SPRUCING UP

Chris Burgess looks beyond all those seats, awash in an alarming color of red. His eyes move up the red walls, up to the red banners draped from the ceiling.

Folk heroes dangle in Utah’s Huntsman Center. This is hallowed Ute ground, suspended high above an arena.

Keith Van Horn’s name is there, his number retired. Andre Miller too. Both are in the NBA. Danny Vranes, Billy McGill, Vern Gardner and Arnie Ferrin--their legends a bit yellowed, like old newspaper accounts--stare down with crimson glares.

The number of Burgess, a 6-foot-10 center, was retired once--at Irvine Woodbridge High. As a senior in 1996-97, he was considered among the top prep players in the nation when he signed with Duke. He now looks up to those banners of former Utah stars, knowing his chances of reaching those heights are nil.

“I don’t see my number ever getting up there,” Burgess said. “But you know what? Whether your jersey hangs up there or whether you’re never mentioned again, you are coached here. They can help me get to where I want to be.”

What remains to be seen is whether there is a destination, or merely a final resting place for Burgess’ career. But a siren song still calls to him: NBA, NBA, NBA.

Once that seemed a given, as certain as winter snow in the Wasatch Mountains that watch over Salt Lake City. He was big and gifted. He could see that far, as could his father. He went off to Duke, whose program, if not the most prestigious in college basketball, certainly is one of the top five.

Burgess returns to Orange County with Utah, which plays USC in the Wooden Classic at the Arrowhead Pond on Saturday. Duke is a memory--good and bad. Burgess left after two seasons, unable to pay off the promissory note that was his high school career. Now he’s in the recycling bin, hoping the back injury that sidelined him during his redshirt season has been repaired and that he can mend his dreams.

The lineage of Utah big men--Van Horn to Mike Doleac to Hanno Mottola--reaches back about as far as the Osmond family. Burgess and Ken Burgess, his father and a former Brigham Young player, knew this well. Could there be a better place to rehabilitate his career?

“That absolutely entered my mind,” Chris Burgess said. “Big guys have done well here. The fundamentals they teach here are unbelievable. The attention to detail is unbelievable.”

Unbelievable, too, was how quickly his career went south at Duke. The falling out was amicable, sort of. He said he has received two nice notes from Blue Devil Coach Mike Krzyzewski since leaving.

Ken Burgess, on the other hand, frequented talk-radio shows in North Carolina, defending his son’s transfer. He still harbors strong feelings.

The elder Burgess said his son was an NBA draft pick after high school. He said that two years at Duke left Chris “a CBA player.”

“We wanted to fix his career,” Ken Burgess said. “We asked who the best big-man coach was. One name kept coming up over and over, [Utah Coach] Rick Majerus.”

Chris Burgess wasn’t happy about his father expressing his overt opinions about Duke. He said they even argued about burning bridges. But they agreed on Utah.

“In high school, I dominated,” Burgess said. “That’s what I need to be right now, the kind of player I was in high school.”

There were no signs of Burgess’ former self in the Utes’ season opener. He might have averaged 24 points, 12 rebounds, four blocks and four assists as a senior at Woodbridge, but against Idaho State, he loped up and down the court as near misses--and not-so-near ones--filled his evening.

He made a slick post move, leaving Idaho State’s center defending air, but then blew the layup. Burgess made two of six shots, scored four points and had two rebounds in Utah’s victory.

After missing a three-point shot, he got some of that attention to detail from Majerus, who chewed him out during the next timeout. Burgess received another tongue lashing, in absentia, after the game for failing to block out on a free throw.

“I bet at Tustin Junior High School, or wherever Burgess went to school, they teach you to block out on free throws,” Majerus volunteered without being asked.

Later, after the postgame press conference, Majerus was more emphatic. He was concerned that the back injury, which kept Burgess from practicing last season, hasn’t completely healed.

“You can see the robotic quality to his gait,” Majerus said. “I admire him because he’s trying very hard in what looks like to me to be a lot of pain.”

Burgess said his back is fine. But with backs, who knows?

He thought it was OK until last fall. By then, Burgess couldn’t move without pain from what was diagnosed as a bulging disk. The injury had developed over time and the pain grew worse.

“It got to the point where my exercise was a 10- to 15-minute walk,” Burgess said.

He spent the summer at boot camp, one that specialized in strengthening backs by using training similar to that of the Navy SEALs, Burgess said. He showed up this fall at a trimmer 236 pounds, which Majerus had required.

Still, Burgess looked rusty, according to Majerus. Like a guy who hadn’t played a game in 18 months, or since Duke’s run to the 1999 national title game.

Burgess went to Utah practices after being put on the shelf last November. He would lie on his stomach, taking notes, trying to take in as much as possible through osmosis.

“Those were sometimes 2 1/2-hour practices,” Burgess said. “I would start to daze a little and my teammates would tease me. They’d throw water on me to wake me up. Fortunately, they’ve all graduated.”

Those openings were part of what had attracted Burgess to Utah. Mottola and others were gone. Burgess could do the math, and he wasn’t the only one who thought he would fit nicely into the equation.

“I was really excited about him,” Majerus said. “Then he went down with the injury.”

And watching was simply not the same as doing.

“I could go to a writing seminar and nod my head a lot,” Majerus said. “That doesn’t mean I’m going to be like Jim Murray.”

So Majerus is withholding expectations.

Still, expectations have dogged Burgess since he left Woodbridge. Even now, they nip at his heels.

More than one publication has predicted Burgess will be the top newcomer in the Mountain West Conference this season. There were signs that he might be last week in the Puerto Rico Shootout, when Burgess averaged 12 points in three games.

At the moment, though, he isn’t even the top newcomer on his team, that honor going to guard Travis Spivey, a transfer from Georgia Tech.

“The greatest disservice we do is put guys on pedestals early in life,” Majerus said. “I tell everyone, nobody heard of Van Horn and Doleac and Miller out of high school. They were all first-round [NBA] picks.

“Only a handful of players never have a ceiling to their game. Even Wilt Chamberlain couldn’t shoot free throws.”

Neither can Burgess. Even in high school he couldn’t. That didn’t matter, though. He was the national prep player of the year, according to the Sporting News.

Burgess played more or less wherever he wanted at Woodbridge, where he was the Warriors’ centerpiece. At Duke, he became a table setting. The Blue Devil recruiting class was the talk of college basketball that year. Elton Brand, William Avery, Shane Battier and Burgess all signed up, and four NCAA championships would certainly follow.

“We had the idea of winning a bunch of national championships,” Brand said. “Things didn’t work out.”

Not for the Blue Devils, and not for Burgess. He was considered the best of the bunch when he signed with Duke. He ended up playing second banana to Brand.

“When I met Chris at a high school all-star game, I told him, ‘When we get to Duke, I’ll play forward and you play center.’ ” Brand said. “He looked at me like, ‘Right, get out of here.’ When we played, I had to let him know who I was.”

Said Burgess, “After that game, I told Elton, ‘OK, you’re the forward and I’m the center.’ ”

Even that didn’t work out.

Brand flourished and won the Wooden Award after his sophomore season. Burgess just grabbed a lot of pine.

Inconsistent play plagued him. In six games against North Carolina, Burgess scored a total of seven points. And at Duke, the quickest way to fall out of favor is to play poorly against the Tar Heels.

“Chris would have left a year earlier had Coach K been honest about things,” Ken Burgess said. “He gave a line [about playing time] that was believable to a young kid. We reminded him of it two or three times during the season and things would be corrected for 24 hours.”

Krzyzewski declined to be interviewed for this story.

Burgess, who averaged five points and four rebounds in two years at Duke, saw Avery and Brand jump to the NBA after the 1998-99 season. Burgess jumped too, but it was a lateral move, at best.

Brand was drafted by the Chicago Bulls with the No. 1 pick. He was the NBA’s co-rookie of the year last season. Burgess spent the winter in Salt Lake City, where he can gaze to the rafters of the Huntsman Center.

“Anyone who has ever played has dreams,” Burgess said. “But I’m not here for that. I’m not here to play for the NBA. I’m here to focus on Utah basketball. But if I work hard here and listen to the coaches, I think I have a shot.”