L.A. Hooked on the Worm

The guy who used to play power forward for the Lakers showed up at 4:40 p.m., ready to start his new job.

In 20 minutes Kurt Rambis, the lunch-pail guy, would be introduced as the head coach of one of the most glamorous teams in sports. He arrived by himself, clutching a picture of his daughter in costume for her role as Little Miss Muffett in the school play. It was as calm and normal a moment as there has been around the Lakers this week. Rambis knew it wouldn’t last.

“Now the craziness starts,” he said.

The past, present and future of the Lakers converged at the Great Western Forum, right in the hallway outside the Laker locker room.

True to an organization in which no one knows for sure what’s going on, players learned the identity of their new coach from reporters as they walked to the locker room.

A procession of former Laker power forwards passed down the hallway: Rambis, Mitch Kupchak and Jim Brewer.

At 5:52, a former Chicago Bull forward who now plays for the Lakers came through--Corie Blount. The clock kept ticking, bringing on the first act of the Dennis Rodman carnival. He’s a man who turns the simple act of arriving at a game into an event fraught with drama.

It’s standard operating procedure around the NBA that players are to arrive by 6 p.m. for a 7:30 game. Rambis, when asked about his role of disciplinarian, had said: “We have a set of rules, and those rules will be adhered to.”

Six o’clock loomed and still no Rodman. His first test. He finally arrived, with his people, illuminated by mini-cam lights, walking into the locker room and quickly disappearing into a back room. The digital clock inside the Laker locker room read 6:02.

Classic Rodman, right off the bat. Close enough to the appointed time to avoid being a major problem, over the edge just enough to show he’s a nonconformist. With Rodman the infractions always start off small, growing until he finds out just how much he can get away with.

So in addition to seeking maximum production from this Shaquille O’Neal/Kobe Bryant-led team to avoid meeting the same fate as Del Harris, Rambis must steer clear of the Rodman distractions that stunted Bob Hill, an otherwise good coach, in San Antonio.

The thing is, the Lakers could use Rambis the player more than Rambis the coach. Would that player work on this team? “Oh yeah, definitely,” O’Neal said.

Back in the Showtime days, Rambis was the guy shoveling the coal so the Laker locomotive could race down the tracks. Those fastbreaks with the Magic Johnson no-look passes and James Worthy one-armed dunks often started with a Rambis rebound. Rambis earned four championship rings and a loyal following from the Forum fans, particularly those bespectacled boys of Rambis Youth.

But this is the ‘90s, so it’s not enough to simply do your job. You need an act too. You have to sell yourself, the way Rodman has developed a cult of people who follow “the person who is Dennis” (as he once described himself).

If you connected the dots in this week’s news you could get the full picture of Rodman. Earlier this week there was a murder conviction in the hate killing last year of a black man in Jasper, Texas. Rodman paid for the victim’s funeral. That’s Rodman, just as much as the colored hair. But that act didn’t get one tenth the coverage of Rodman’s did-they-or-didn’t-they marriage to Carmen Electra.

That’s where the media come into blame for the creation of this Rodman monster, and I’ve been just as guilty as anyone with some of the stories I’ve written in the past when he was with the Bulls.

But the public encourages him too. The first book on Rodman, the tale of his adolescence spent with a white family who took him in and the cultural bridges they crossed, sat on the shelves. But when he came out with his lurid, loony “Bad as I Wanna Be,” it made the best-seller lists.

Dennis could be known as a hard-working, smart person if he chose to. He just wouldn’t be as known.

He definitely came to the right town for the twilight of his career. This is a town that turned live car chases into a staple of television.

There were 17,505 enablers at the Forum on Friday, cheering Rodman from the moment he stepped onto the court.

Whenever the game got boring--and there are plenty of dead spots whenever the Lakers and Clippers meet--the crowd started chanting for Rodman. When they tired of that, they waved and yelled for Carmen Electra.

Will Rodman find a way to stay in the spotlight, or will his act get old? There’s flash-in-the-pan and then there’s the long-term approach.

Rambis was a long shot to make the team when he came to Laker camp in 1981, but he managed to fashion a 14-year career in the NBA, then parlay that into a desirable coaching job.

Rambis and Rodman do have their similarities--”I’ve always kind of been a bit of a rebel, but I’ve done it in a way that’s a little different,” Rambis said.

And for both, wardrobe was a hot topic. At least it was for Rambis before Friday’s game. He isn’t known as a snazzy dresser, and the players teased him about his clothes, asking him if he’d signed a deal with Armani yet now that he’s a head coach. Rambis wondered how he’d be able to use a three-suit rotation without anyone noticing.

He changed into a blue suit, then asked fashion consultant Eddie Jones whether he should wear blue or black socks.

But overall the suit looked good, as the Lakers did in his debut.

J.A. Adande can be reached at his e-mail address: j.a.adande@latimes.com