Meeting Up With the Castaways

By TIM KAWAKAMI

Jan. 6, 2000 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

PHOENIX —

Eddie Jones is wincing, not because of his damaged left elbow, but because of what he left behind:

* The Laker fans, who still find reasons to chant his name, and will again Friday night when the sixth-year guard comes to Staples Center with the Charlotte Hornets for the first time since he was traded from the Lakers last March, though he might not suit up because of the injury.

* Shaquille O’Neal, who has lifted his game so high that Jones says, appreciatively and wistfully, “I think if he played this way two or three years ago, we’d have two championships.”

* And especially Kobe Bryant, who remains one of Jones’ best friends and whose spectacular plays and frequent phone chats rekindle Jones’ emotions.

“You know something? I really hate to relive this,” Jones says in his hotel here, shaking his head when asked about the denied chance to play alongside Bryant for a decade or so. “To think how great it could’ve been?”

Jones, a free agent at the end of this season, says he understands one of the reasons he was dealt was because Laker management believed he and Bryant were too similar in talent to be worth two giant salaries at the same time.

Bryant was the young superstar, Jones wasn’t, so Jones was trade bait.

“I’ll tell you one thing, and Kobe can say this too: We loved playing with each other,” says Jones, who winces even harder when reminded that the arrival of Coach Phil Jackson meant Jones and Bryant would have been a perfect big-guard tandem this season.

“Because [Bryant] knew me. He knew I wasn’t a guy that wanted to shoot the basketball every time I touched it. He knew I’d make the extra pass. He knew I’d make him that much better.”

Jones, 28, has a new life now, with an exciting new team expected to be dangerous in the Eastern Conference playoffs.

And despite the torn ligament in his elbow that has forced him to miss seven games and probably at least two more, Jones feels fortunate to be an ex-Laker and is flourishing as perhaps the conference’s best shooting guard. He leads the team in scoring (19.4 points), leads the league in steals (2.83) and chips in 4.8 rebounds and 4.5 assists.

Jones participated in some light practices this week and appeared ready to return to the lineup during some rigorous pregame shooting Tuesday in Phoenix. He was activated Wednesday but didn’t play at Utah.

But he says he can’t go full speed unless he wears a cumbersome elbow brace, which dramatically limits what he can do on the floor, and he has no intention of playing if he can’t be close to his usual self.

“Don’t be fooled by me out there,” Jones says with a smile after his one-hour shooting workout. “I am definitely not playing Friday. Not a chance. . . .

“It’s sad I won’t get a chance to play out there this year. I really want to play in front of the fans out there, because they supported me from Day 1. That’s the only way I could really give back to them; that’s come out there and have a great performance.”

Rumor to Reality

Other than this temporary misfortune, Jones says he’s glad it worked out the way it did, after two increasingly disturbing years of trade rumors--denied by Laker executives but certified by the March 10 trade to Charlotte, with Elden Campbell, for Glen Rice, J.R. Reid and B.J. Armstrong.

The trade, along with the midseason elevation of Paul Silas to head coach, triggered a 21-12 Hornet surge (after a 5-12 start) to the brink of a playoff berth last season and had Charlotte battling for the Central Division lead this season until Jones’ injury (Charlotte is 2-5 in Jones’ absence).

But that does not mean Jones, prodded by an interviewer, cannot take a few moments during the Hornets’ Western swing to guess at the Lakers’ thinking in dealing him, and shrug.

In a strange way, Jones agrees, the trade, which did not produce the championship many Laker officials and players assumed would follow, led to the chaos that caused the hiring of Jackson during the off-season.

“I don’t really blame them,” Jones says of the trade. “In this league, you want to win right now. Just impatience . . .

“They thought what they did would get them to win right this minute. It shows the world that it doesn’t happen like that. Everything takes time.”

His main problem, Jones suggests, was with the way the Laker brass handled the situation from the moment his name began surfacing in trade talk.

Clearly, Jones was being peddled--for Mitch Richmond, for Jerry Stackhouse, for Tom Gugliotta, for any number of big names. And each time, a member of the Laker management would tell him it was all being overstated by the media.

“You can’t trust anybody,” Jones says quietly. “Believe me. You cannot trust anyone. I figured that out a year or so before I even got traded. I knew it.”

What did Executive Vice President Jerry West and General Manager Mitch Kupchak tell him during all that time and all those rumors?

“They told me what I needed to hear. Do you like that?” Jones says, laughing. “What I needed to hear. Not that I believed everything.”

Jones says he and another dispatched member of the recent Laker past, Denver guard Nick Van Exel, often talk about the team, but that neither took pleasure in Laker frustrations last season.

“I never said, ‘Yeah!’ or anything,” Jones says. “I was just happy there was a closure for me. I didn’t care how they did, whether they won or lost. If they’d won it all, I would’ve been happy for the guys I played with.

“When they didn’t, I was . . . whatever. People asked me, ‘Is there any poetic justice?’ Naw. I don’t care. I want my friends to enjoy the game and be successful.”

And his opinion of the way Rice has fit in with the Lakers? “I’ll leave that alone.”

Whatever bitterness he might have a right to feel, Jones says, has been alleviated by Charlotte’s bright future.

The Hornets have a deep (if well-traveled) frontline of Campbell, Derrick Coleman and Anthony Mason, have former UCLA star Baron Davis as a spark off the bench and solid players such as David Wesley and Bobby Phills.

“I think if I’d have been somewhere that I didn’t want to go, maybe I would hold some grudges,” Jones says. “If I was in Vancouver or somewhere, a team that wasn’t winning. . . . If I was on a team that didn’t have a chance, you know, then I might be a little bitter.

“But I’m not. I feel I’m in the same situation they’re in.”

And if it somehow worked out that the Lakers played Charlotte in the NBA finals? “That,” Jones says, “would be the best thing ever.”

The Other Guy

Campbell, no surprise, had very little to say about his return to L.A. after his much more controversial eight-plus-season Laker career.

“Oh, I can’t remember that far back,” Campbell says when asked if he felt freed by the trade after several seasons of an uncertain role behind O’Neal. “I just know it’s a good situation here. Get a chance to play a lot. Be more involved. It’s a better situation.”

Campbell has started at center in all 58 of his games as a Hornet, producing similar statistics (12.5 points, 7.2 rebounds) to the numbers he put up when he was the Laker center or when he teamed with Vlade Divac before O’Neal’s 1996 signing.

“There’s no secret that I can play. I’m just getting the right opportunity and the right chance,” Campbell says. “This is the situation I like. I like to play a whole lot, I’m not just playing spots and minutes, which helps me play better.”

Does he ever sit back and question the logic of the Lakers, who now are thin on the frontline? “No,” Campbell says quickly, “too busy looking ahead.”

Silas, for his part, says he was initially surprised by Jones’ complete game--not merely the fastbreak-finishing skills and three-point shooting, but the way he can help other players in the half-court defense and the flexibility he has given the coach to fiddle with the lineup, moving Jones from defensive small forward to point guard.

“I didn’t know how good Eddie was,” Silas says. “He brings such energy to our club. . . .

“[With the Lakers] he was a complementary player to two other big scorers. Although he made all-star teams and that kind of thing, you really didn’t think of Eddie as the big-time star as I think of him now.

“He’s our most valuable, most important player.”

With the Lakers, the biggest and perhaps most legitimate grumbles about Jones were that he was a non-factor during the biggest-pressure situations--at the end of games and in bruising playoff matchups, moments when the Lakers presumed Rice would be a star.

“Awww, he wants the ball,” Silas says when asked about Jones’ pressure-time nerves. “He’s either going to make the big shot, get fouled or do something good. If that’s the way he was in L.A., he most certainly is not that way here.

“I remember we gave him the ball at the end of the first Boston game that we played, to show him that, ‘You’re the guy. We’re going to you, and you have to produce.’ And since that time, he’s really produced.”

Says Jones of the role: “I love that. I enjoy having that ball in my hands and knowing that if I fail, it’s on me. . . .

“[With the Lakers] when you had so many talented players on a team, somebody has to back off. . . . I mean, when you’ve got Kobe, you’ve got Nick Van Exel, you’ve got Shaquille . . . you’ve got Elden . . . you’ve got all these guys on the court, everybody wants to score.

“If one person on the team takes a back seat to everybody, you’re going to be that much better. Now if you can get three guys to take a back seat, you’re going to be even better.”

The quieter things about him, Jones says, were what the Lakers overlooked.

“I think people never looked at me as a leader,” Jones says. “I wasn’t the most vocal leader, but I think I kept everybody together, I’ll tell you that. Because I was cool with everybody and I could come and talk to everybody.

“I was close to Kobe and I was close to Shaq. So if they had any beef or whatever, and they didn’t have any beef when I was there, I would’ve cleared that up quick. . . .

“I talk to Kobe a lot. We talk all the time. . . . I don’t know if he has a relationship with anybody like he had with me when I was there. I guess I’m sort of his way to speak out. Somebody he can trust.

“We call each other--we’re always talking about comments people are making about him. Which is totally unfair to him. When you’re that young, you’ve got to let somebody grow a little bit. They’re going to grow into what type of person they are. Sit back and enjoy it.”

Jones says he is not particularly bothered that the Hornets, who are experiencing some ownership changes, have decided not to negotiate with him until after the season.

His price--the $12-million-per-season maximum for a player of his experience level--is fairly well established, and by now, hard to dispute.

“We talked about things; we’re just not able to do this right now,” Jones says of discussions with the Hornets. “I’m a free agent, I’ll test the water.

“Charlotte is my first choice. If they come right, I’m here. If not, I’ve got other options.”

When asked if returning to the Lakers, as has run the unlikely rumor, Jones breaks out in laughter for about a minute.

“Uh, I don’t know,” Jones says finally. “I can’t say yes, I can’t say no.”

Then he shakes his head and keeps laughing.

“I want to be right where I am right now, doing the things that I do--top of the league in steals, one of the top players in this league, winning, winning,” Jones says. “I’m talking about going deep into the playoffs, going to the championships. That’s why I play.

“I remember the days, seeing Michael [Jordan] holding up the championship trophy. I want to feel that. I want to see how it feels. Whether it happens for me . . . it depends on how we build this team now.”

Well, gee, then what are his thoughts about the Lakers now, who have the best record in the league?

“They’re a joy to watch,” Jones says. “They’re organized. They show great respect for Phil Jackson--that might be the biggest difference, they believe in Phil Jackson.

“You can just see the difference that Phil makes with Shaq, Kobe, Glen. . . .”

Then Jones pauses and delivers the coup de grace, loaded with a feel for Laker history and chaos: “I think even Nick would’ve respected Phil so much more.”

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Eddie and Elden

Statistics for Hornets Eddie Jones and Elden Campbell, both former Lakers:

EDDIE JONES

Minutes 37.8

Field-goal Percentage .428

Free-throw Percentage .878

Points 19.4

Rebounds 4.8

Steals 2.83

Assists 4.5

ELDEN CAMPBELL