CHARLIE : Ooooohh!

For three-plus years, he was Charles the Almost Great. Occasionally great. Could be great. Gee, shouldn’t he be great?

He had the best dunks, the best 90-foot sprint, the best smile, the best sensibilities, the best-looking fans--and the best older brother.

So, as hard as it was not to watch Charles O’Bannon when he was in flight, why was it often so easy to think he was invisible on the ground?

Was he a younger, even more skilled version of Ed O’Bannon--minus the reconstructed knee and serious demeanor--or just another the lollygagging children of the flashy, trashy ‘90s?

The truth was: Charles O’Bannon didn’t figure out how to be Ed O’Bannon’s little brother until he quit trying to figure it out.

And, after three-plus years of brilliant moments and long patches of uninspired play for UCLA, when he at last figured it out in the middle of his senior season, he was free to fly.

“To me, it seemed like he tried so much not to be like me, I don’t know if that helped him,” Ed O’Bannon said of his brother.

“But, now he’s playing like I know he can play, like he’s played before at Artesia High School, where his athletic ability can dominate the game, but he’s very much under control.

“I don’t want to say he’s acting more like me--I just think he’s coming into his own. There’s just not a lot of flamboyance and jumping over people and dunking. I saw him with an easy dunk against Stanford, and he laid it in instead of going up and just tearing the backboard off.”

Over the last month and a half--partly triggered by a motivational Christmas-time lunch with Ed and their father, Ed Sr.--Charles has shed his inconsistent ways and laissez faire attitude, barking, badgering and bank-shooting his way into a familiar Bruin spot.

Into Ed’s old place as the unquestioned leader. No more resistance, no more yawns during practice or screams after dunks, no vanishing act when the score is tied and the opposing crowd is whooping it up.

“I totally agree,” Charles said Tuesday. “I spent all my years like, ‘I’m Ed’s younger brother, but I’m not like Ed. Quit comparing me to Ed. We don’t play the same position, we don’t have the same attitude.’

“But, then I realized, why do something opposite of something that’s right? Why not be the same leader, why not be as humble, not as flamboyant, do what got him there. Why not do that?”

*

Actually, the comparisons are impossible to ignore.

“Remember that move he made on Miles Simon--pump fake, one bounce, boom, tie it at 64?” said Kris Johnson, recalling one of Charles O’Bannon’s key baskets late in the game to lift UCLA over Arizona at Tucson last Thursday. “I said on the bench, ‘Charles is the best small forward in college basketball.’

“He’s like on the crazy stretch Ed went on [during the 1995 national title run] when he’s giving Duke 37 [points]. Charles is killing everybody.”

Said Coach Steve Lavin, “It’s one of those things where every week now, we’re saying that’s the best game Charles O’Bannon has played.

“Then, whoops, now this is the best that he’s played. When you start to say that five or six times, that means someone’s having a great season.

“That’s what happened with Ed O’Bannon--every game, he kept topping the last game. He kept kind of blowing the ceiling off his last game. We don’t know where the ceiling is with Charles O’Bannon. That’s the exciting thing.”

The drive began five weeks ago, when O’Bannon led UCLA’s comeback from a 48-point loss against Stanford by tearing down a career-high 16 rebounds in the Bruins’ resuscitating victory over California on Jan. 11 at the Cow Palace in San Francisco.

“That showed me what I could do,” O’Bannon said, “I didn’t really feel like I was doing that much, and I ended up with 16 rebounds.”

In the 10 games since, O’Bannon has averaged 19.9 points a game--up from 14.1 in the first 12 games--led the Bruins in scoring six times, and tied for the lead once.

The centerpieces have been O’Bannon’s games against Arizona--a 24-point outing in UCLA’s Pauley Pavilion overtime victory, with O’Bannon scoring eight in overtime, and his stirring 26-point performance at Tucson last Thursday, which included three-for-three shooting from three-point distance and a level of intensity nobody had ever seen in him.

“He reminded me so much of Ed, just the way he was playing, his whole demeanor,” Johnson said. “And the feeling I had was like, ‘Yeah, Charles can carry us, let’s go along for the ride.’

“You need that. Guys were saying at the beginning of the year, ‘Who’s going to be the go-to guy?’ And Charles has asserted himself as the go-to guy on this team.

“In the huddles that night, it was the first time in my career I’ve ever seen him do it: ‘Get into the game! Come on people!’ I’m like, ‘This is Chuck?’ ”

It is now. O’Bannon says that the lunch with his brother and father, coupled with his recently fulfilling almost all of his graduation requirements--he has only one class left to take this spring--pointed him directly toward his goal, becoming an NBA first-round pick, and what he had to do to achieve it, start playing better.

“I have three brothers,” said Ed, freely adding that, after five years at school, he still hasn’t earned his degree, “and Charles has all the brains--took all of them for us.”

At the crunch lunch, the two proud Eds told Charles that after three years of occasional flakiness, he had three months to prove that he wasn’t just a dilettante dunker with no other game--that he could play defense, fight for rebounds, lead the troops . . . that he could be an NBA player.

“I needed to hear that,” Charles said. “I didn’t think I was having a good senior year. I was just going along the same path that I had been on, score 12-13 points a game, solid on the boards, but no huge numbers.

“I would never have admitted it at the time, but yeah, sometimes you think it can be like a faucet--turn it on when you have to: ‘I don’t have to practice that hard, but come game time, I’m going to be ready.’ And that has killed me in the past.

“My early years, I put more emphasis on dunking. But, if anyone has watched this season, they’ve noticed that dunking is not part of my game anymore. I haven’t made a conscious effort not to dunk, but there’s more to the game--that’s just two points, regardless of how you get it.”

The NBA has noticed. General Manager Mike Dunleavy of the Milwaukee Bucks, one of a host of pro personnel on hand for both of UCLA’s games in Arizona last weekend, said O’Bannon has been hard to ignore.

“His stock has risen,” Dunleavy said. “I think staying his full four years has helped him. The leadership qualities, for instance that game the other night against Arizona, down the stretch he made all the big plays, made the shots. And he’s increased his shooting range a little bit.”

Said Ed O’Bannon, “I think he’s fit for the NBA. He can handle the ball a lot better than me, he jumps a lot higher than I can, he’s a lot smoother. He’s going to do well.”

Charles, who, as a high school superstar at Artesia assumed he would go straight to the NBA after his sophomore season, calls his fitful junior season his growing year.

“I learned that I wasn’t God’s gift to this game,” he said. “And as far as leading a collegiate team, I needed a lot of work. I used that year to help this year.”

On the heels of the Ed-led title season, Charles’ shooting percentage, rebound average and assists went down from his sophomore year. He was benched for missing a morning practice after celebrating his 21st birthday. And he finished the year with two blown layups and the critical blown defensive assignment on a back-door play in the first-round tournament loss to Princeton.

“I think the game was a lot bigger to Charles than people think,” Ed O’Bannon said. “I know if that happened to me, I would’ve definitely been on a mission for this year.

“And he’s different off the court, too, the way he talks about playing and his goals and things like that. He’s just a man now. That’s my baby brother. I can’t imagine him doing the things he’s doing.”

Tonight’s Game

USC (14-8, 9-4) at UCLA (15-7, 10-3)

7:30 p.m., Fox Sports West 2