Guarded Decision

This is the Baron Davis you don’t necessarily know.

The morning of a game, the phone rings at his sister Lissa’s house.

There has been a problem, a UCLA official says. A fight. Baron is on a plane home, and an officer wants to speak to her.

“Hello, Officer?” Lissa Davis says, panic in her voice.

On the other end, peals of laughter.

It’s Baron.

Again.

“I disguise my voice,” Baron said. “She falls for it every time.”

Life around Baron Davis is sometimes exhausting, always entertaining.

Rico Hines was snoozing in his bed one night last summer after going to see “Bride of Chucky” with Davis, his roommate.

Hines stirred in his sleep, half aware of someone standing near his bed--then awoke in shock to find a frightening mask staring at him, inches from his face.

Baron. Again.

“I woke up screaming, and I swung at him,” Hines said. “He laughed the whole day, came back and told everyone at school. He’s a practical joker. He loves joking. That’s his whole thing.”

Months later, Davis feigned offense all over again as he and Hines walked across campus after class.

“He slapped me,” Davis said.

That’s Davis, the loosey-goosey UCLA point guard who has gone from a foul-prone and sometimes out-of-control freshman famous for the sport-utility vehicle he drove in high school to the Bruins’ maturing leader and game-breaking scorer.

Still only a sophomore, he could be playing his final game at Pauley Pavilion today, his dream of making it to the NBA close enough to touch.

Maybe there’s still the occasional flash of impetuousness or frustration--remember Terry Christman?

But Davis has corralled his game without losing his exuberance and creativity and has come back a changed player after tearing his anterior cruciate ligament during the NCAA tournament last season when he landed awkwardly after a dunk.

Maybe Davis isn’t as fast or as explosive. Not yet, with a brace still on his left knee. Maybe not so airborne.

But he is stronger, smarter.

Better.

“He is so good, it’s unbelievable,” USC Coach Henry Bibby said. “You take Baron Davis and put him on any team in the Pac-10, and it would make them a contender.

“The difference is he’s smarter. It’s like he’s aged. . . . Like he’s gone from 19 to 29. Just in his play on the floor, his demeanor has calmed down. He’s shown more maturity.”

He has been the leader UCLA needs, exhorting his teammates in the huddle to a second-half comeback against Louisville, taking the ball in the final seconds against Oregon and driving the length of the court only to pull up calmly from 14 feet for the winning jumper. And only Sunday, brushing aside Syracuse with his second 27-point game in little more than a week.

He makes powerful drives through the lane for layups, often not even thinking about an exclamation-point dunk anymore. He has found the range on his three-point shot, making 18 of his last 38--an impressive 47%--after some early-season struggles. He even went nine for 12 from the line the other night, showing he won’t always be a 60% free-throw shooter.

Maybe most important, he starts to drive hard to the basket, then pulls up for short, unspectacular jumpers--those count for two points too--leaving the defense flat-footed.

“My knee has just grounded my game. I’m more of an on-the-ground player now,” Davis said. “I tend not to get out of control, flying through the air.

“My mind now is more on getting my teammates involved. Let my game flow from that. I’m in no rush to score points in spectacular ways.

“Last year, every big game, I came out really hyped and really emotional. This year, I’m thinking more about getting the other guys involved.”

Twice, he has had 11 assists in a game. But when the Bruins need him to, he has been more of a scorer than ever. After averaging 6.5 points his first four games as he worked his way back into game shape and tested his knee, Davis is leading UCLA at 15.8 a game--and has averaged only a hair under 20 over the last 10.

“Not to wish an injury on anybody, but you can see it’s been a blessing in a way,” UCLA Coach Steve Lavin said.

Hines doesn’t think there’s any question.

“I think what he went through with his knee matured him a whole lot,” Hines said. “He began to put things in perspective a little more. Like, ‘Dang, I’ve got to slow down on the court. I can’t be as wide open as I usually was.’

“I think it made him better. . . . He’s shown people he can play below the rim. He’s not as exciting, but he’s still scoring 20 points and still having six or seven assists. He’s shown people he’s not just a high-flying athlete, but a true point guard.”

Wounded Knee

Who knew at that moment last March 15 how much one dunk could cost Davis?

“I didn’t even know he had hurt himself until I saw him go in to the locker room, but then he came back in the second half,” said Lissa, who was at the second-round game against Michigan in Atlanta when Davis came up limping after a driving dunk in the first half.

“After the game, when we waited for him to come out, that’s when they told me something was wrong with his knee. When I found out how serious it was, I was just sad he couldn’t play, because that’s all he wants to do.”

Raised largely by his grandmother and late grandfather, Lela and Luke Nicholson, Davis says Lissa and his grandmother are his closest family, along with another sister, Toi.

“My grandfather passed when I was in eighth grade. That was the saddest moment in my life. He started me in basketball,” Davis said, not wanting to talk about the circumstances that led him to his grandparents. He occasionally sees his mother, Bernice, but not so much his father, whose name is Walter Davis (not the former NBA player).

It didn’t take long for Lissa and her grandmother to realize Baron’s knee injury was the beginning of another crisis in his career.

Lissa played a large role in the first crisis several years ago, when UCLA came under scrutiny for possible NCAA recruiting violations after she purchased a used Chevy Blazer registered to Jim Harrick, then the UCLA coach, from Harrick’s son Glenn, only two days after her brother committed to the Bruins. (UCLA was eventually cleared of wrongdoing because records indicated the vehicle was purchased for fair market value.)

With the knee injury, basketball couldn’t be his outlet.

“I just prayed everything would be all right,” Nicholson said. “We had to stay on him in the summer about getting his treatments. We had to help him with his crutches.”

Davis slipped toward depression, and the pounds piled on.

“The guys would say, ‘Fatso.’ Say I had breasts. Call me ‘Fat Man,’ just joking,” Davis said. “But I started realizing I had to lose weight.”

He topped out at 230 pounds, after weighing a skinny 180 after the surgery, and plays at about 210 now.

The closer Davis got to playing, the harder it was to keep him away from the court, especially the pickup games with NBA players at UCLA.

The Lakers’ Kobe Bryant says he was the one to ask to go one-on-one with Davis. Bryant won, but Davis made an impression.

“He seemed very intense when I played against him, and that’s something you really don’t see in college too often,” Bryant said. “He’s serious about the game.

“That’s what I like about him. He wasn’t afraid or anything. He came out and played hard. I was definitely testing [his knee] out for him. It was fine. Very, very quick.”

The Comeback

It was five games into the season before Davis returned to the Bruin lineup with his repaired knee, playing 16 minutes against Delaware State. Bit by bit, he made it back.

“Around Christmas, that was a big-time leap,” Davis said. “Everybody was telling me, ‘Go ahead, why don’t you dunk anymore? You can.’ I said, ‘No, I can’t. I know I can’t.’

“The start of the Pac-10, that was the biggest turning point. I think that when I hit my first jumper and dunked, my confidence started coming back.”

The Arizona game was big, a 20-point, six-assist performance in a UCLA victory. And later, in UCLA’s first game against California, two back-to-back powerful drives to the basket seemed to cement it: Baron was back.

Not without a little extra prodding from sophomore Earl Watson, his partner in the backcourt, who thought Davis was being too tentative.

“Baron can still dunk on anybody,” Watson said. “I saw him in practice one day, he came back and did 360s, every dunk imaginable. I was like, ‘Baron, in the games you’re shooting layups. What are you doing? It’s a total mind-set thing.’ Then he came back the next game and had two amazing dunks.”

Davis insists he has no fear, even though it was on a dunk that he hurt his knee.

“It’s not me to be scared,” he said. “If I could do it all over again, I’d do the same thing and dunk again. It was just one of those things that happen.

“But I learned from it not to dunk as much. I’ve matured as a basketball player, trying to work on my game instead of dunking all the time.”

All this talk of maturity, and he’s still the same, playful Baron in many ways.

He knows his grandmother doesn’t approve of tattoos. So he buys a temporary one and marches into the house to tease her before he rubs it off.

He hears the Stanford students’ left-right, left-right taunting as he walks to the bench after fouling out in Maples Pavilion, then hops on one leg to tease them, breaking up the crowd.

And sometimes he slips back, the way he did in l’affaire Christman, drawing a technical when he threw his mouthpiece down to express his frustration after Christman called Davis’ fifth foul on what replays showed was a questionable call.

His real mistake came after that Jan. 31 loss to Washington, when Davis said Christman had “been cheating” the Bruins, drawing probation from the Pacific 10 Conference for the rest of the season.

Davis issued his apology and took care of his mistake. He also recognized his initial error: trying to block a shot on a breakaway while playing with four fouls.

“I should have let him make the layup,” Davis said.

Last year. This year. A world of difference, all because of a knee ligament?

“It’s made him a more mature person, regardless of basketball, to go through that kind of adversity,” Lavin said. “But he hasn’t lost that spirit he has, that kind of passion and love for the game that a Magic had, that has a contagious effect on everybody.”

His grandmother sees something else.

“The injury, I think it made him more humble,” she said.

The Next Step

The first time James Nicholson, Davis’ uncle, realized the basketball Davis always had under his arm as a kid was going to mean big dollars, Baron was 13 or 14 and had signed up for a charity fund-raiser, recruiting friends and relatives to pledge a few bucks for every free throw he could make without missing.

“I thought he’d miss one after about 19 or 20,” Nicholson said. “He hit 76 free throws without a miss. Cost me three hundred-and-something dollars.”

Now the really big money is only a word away.

All Davis has to do is say yes.

“It’s a tough decision, I’m not teasing,” said Davis, who will be a first-round pick in the NBA draft if he comes out.

“You know, it’s a decision that’s going to affect the rest of my life. I might miss out on the best two years of my life.

“But there’s the fact I could get hurt, and it’s just always been my dream. Everybody always says that there’s a small window of opportunity. I don’t want it to close on me, with an injury or something like that.”

He looks for advice from the pros he knows, especially the Clippers’ Darrick Martin, a former Bruin, and the Lakers’ Derek Fisher.

“I see the way they carry themselves, businesslike. It tends to rub off,” Davis said.

Davis’ goals were never any secret to Martin, almost from the first time he stepped on the UCLA campus.

“I knew in his mind what he wanted to do,” Martin said. “Play the least amount of years in school he could, and then come to the NBA.

“When he was rehabbing, I talked to a couple of guys who said he wasn’t going, and I pulled him aside and said, ‘If this is your goal, you need to be there every day.’ He’s done very well. I see him progressing. His game’s starting to go to the next level.”

The last few weeks, Davis has recognized that too.

“I knew if I just worked hard, everything would fall into place. The hard work is starting to pay off,” he said.

Is he ready for the NBA?

“I think so,” Bryant said. “He’ll be fine.”

Davis disputes the idea that he was always going to jump to the NBA as soon as possible.

“That’s what everybody said. That wasn’t my perception,” he said. “. . . My perception was to come here and stay, and if the opportunity presented itself, I would definitely consider it.”

“He makes everything fun,” Hines said. “I want him back so bad. I know it’s a little selfish. He’s playing so well.

“I ask him every night, ‘Are you coming back? Are you coming back?’

“He just grins.”

Times staff writers Tim Kawakami and Lonnie White contributed to this story.

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Davis at a Glance

Baron Davis’ statistics in his freshman and sophomore seasons: *--*

Fresh. Soph. Games 31 23 FG% .529 .492 FT% .676 .609 Points 11.7 15.8 3-PT% .308 .324 Assists 5.0 5.4 Rebounds 4.0 3.7

*--*