TAKEN FOR A RIDER

EDITOR’S NOTE: Times staff writer Paul Gutierrez was in Oakland on Wednesday because he had been promised by Isaiah Rider, his former college classmate at Nevada Las Vegas, that they could hang out together for a day. Gutierrez wanted to do a story on the Laker guard’s return to his old neighborhood. Gutierrez waited all day for Rider. We are still waiting for the story.

Gutierrez’s explanation:

*

Dear Boss,

Sorry.

But, as Rider is fond of saying, “Stuff happens.”

I thought J and me (we’re tight enough that I can call him by a single letter) were cool.

Remember when the Lakers surprised everyone and signed him in August? I was the one who got the interview with him, called him on his cell phone.

When I filled in on Laker duty a couple of weeks ago, he seemed happy to see me. At least he didn’t threaten me, like he did some other reporters.

It’s like I told you when I pitched the story--J was eager to cooperate to clear his name and show the readers that he wasn’t a perpetually petulant and terminally tardy malcontent. He even came up with the day’s itinerary.

He told me to meet him at The Arena in Oakland after the Lakers’ shoot-around the morning of their game against the Warriors. We’d go from there to his hometown barbershop--he needed to clean up his hair and his beard, he said--and his boys would be there too. From there, J said, we’d go visit his mother, Donna, in her house in Alameda. He wanted to get it all done, though, in time for him to take his ritualistic game-day cat nap.

When I asked if I could bring along a photographer to better illustrate him in his old neighborhood, he said sure, no problem.

But things started getting bizarre when our photographer, Robert Durell, and I showed up at the appointed time and place.

J, who had driven himself to the shoot-around, pulled his black Mercedes-Benz out of the Arena tunnel toward us and told us that plans had changed.

He said he had to pick up his mother from the airport; she was flying back in from L.A. and landing at noon. That was plausible because I saw and talked to her at Staples Center a couple of days earlier. Remember, I told you how eager she was to see such a story written on her misunderstood son and even invited me over to her house.

I offered to follow him, but he said that he would just pick her up and meet us at the team hotel, the nearby Airport Hilton, which is walking distance from the terminal. He said that we could follow them back to her house, about 10 minutes from the airport.

“Give me about half an hour,” J said.

I asked for her address so we could just meet them there. He declined and said he’d just meet us at the hotel.

Forty-five minutes later, no J. So I called him on his cell phone. No answer. I left a message.

Thirty minutes later, an hour and 15 minutes after leaving the Arena, I called his cell phone again. He answered this time, saying he got held up and that he just dropped his mom off. But since he got such a late start on the day, he said he didn’t need to take his nap. He was on his way to the Hilton.

“Let me call my man at the barbershop to make sure he can see me now since I was supposed to be there earlier,” J said.

I asked him where the barbershop was.

“I’ll call you on your cell,” J insisted. “I’ll be there [at the hotel] in 15 minutes.”

So Durell and I went into the Hilton’s sports bar for a bite to eat, knowing that karma would have Rider show up just as our food arrived.

Not only did karma not make an appearance, neither did Rider.

Durell, who had another photo assignment in San Francisco, bailed at 3:30 and I hung out until 5, calling Rider’s cell three more times and getting nothing but voice mail greetings from “Rider Records.”

That’s when it hit me. I’d been duped.

Having driven himself to the Arena for that morning’s shoot-around, J didn’t need to come back to the hotel to take the team bus for the game. Hence, he didn’t need to come back to the hotel at all.

To top it all off, he was 15 minutes late to the Arena that night. And then, reportedly because he spent the Laker pregame meeting sorting out ticket requests and stuffing envelopes with tickets for the “30 or 40” friends and family we were supposed to meet, Laker Coach Phil Jackson benched J for the whole game, the Zen-master of patience punishing J for not paying attention.

Momma Rider, surrounded by about 15 people, was none too happy after the game when I approached.

“Hi, Donna, Paul Gutierrez from the L.A. Times,” I said. “Remember me?”

“I don’t feel like talking right now,” she said.

“Um, OK,” I grumbled, making no attempt to hide my displeasure. “How about if I call you at home tomorrow?”

“I’m going to be busy.”

Like mother, like son?

Before the game, when I had approached J in the Laker locker room, he looked at me briefly before turning his attention elsewhere, his mind apparently on tickets as he pulled out a credit card and handed it to a team official.

“Man, I know, I know,” he told me. “I’m sorry. I can’t even make it up to you. I just had to shut the world out today.”

Much like Jackson shut him out by benching him in the Lakers’ overtime loss to the Warriors that night.

But at least Jackson got to him to sit in one place for a while.

Wounded but wiser,

Paul