HAIL TO THE KING

He’s the one.

The Sacramento Kings’ Jason Williams isn’t the one they figured would be the one, not with his rebel-without-a-cause college career, but the NBA’s marketing machine can only nominate. It takes a higher power to elect.

Ask Vancouver’s Mike Bibby, the No. 2 pick in the draft. He was supposed to be the one, so it may not have been coincidence he became Williams’ first poster child. The first week of the season, Williams came down on Bibby, dribbling left-handed . . . when he suddenly leaped and did a scissor kick, somehow keeping his dribble going. Bibby did what defenders always do with Williams, he froze as if hypnotized.

Williams whooshed past and laid it up. “SportsCenter” replayed it about 100 times and a star was born.

Hops in the air?

Who hops in the air while he dribbles? Where does anyone come up with a move like that?

“I guarantee you,” Indiana Pacer President Donnie Walsh said, “the referee that game went in afterward and got out the rule book to see if it was legal.”

Referees? They’re used to taking out their bad moods on rookies, but Williams mesmerizes them too. For all his razzle-dazzle, he has a 2-1 assist-turnover ratio and gets few palming calls.

Of course, anyone who wants to know where Williams got that move will have to ask someone else.

“Well,” Williams twangs in his West Virginia drawl, “I mean, people always ask me that.

“I just go out and try to have fun. People ask me, do I think of these things before I do ‘em, and the answer’s no. Once you get to start thinking, I think you get to play like a robot, so you just go out and do whatever, you know.”

A week later, he posterized The Glove, himself, Gary Payton, who found himself back against Williams, after which Jason did this little . . . hesitation . . . as if he was about to pull up. Payton started to contest the shot, except Williams, having kept his dribble alive, strolled to the basket, with Payton 20 feet out on the floor, wondering where he went. By the time “SportsCenter” showed that one 100 times, there wasn’t a basketball fan who didn’t know Jason Williams.

Teammates now think up nicknames for him (“White Chocolate,” which makes him wince). Hardened veterans compare him to Pete Maravich.

“I watch him play,” the Lakers’ Jerry West said, “and I think, ‘My goodness, why did so many teams pass him up?’ ”

Golden State Warrior Coach P.J. Carlesimo, conceding his No. 1 pick, Antawn Jamison, is way back in the rookie race, notes ESPN’s highlight drill is putting the pressure on.

“For goodness sakes,” Carlesimo said recently, “ESPN showed over and over a highlight of a Williams miss two weeks ago.”

That was Jason’s daring reverse fly-by at Washington. We’re not talking about the one this year. We’re talking about one like we haven’t seen in a number of years.

Even Phenoms Get the Blues

“I never plan. I just go out there and play and Lord knows what will happen.”

--Jason Williams

No, he isn’t very good at planning.

Preparation? He was great at that. As a tyke in tiny Belle, W.Va., pop. 2,500, a DuPont company town, he practiced relentlessly and religiously.

He didn’t simply shoot like everyone else. He handled the ball over and over. His dad, Terry, a West Virginia state trooper, says when he’d send Jason to his room his son would go up and twirl a basketball on his fingers for hours, as if it wasn’t punishment.

Terry had a house on the DuPont High grounds, as part of a security arrangement, which meant he had a key to the gym. Jason spent hours in there, dribbling with weights on his wrists and work gloves on his hands. Without the gear, it was like handling a tennis ball.

Jason was a great player at every level, from biddy basketball up, but if he dreamed of the NBA, as little boys do, he seemed overmatched by reality.

“That was the furthest thing from my mind,” Terry says. “I never even thought of it. In high school, he probably only weighed about 135-140 pounds. Little old thing. The only thing I wanted him to do was go to college and get an education. I knew it was a longshot because he didn’t like school.”

In a family of policemen--older brother Shawn graduated from college with high grades and is now on the force in Charleston--Jason was the one headed the other way.

“Back then,” Jason says, “when I was growing up, I was always mad at my dad, because when I was out with my friends, I was the only one who had a curfew. Like 10, 10:30 weeknights, whatever, 11, 12 on weekends. Back then, I came home, I was mad at him. Like, why me? They get to stay out.”

There was more working than rules. Terry was a single father, having divorced when Jason was in junior high and gotten custody of both children. Jason went years without talking to his mother and sought solace between the lines.

He was a local star. With Randy Moss, now of the Minnesota Vikings, at center, DuPont went all the way to the state finals in Jason’s senior year, before falling to Martinsburg. At DuPont, they still tell of the time Williams threw Moss a behind-the-back pass three-quarters of the length of the court, for a dunk.

Then it was off into the wider world for both of them, and it wasn’t easy.

Jason didn’t like school or structure. He decided to try a military school, Fork Union, but came home in a week.

Nor were the shifting sands of college basketball anything but bewildering. He committed to Providence but backed out after Coach Rick Barnes, who recruited him, left. He went to nearby Marshall, only to see Coach Billy Donovan, whom he adored, leave for Florida.

He followed Donovan to Florida but tired of sitting out his transfer season and quit. After weeks of hanging around the house, his worried father, noting all the old DuPont jocks hanging around the local 7-Eleven, asked Jason if that was what he intended to be, All-7-Eleven?

Jason went back to Florida, became eligible--then was suspended twice and finally tossed off the team.

The Gators made the usual “violation of team policies” announcement, but Terry put the infractions on the record: Jason flunked two marijuana tests.

Of course, there was a reason, but not a satisfactory one. Jason said he had fallen in with the wrong crowd.

After he failed the first test, he assumed, they’d never test him again.

“In my job,” Terry later told the Sacramento Bee’s Mark Kreidler, “I can’t tell you how many times I’ve picked up kids and called their parents and their parents would say, ‘Oh, my kid would never do something like that.’

“Well, sometimes they do and sometimes they don’t. In Jason’s situation, we didn’t deny that he did what he did. . . . I blame Jason. He did it and he paid the price for it.”

Of course, Jason wondered if the price would be his dreams.

“At first, I did,” he says. “I’m not going to lie. The day that I got suspended, I’m thinkin’ to myself, what am I going to do?

“But I went to sleep that night, woke up the next morning and it was gone, it was out of my mind. I was just going to start working hard, keep myself in shape, stay out of trouble as much as I could and just hope for somebody to give me a chance.”

He went to Orlando under the auspices of an agent, Bill Pollack, who got him on a workout program and introduced him to a sports psychologist. Williams was befriended by another Pollack client, Nick Anderson of the Orlando Magic, whose eyes bugged out when he saw Jason play.

Several months later, Williams entered the pre-draft circuit as a question-mark dark horse and dazzled more people. West, still an idol in their native state, put him up at his Bel-Air home and tried to trade high enough in the draft to get him.

That would be high, indeed. Ticketed for nowhere, then the teens, then the high teens, Williams became the Kings’ surprise pick at No. 7.

Years from now, the surprise may be he lasted so long or went behind another point guard, even a promising one such as Bibby, who had led Arizona to an NCAA title as a freshman.

Williams was in the NBA. The rest, it turned out in the biggest surprise of all, would be relatively easy.

Life in the Fastest Lane

It’s his first trip to Los Angeles as an NBA player, for a game against the Clippers. He has invitations to stop by the “Friends” set, and that of “Suddenly Susan.”

No, nothing is the way it used to be.

He’s finding out, the NBA isn’t only about basketball; there’s marketing and the same embarrassing questions about why he did what he did, but he’s holding up. He’s easy to schedule, shows up in the lobby of the Ritz Carlton in Marina del Rey on time, although he asks if he can make it a short session because he isn’t feeling well. But he’s nice, responsive and handles questions about his troubles graciously.

“With me getting in trouble, I got in with the wrong crowd, made some stupid decisions,” he says. “And I paid the consequences for what I did. Just move forward. I just wanted the opportunity by somebody in the league to give me a chance to play for ‘em. The Kings gave it to me, and I’m thankful for it.”

No more than the Kings. A drab, going-nowhere team is now an exciting, promising bunch of kids, even if their youth shows in their apparent determination to make the highlight reels every time down the court.

Moss, now an NFL star--as former King personnel director Jerry Reynolds says, “They ought to bottle the water in Belle”--went to see him play in Minneapolis, wearing Jason’s No. 55 King jersey. In a TNT interview, Jason returned the favor, wearing Randy’s No. 84 Viking jersey.

All of a sudden, the only thing Williams has to study is the thing he always wanted to study. How much better can things get than that?

“Well, I mean, it feels good,” he drawls. “I’m not just doing this for myself. I’m doing it for my dad, I’m doing it for Coach Donovan, my family. ‘Cause I felt like I let those guys down last year when I got in trouble. It’s kinda like I owe ‘em something now so I try to do the best I can. . . .

“I mean, it’s just truly fun. I think the funnest part about it for me is, growing up, watching all these great players playing and night after night, going out and really being on the same court with them and going against them. That’s the fun part for me.”

Now 6-1, 190, he’ll have to calm down and get stronger, not to mention that other end of the floor, but make no mistake, he’s different.

As time has passed, young players, aware referees rarely enforce palming, have started a whole new art form.

Magic Johnson got away with being a 6-9 point guard by discreetly turning the ball over and slamming his dribble into the floor, but he’s an innocent compared to the youth of today, like Allen Iverson and Kobe Bryant, with their devastating let’s-just-cuff-the-ball-out-here-a-few-seconds-and-see-what-happens crossovers.

Now comes Jason Williams, who’s almost a whole new generation by himself.

Williams, averaging 13 points and 5.5 assists, can keep the ball on his hip for what seems to be seconds at a time, which would suggest palming, except it doesn’t look too blatant. Maybe the basketball just follows him around the court.

Whatever, watching him is one of the most fun things NBA fans have to do these days.

“I’m proud of him,” says Terry, now retired and shuttling between Sacramento in the winter and Belle in the summer (“I like it out here, but there’s no place like home”) to be near his no-longer-so-troubled son.

“There’s some people think he shouldn’t be where he’s at because of what’s happened to him in the past, but everybody makes mistakes. He made some bad choices. It’s his own fault. He’s not one who sat back and said, ‘I didn’t do that.’ He admitted everything. He has the right to succeed, just like everybody else.”

That’s one of the few things Terry Williams’ youngest son has in common with anybody else. Vive la difference.

TONIGHT

LAKERS vs. SACRAMENTO, 7:30 Fox Sports West

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Kid Stuff

Comparing the top 10 rookie in the NBA, ranked in the order they were chosen in the draft:

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Player/Team (Drafted) Min. Pts. R A Michael Olowokandi, Clippers (1) 26.4 8.7 7.1 0.3 Mike Bibby, Van. (2) 35.9 13.2 2.8 6.8 Raef LaFrentz, Den. (3) 32.3 13.8 7.6 0.7 Antawn Jamison, GS (4) 18.8 7.5 5.8 0.5 Vince Carter, Tor. (5) 35.1 16.9 6.0 2.0 Jason Williams, Sac. (7) 36.0 13.0 2.8 5.5 Larry Hughes, Phil. (8) 18.0 8.5 3.4 1.5 Paul Pierce, Bos. (10) 31.6 14.5 6.1 2.0 Michael Dickerson, Hou. (14) 31.7 10.3 1.7 1.7 Felipe Lopez, Van. (24) 21.2 7.3 2.8 1.2

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