Brand X Factor

“It doesn’t seem like a whole lot gets him down. He never has anything bad to say. He’s always got the right attitude. He dresses in a nice suit, coming to the arena every night. He does everything the right way, that as an owner, if you look at someone you want on your team--this is your star who you’re going to pay a lot of money to--you would want a player to be exactly like him.”

Clipper Eric Piatkowski, on teammate Elton Brand

Well, that’s the $64,000 question, isn’t it?

Except, of course, Clipper owner Donald T. Sterling’s tab for Elton Brand may be more like $100 million.

Brand loves the team and the town--when he played for the Chicago Bulls, he used to come out every summer--but before he takes Sterling’s $100 million this summer, assuming Donald offers it, Elton wants to know how the other negotiations are going.

“I do,” Brand says. “Of course, you have to be intrigued to see what they’re going to do with Michael Olowokandi, who’s been playing great; Jeff McInnis, who’s been playing great.”

Then there’s Brand, who isn’t merely playing well. In five short months, he has become Mr. Clipper, the greatest of them all.

Not that it has been much of a competition. Danny Manning had two good seasons on his way out of town, his agent having promised he’d leave ... five years before, when the Clippers drafted Manning. Dominique Wilkins was great here ... both months. Ron Harper had his moments, before tearing up his knee and comparing his tenure to time in jail.

Michael Cage? Loy Vaught? Benoit Benjamin? Ken Norman? Keith Closs?

Ralph Lawler?

Well, you get the idea.

Of course, if Brand is to remain Mr. Clipper, the Clippers actually have to keep him, although under ordinary circumstances that would be a no-brainer, even at the “maxed-out” price of $100 million for seven seasons.

He’s 22, a three-year veteran and newly minted All-Star with career averages of 18 points and 11 rebounds. He’s leading the Clippers through a dream season. They’re on track to improve by 10 wins and these days are selling out regularly.

With this young man, however, that’s only the beginning. Prodigious as his contribution is, it’s matched, or dwarfed, by his human qualities.

This is the world’s largest Boy Scout, not only trustworthy, loyal, helpful and all the rest, but humble in the face of celebrity, hard-working despite his success.

He does get nights off to go clubbing and he’s capable of messing up, as when he and Corey Maggette played a prank on teammate Obinna Ekezie that led to Ekezie and Brand duking it out in an elevator at their Minneapolis hotel, the first major embarrassment Brand got to go with all his merit badges.

However, for an NBA player, this was such a garden-variety misstep as to be laughable. Kobe Bryant was having one of those a week for a while.

The interesting thing was the reaction around the league from people who knew Brand: disbelief.

“He’s not that kind of guy at all,” said Bull Coach Bill Cartwright, an assistant during Brand’s two seasons there. “He’s one of the best guys, maybe ever.”

Ask Alvin Gentry, the Clippers’ coach, who sometimes jokes about adopting Brand.

“Grant [Hill, whom Gentry coached in Detroit] is probably the lowest-maintenance superstar I’ve ever been around in my life,” Gentry says. “Doesn’t want any preferential treatment, doesn’t want anything, just wants to be one of the guys. I think Elton is the same way....

“I didn’t know a whole lot about him [before the season] and obviously, you think, ‘Hmmm, why did Chicago ever get rid of this guy? There’s got to be something.’

“So I keep waiting for that one thing. It’s been a whole season and I’ve yet to see any of that.

“I don’t think we could have gotten a better situation, where we get a veteran player, we get a great guy, we get a player who plays hard every night--and he’s 22.

“That doesn’t usually exist out there.”

Now to see if they can keep it from going back out there.

Peekskill, N.Y.: The Elton Years

“One day I’d like to be as mature as Elton was when he was 14 years old.”

Joe Panzanaro, 56,

Brand’s coach at Peekskill High

Oh, and Brand is nice to his mother.

Seriously. Brand is tight beyond tight with his mom, Daisy, whom he moved into a Chicago apartment near his, who now lives minutes away from his place in a Marina del Rey high-rise.

Daisy goes to most Clipper home games and many on the road. She’s shy and reluctant to do interviews and her protective son asks people not to approach her.

Nevertheless, this story is about the drive and discipline Daisy instilled in her son.

Without those qualities, he wouldn’t have been lost, but he wouldn’t have been an NBA star, either, only a big guy from Peekskill, an economically depressed, blue-collar town of about 20,000 in Westchester County, 30 minutes north of Manhattan but a world away from the bright lights.

Daisy was a single mother, living in public housing. Panzanaro said there were times when she and Elton were “almost homeless.”

Elton didn’t understand how bad off they were. It felt like a normal childhood to him, sort of an urban ... theme park.

“I never really felt I was poor, even though I lived in low-income housing,” he says. “It said, ‘Dunbar Heights, Low Income Housing.’

“But I didn’t feel I was poor because my mom always did what she had to do to make sure we had, not everything, but....

“Growing up in an apartment complex, I had 13 male friends, either two or three years older or younger than me--so I had a great environment to play basketball or do whatever with. I didn’t feel like I didn’t have money until I got to school. When I got to school I didn’t have as many pairs of pants as everybody else and things like that. Then you started feeling, ohhhhh.... “

Daisy worked with mentally challenged children. Deeply religious, she raised Elton that way. Once, when Panzanaro called a rare Sunday practice, Elton told him he had a problem: church. Daisy worked out a compromise: Elton would attend church, then go for the rest of practice.

Daisy had a deep belief everything would work out--if you did the right thing. Elton put it to good use, in school--he was an A student--and basketball.

“Initially, I didn’t think he was good enough as a freshman to bring him up to the varsity,” Panzanaro says. “I was going to let him play with the JVs. I went down to referee the JV game and he was so thoroughly dominant. I mean, he won the tap, ran to the block, they threw him the ball, he turned and jammed it with two hands.

“He ended up with 38 points, some ridiculous number, and I turned to the JV coach and said, ‘That’s it. He’s gone.’

“Elton was the type of low-profile kid, he just came for the first three, four weeks and worked so hard. One of my seniors who had been starting for two years and was a really intense type of selfish kid, he came to me and said, ‘Coach, Elton should be starting over me.’

“So I said, ‘Rich, thank you. I appreciate that.’ And I started Elton.”

Brand was 6 feet 3 as a freshman, 6-8 as a senior. He looked more like a defensive tackle than a basketball player. But he put up numbers, his teams had a special esprit and they won a lot. Far down the national list at the beginning, or off it, he wound up a McDonald’s All-American.

On the other hand ...

“I still had coaches saying to me, ‘He’s not that good,’” Panzanaro says. “He’s just had 32 points and 18 rebounds against you

Panzanaro had his own concerns.

When Brand was set to sign with Duke, he remembers his coach telling him, “Hopefully, they’ll get you in at the end of the game so the hometown fans can see you.”

Panzanaro’s best previous player had been buried in a big program, Virginia’s, and he regretted not having warned him off. Now Duke’s Mike Krzyzewski was bringing in one of his vintage classes, with two higher-rated McDonald’s All-Americans--Shane Battier and Chris Burgess.

Panzanaro quizzed all the coaches recruiting Brand. How much would he play? Who was ahead of him? The session with Coach K was memorable, if awkward.

“Everyone was very forthcoming--except Coach Krzyzewski,” Panzanaro said. “He just said, ‘Well, he’s a post player.’

“I said, ‘But where? Four [power forward]? Five [center]? Where?’

“He said, ‘We don’t use fours and fives.’

“So I said, ‘Well, you’ve got a lot of post players. These guys are there. Where do you see him fitting in?’

“‘Well, if he comes and he works hard, he’ll play.’

“This was getting nowhere. Finally he says to me, ‘Maybe Elton shouldn’t go to Duke.’

“I said, ‘Coach, that’s certainly not my intent, but I’m sorry you feel that way.... I understand Elton has to work hard if he’s going to get playing time, but give me a sense of where he is. I don’t want him to get buried.’

“So I call Elton and we get together and I tell him about the conversation. And first thing he says to me, ‘Coach, if you don’t want me to go there, I won’t go there.’

“Now, I would have been hung from the nearest tree in town if that ever happened. The whole community wanted him to go to Duke. I said, ‘No, Elton, that’s not what I’m saying to you.’ And we named the names [of Duke’s recruits]....

“And he says to me, ‘Coach, you know I want to play in the NBA.’

“And I said, ‘I know that.’

“He said, ‘Well, if I’m going to play in the NBA, don’t I have to be one of the best players in the country?’

“And I said, ‘Yes, you do.’

“And he said, ‘Well, then so what if they’re all on my team? Because at least I know what my competition is.’

“I said, ‘Elton, go to Duke.’”

So Brand went to Duke and took it over, just as if it were Peekskill High.

He was a starter from the first game of his freshman year, when the Blue Devils made the Final Four, to the last game of his second and last season, when they lost to Connecticut in the championship game.

For Brand, that’s how it always went, skepticism followed by success.

“We have at Peekskill, at times, struggled with academic eligibility,” Panzanaro says. “During the year, they have to have a 70 average to play.

“During three of the four years that Elton was there, the team had a 90% average. We’ve never had that, before or since.”

Some Days the Magic Works....

“I wasn’t part of the dynasty. I was with the anti-dynasty. We lost every game, so I was just thinking, like, ‘We’ve got to get some players or something has to happen because it’s not working out for me. Fifteen wins in an entire season.’

“Coach [Tim] Floyd and I would joke about it because he was catching more of the flak than I was. The players, of course, we were all like, ‘Wow, what’s going on?’”

Brand

Then there were his Chicago years, which everyone, Brand included, is trying to forget.

It started routinely, with everyone wondering if Brand, who measured 6-8 at the 1999 pre-draft camp, could play power forward in the NBA. Fellow draft prospect Richard Hamilton even measured him on TV at the suggestion of host Roy Firestone.

Said Hamilton, looking at the tape: “Six ... three and a half.”

The Bulls took Brand No. 1 and were widely criticized after Steve Francis, the No. 2 pick, and Lamar Odom, the No. 4, started fast while Brand was getting shots blocked by the bushel.

“I started my first two games against the Knicks, one of the most defensively sound teams every year, and against Miami and Alonzo Mourning,” Brand says. “So shots were getting tossed all over the place....

“I remember Zo. That was like my second game of the season, and it was just like, ‘Welcome to the NBA.’ It’s like, I’m going by my man and he’s waiting there, like, boing! Get that shot outta there! It was really a rude awakening.”

Awaken he did, though, finishing as co-rookie of the year with Francis, becoming a 20-10 man, averaging 20 points and 10 rebounds, then repeating that feat the next season.

Meanwhile, the Bulls went 17-65 his first season and, perhaps just to prove things could get worse, 15-67 his second.

Brand was always available and positive, but inside, he was plotting his escape.

“It was terrible,” he says. “It was really bad. I’m the type person, I could deal with losing, deal with a bad situation, but I didn’t accept it. I was upset after every loss and just had to move on. There were times I just felt myself ... just accepting losing. And that wasn’t me.

“So that really made me upset. I would brush it off like, ‘Ahh, we lost, OK.’ You know what I mean? Because we lost 20 in a row! So, by the 18th, I’m like, ‘Oh, we lost again.’ And that wasn’t me, so something had to change.”

Fortunately for Brand, the Bulls had come to the same conclusion and traded him last summer for the Clippers’ No. 2 overall pick, so they could draft Tyson Chandler.

At that point, Brand didn’t know much about the Clippers, except that they were in Los Angeles and had a colorful past.

“I heard the stories ... guys not wanting to be here. Without a doubt. Of course, management not paying, things like that.”

Nor did they know much about him. Says Piatkowski: “You don’t see him on the highlights every night because people want to see Darius Miles catching alley-oops and getting dunks and stuff. But when we played against him in Chicago, he put up big numbers against us and every time he’d score, you’d be like, ‘ ... dang it, why does that guy keep scoring?’”

Then they found out. They also found out he could do it against the West’s huge power forwards.

They found out how much there was to him.

With a roster so young--the average Clipper was 24--they had an urgent need for veteran leadership.

It couldn’t come from a reserve, like Sean Rooks, it had to be someone who started, a Scottie Pippen or Antonio Davis, but they had price tags of $10 million-$15 million a year.

And then, along came Brand, who was the answer to their dreams, a star/professional/role model/homeboy.

“The thing you’ve got to respect about him more than anything else is, he practices just about every single day,” Piatkowski says. “He’s the first one there. He’s the last one to leave. He’s always getting extra shots.

“What I find the most impressive is the consistency, to be able every single night, to be right around 20 and 10.... And lots of nights, you don’t even really notice it. Some nights, you’re like, ‘Oh, Elton didn’t have a really good game.’ You might look at the stat sheet and he had 18 and 10 that night.”

Talk about your great situations.

Half the roster--Brand, Odom, Maggette, Miles, Quentin Richardson and Keyon Dooling--is between 20 and 22. Brand and Odom were friends in New York AAU ball. Brand met Richardson in Chicago. Brand and Maggette were friends at Duke. Maggette and Richardson were friends from their Chicago prep days. Richardson and Miles, from downstate Illinois, are all but joined at the hip.

It’s just like Dunbar Heights, except now Elton and his friends are rich!

“I really enjoy it,” Brand says. “It’s tough. You look at the power forwards in the West, they’re the best players in the NBA--Tim Duncan, Sheed Wallace, Dirk Nowitzki.

“But I’ve definitely held my own and I love the challenge ‘cause I’m a competitor. But I definitely would love to anchor the four spot here.”

The young Clippers will be even richer soon. Clipperdom waits with bated breath to see if they’re all still Clippers when it happens.