway, and he didn’t work as hard in practice as Mashburn. He finished the season averaging nine points as the third man off the bench and scored only one point in a Final Four loss to Michigan.

“He was playing well for us, but so much was expected of him, maybe it was impossible for him to live up to it,” Pitino said. “The Kentucky pressure is not for everyone.”

Rhodes was out to prove it was for him his sophomore season. He came back expecting to be the focal point of the team, as Mashburn had been, but didn’t have the game or the maturity to fill the role. Pitino and Rhodes clashed almost from the start. Pitino accused Rhodes of being lazy and did not like his taunting behavior.

After the second game, Pitino told reporters he was “fed up” with Rhodes after he had received a technical for taunting.

In his junior season, against Arkansas in the Southeastern Conference final, Rhodes was so upset after missing free throws late in a tie game that he cried on the bench and was too upset to play in the overtime.

Finally, in what was his last game as a Wildcat, he took on North Carolina’s Jerry Stackhouse in the 1995 NCAA Southeast Regional final. It was billed as a personal challenge. He finished two for 10 in the loss, and shortly after, declared himself eligible for the NBA draft.

There were rumors that Pitino forced him out so he could give his scholarship to prep star Ron Mercer, and talk that Pitino did not think Reggie was a good influence on Rodrick, that he was pushing him to the NBA before he was ready.

Pitino denied that Rhodes was forced out.

“I begged him not to get an agent,” Pitino said. “I wanted him to stay at Kentucky.”

Rhodes went to pre-draft camps but did little to change the perception many had of him--he wasn’t quite ready for the NBA.

“When I saw him [at the camps] I saw someone who was a solid basketball player, but he didn’t have one definitive skill,” said Dave Pendergraft, director of player personnel for the New Jersey Nets. “There was not that one thing that separated him from the other swing players. He was sound in all areas but not a master of one.”

After being projected as a late second-round pick, Rhodes pulled his name out of the draft and returned to Kentucky. But when he got back, that red carpet he had seen at Midnight Madness three years earlier had been rolled out for Mercer. Pitino suggested a redshirt season for Rhodes.

“I wanted him to take a year off and work on his game and take some time to enjoy this time of his life,” Pitino said. “Since he was 5 years old, people have been telling him he was going to be in the NBA. I wanted him to realize what he had going for him now. I wanted him to enjoy where he is at the moment instead of trying to get to the next level.”

Rhodes decided to transfer instead of stew at Kentucky, and picked USC over Syracuse and other schools because he had a friend who knew Trojan Coach Henry Bibby.

Of his Kentucky experience, Rhodes would say only, “My situation wasn’t right. It wasn’t good for me. It was best for Rodrick to further his career at another program.”

*

He was walking in a mall in Charlotte, N.C., there with USC for a tournament early this month. It was the first time in almost two years he was back as a player to a place where basketball is law.

It looked like any mall, like places in Los Angeles, but something was different. People were staring--young kids, girls, older people. Some came up to him. “You’re Rodrick Rhodes, you’re the man.”

It was the first time in a long time he had fans. It felt good, different from before, better.

*

This was his decision.

“I wanted to really work for everything I have,” Rhodes said. “I am looking at this situation as high school all over again, having to make a name for myself all over again.”

He sat out the NCAA’s mandated year after transferring and watched Kentucky win the national title without him. “[My old teammates] called me a week or two after winning the title,” Rhodes said. “They said ‘You were here even though you weren’t.’ ”

He bulked up during the year off, so much so that when he returned to Jersey City this summer, Bobby Hurley and Dehere teased him, saying he might be too big and have to play power forward in college.

“I got bigger, my arms and my shoulders,” Rhodes said. “I am not Lou Ferrigno, but I definitely got bigger.”

A stronger, more mature Rhodes is leading USC in scoring at 19.5 points per game. And he is playing defense, averaging three steals and often playing three positions for the Trojans (3-1). He is a team player, perhaps for the first time in his life.

“Now basketball is not really having the spotlight on you but doing what you’re supposed to be doing and having your peers and your opponents respect you,” Rhodes said. “It’s not about the hype--first-team this and first-team that. As long as your opponents and the other coaching staff respect you, everything else will take care of itself.

“The best way I can describe it is that sometimes you have to take some steps back before you can take steps forward.”

His game as has gone forward. Scouts watching Rhodes against North Carolina in Charlotte came away impressed.

“Usually when a player sits out a year, it takes a while for them to get back.” the Nets’ Pendergraft said. “I went to a practice recently and in Charlotte I saw a passing ability that I hadn’t seen, and he would make plays off a dribble.

“He has improved in other areas--shot selection, he goes to the hole a little bit better, and he can now change a game defensively. He has warranted someone drafting him.”

Said a Laker scout: “He’s shown that he has been working hard. And that may be most important.”

Bibby says Rhodes has been diligent since he arrived at USC. “He’s been nothing but a pleasure to coach,” Bibby said. “He comes out every day and works hard at practice and worked hard in the classroom [in his year off]. He makes others around him better.”

What might be most important to Rhodes now is his 8-month-old daughter, Ro’deira, who is back in Jersey City with her mother, Rhodes’ girlfriend and high school sweetheart.

“You learn really quick that it’s not all about you anymore, that you can’t be self-centered,” Rhodes said about being a father. “There are some days when I come home frustrated from practice or a bad exam, but I come home and hear her voice over the phone and that is a great feeling. It has definitely changed me on the court also.

“It may sound corny, but I am really out there having fun. I am not pressed anymore, I am out there helping guys up, making jokes on the court. It’s supposed to be so serious, where I will stare you down and intimidate you, but I’m past all that now.”

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Rhodes’ Work

A look at Rodrick Rhodes’ per-game averages at Kentucky and USC:

KENTUCKY

* 1992-93: 33 games, 9.1 points, 2.4 rebounds, 1.8 assists

* 1993-94: 33 games, 14.6 points, 4.1 rebounds, 2.8 assists

* 1994-95: 33 games, 12.9 points, 3.6 rebounds, 3.6 assists

USC

* 1996-97: 4 games, 19.5 points, 6.8 rebounds, 4 assists