HE GOT THE POINT

Four seasons ago, I met a slouching, smirking UCLA freshman named Earl Watson.

Searching for him amid the celebrators in a winning locker room, I could find only his back. Even when I introduced myself, he didn’t turn around.

When he finally spoke, he did so with eyes to the ground and a voice dripping sarcasm. Snippy answers. Huge sighs.

“Great,” I thought. “Four games into his collegiate career, and already a jerk.”

I figured in a year he would transfer, in two years he would leave school for some minor league prairie team, in four years he would be forgotten.

“Have a nice life,” I muttered as I walked away.

*

Two days ago, I met with a beaming UCLA senior named Earl Watson.

He had just finished half a dozen interviews, but was gladly sitting in his practice uniform on cold concrete steps at Pauley Pavilion, giving one more.

“I am privileged to be here,” he said. “Every day I wake up, I am thankful for this chance.”

A homeless man wearing Bruin clothes and carrying a paper sack was waiting for him. Maybe, he thought, Watson would buy him dinner again.

Watson had a midterm history exam in two days. He said he was determined to ace it as part of his plan to graduate this spring after four years.

There also was a season waiting for him. His final season. The last giant step in a journey that has surpassed all expectations and disappeared beyond the horizons of even a cocky 18-year-old’s imagination.

“Four years ago, could I picture any of this now?” he asked. “Are you crazy?”

The shy kid cannot stop talking.

The angry kid cannot stop smiling.

The homesick kid did not fly home to Kansas City last Christmas, even though it meant dinner at a Westwood Burger King.

The tattooed, tough-acting kid plans to attend law school.

The kid who played in the shadow of several other great recruits here will probably be remembered above all of them.

The kid has grown up.

“Every single day, I think about Senior Day here, and what it will mean to say goodbye to this place,” Watson said. “When I think of that, I get a tear in my eye.”

He says he will weep not in sorrow, but in thanks.

“Not once have I thought I deserved to be applauded, to be singled out, to be made to feel so special,” he said. “I have been very, very fortunate. I owe this place everything.”

Sometimes it works, you know?

Sometimes big-time college athletics really works.

*

During the Bruins’ final home practice before leaving for Thursday’s season opener against Kansas in New York, starting forward Matt Barnes angrily shoved one of the walk-ons.

Immediately, Coach Steve Lavin ordered everyone to run.

Immediately, Earl Watson spoke up.

“C’mon Matt!” he said, shaking his head.

Four years go, Watson might have been the one shoving. Two years ago, he would have sided with the star.

“Now he has embraced the role of our leader, on and off the court,” Lavin said. “It might be the best story in college basketball.”

Imagine that. Earl Watson assuming the same position held recently by the likes of Ed O’Bannon, Cameron Dollar and Toby Bailey.

After being booed at the start of last season while struggling to run a new offense, he elevated his game toward their level with a brilliant 16 assists and five three-pointers in an NCAA tournament stunner of Maryland.

Almost as impressive, in the Bruins’ ensuing Sweet 16 loss to Iowa State, Watson played 33 minutes with five assists and two three-pointers, despite an eye injury that only days earlier had required laser surgery.

“From the valley at the start of the season, to the peak at the end, last year is when Earl came of age,” Lavin said.

Now he has a chance to set a record for the ages. If he stays sound this season, Watson could become the first Bruin basketball player to start every scheduled game in a four-year career here.

Not bad, considering he was once so homesick, he was the toughest three recruits of Lavin’s life.

“I joke that coach had to sign me three times in the same week,” Watson said. “I was so lonely here, I kept going home.”

Raised by a divorced mom who never missed his games in grade school and high school, he walked outside the locker room with teammates after Bruin games in that first season and shuddered.

“Everybody would be going over to their family members and going out with them and I was, like, ‘Whoa, I don’t have anybody to hug,’ ” he said. “I’m a family guy. It was real hard.”

The Bruins wanted him to talk about it, except, well, Watson didn’t talk. Watson had never talked.

“You know, I don’t think I said an entire word in first grade,” Watson recalls. “When I finally spoke in second grade, the teacher said, ‘Oh, that’s what you sound like.’ ”

To homesickness and shyness, add insecurity.

During his first two years, Watson was eclipsed by that other young guard, guy by the name of Baron Davis.

Then he attached himself to his high school buddy from Kansas City, guy by the name of JaRon Rush.

Watson says that his one stabilizing force was--yep, Bruin fans--Steve Lavin.

As Lavin enters a fifth turbulent season with controversy again nudging him, there can be no denying that his system has worked with Watson.

“As rewarding as any experience I’ve had in coaching,” Lavin said.

One thing Lavin does as well as any coach is secure the trust and confidence of his players. In Watson, he had a player in serious need of that security.

So they talked. On the phone, in Lavin’s office. Walking the beach.

They talked before practice, during practice, on the phone at 11:30 p.m.

“Right after ESPN ‘SportsCenter’ he would call me,” Lavin said.

He and Watson rarely talked about basketball, until it always came back to basketball.

“I needed somebody who would not be judgmental, who would take me for what I was,” Watson said. “Coach Lavin was always like that.”

Lavin talked him out of quitting school, talked him out of resisting a new offense, talked him out of being upset last year when he was booed.

“He kept telling me, ‘Cade McNown was booed here as a freshman, and look what happened to him,’ ” Watson said.

By the middle of last year, it was Watson who was counseling Lavin.

“He would call and say, ‘Coach, I’m fine, but are you all right?’ ” Lavin said.

By the end of last season, Watson had become the team’s leader and conscience, not to mention spokesman.

And now, what do you know? Davis dropped out for the NBA, Rush has flaked out into who knows where, and Watson is still here.

Still doing things like taking off his jersey after a game and handing it to a little girl whom he fell on while diving for a ball. This was last season in North Carolina.

Still doing things like hanging out on a Westwood street corner to talk to the homeless people, buy them dinner, even take them to a movie.

“My father owned an inner-city liquor store, so I grew up around those people and learned that we aren’t any better than them,” Watson said. “Sometimes they just need a chance.”

Sometimes, certain slouching, smirking kids need a chance.

Sometimes, a giant university and legendary basketball program aren’t too big or distracted to give them that chance.

Sometimes, together, they can create something pretty neat.

“The last four years have been the greatest four years I’ve experienced,” Watson said. “Los Angeles has made me more outgoing. The school has helped make me a better person. I don’t think I’m finishing anything here, just starting it.”

Have a nice life, indeed.

*

Bill Plaschke can be reached at his e-mail address: bill.plaschke@latimes.com.

THURSDAY

UCLA vs. KANSAS

Coaches vs. Cancer Ikon Classic

3:30 p.m. TV--ESPN2.