Pollard Is Not a Fan of L.A.

Scot Pollard, the Kings’ reserve forward, has a . . . well . . . unique style, which features a pony tail atop his head, with mutton-chop sideburns that sweep all the way below his mouth.

Of course, if you don’t like it, don’t worry, it’s always changing.

“Mrs. Pollard actually shaved these in,” he said of the sideburns. “She’s the culprit for this turn. The hair is mine. She wants me to cut it. I made a goal and I’m desperately trying to get to it. I’m tired of having hair. . . .

“If it doesn’t happen by next November, it’s coming off anyway.”

Pollard says the Lakers made him a contract offer last summer when he was a free agent but it didn’t match the $30-million deal he took to stay in Sacramento.

Pollard would have had another problem moving to Los Angeles. As a San Diego native, he doesn’t like the place.

“L.A. is . . . L.A.,” Pollard said. “And San Diego is a completely different story, at least when I grew up there. San Diego’s not L.A., doesn’t have anything in common with L.A. . . .

“I’m not a big fan of L.A. . . . You see people, they walk in the room and they just look around to see if there’s anybody famous, see what everybody looks like, what everybody’s wearing. Oh, he’s got Prada shoes on!

“And then they sit down.”

The Kings had a surprising season, especially given Chris Webber’s upcoming free agency, which became a big story but never a distraction.

“It was a credit to him,” Coach Rick Adelman said. “It never really became an issue around the team. It was only when we’d go to a city and someone would ask. You know, every city we went to, he was going to go there. So it was the same story all the time.

“And our guys really put it aside. They really just decided, hey, we gotta win games this year. . . .

And Chris didn’t change any. It wasn’t like he had his own agenda.

“We had one comment early in the year, one of the players made a comment, that he thought Chris was going to stay and now he wasn’t sure. And all that happened with that, our guys got ticked off at him. They said, ‘You don’t talk about that situation, it’s none of our business.’ ”

Adelman’s three-season tenure has been a surprise. He took the job in the 1998 off-season . . . just before the lockout . . . before the deal with Vlade Divac had been sealed, before Webber had agreed to report, before anyone in Sacramento had ever seen rookie Peja Stojakovic.

“I was leery because we only had about five players,” Adelman said. “I know Chris was one--and he didn’t want to be here, at least that’s what I heard. Vlade wasn’t there yet. Scot Pollard wasn’t there. Jon Barry wasn’t there.”

So why did he come?

“I needed a job,” Adelman said.