Nets’ Van Horn Is Best Viewed in Soft Focus

They call Keith Van Horn enigmatic. And that’s the compliment.

Van Horn’s New Jersey Net teammate, Kenyon Martin, has used some impolite words while calling on Van Horn “to dunk the darn basketball.” Van Horn’s coach, Byron Scott, has begged him to be meaner, tougher, nastier, more focused, more passionate, more like a superstar and less like a contented backup.

Opponents whisper that Van Horn is soft and is wasting good talent, and that the Nets are wasting good money. Sometimes Van Horn feels as if playing on the road is better than at home. He is booed less often on the road.

What is it, then? Did the Nets overrate Van Horn when they gave him a long-term contract that paid him $10,865,250 this year and will pay him $15,694,250 annually by 2005-06, and expected him to be a marquee player? Is he a waste? A smaller version of Shawn Bradley, a confounding mass of talent lost in the body of a man who might be happier being a husband, a father and a 20-minute-a-game back-row understudy?

A child of Southern California, reared in Diamond Bar where he played pickup games at a place called Ronald Reagan Park--and who can possibly become a hard-hearted, don’t-get-in-my-way bad boy while playing at Ronald Reagan Park?--the freshman Van Horn was told by his college coach at Utah, Rick Majerus, to gain some weight and become a man.

It has always seemed as if Van Horn has been tormented by his talent and the expectations that talent has brought to him.

“Keith can do so many things with the basketball,” Martin said. Martin is Van Horn’s opposite, a player possessed by too much energy and desire and enthusiasm, a man cursed by his emotions and often left on the bench because he was put there by his own anger and referees who don’t get him.

“When I got in his face about dunking, it was only to help him,” Martin said. “I would want someone to tell me what they saw. What I see is a man who is 6-10, who can run the floor with anybody and who has all the shots. He just doesn’t always have confidence.”

At times this season Van Horn has poured out his soul to Kerry Kittles, telling his teammate how he lost his confidence and belief in himself. At times this season Van Horn has railed publicly about lack of playing time, even as Scott was saying he wanted to play Van Horn more if only Van Horn would act as if he wanted to be on the court.

“There [were] times,” point guard Jason Kidd said, “you could see Keith was hesitating on every shot. He wasn’t doing things naturally, in rhythm. Maybe he was thinking too much. Things were bothering him too much.”

When Van Horn, 26, was a rookie in 1997-98, he led the Nets in scoring, was on the NBA all-rookie first team and was an astounding surprise to Net fans, who had grumbled at his selection because of all those faults they thought he had--too soft, too unaggressive, too darn nice.

And of all the surprises about the rookie, nothing was as amazing as how Van Horn became best buddies with Jayson Williams, the big-mouthed, foul-mouthed, oversized personality who played hard and lived hard. It has bothered Van Horn immensely this year to see the former Net center indicted on nine counts, including a charge of aggravated manslaughter, in the February shooting that left a man dead in Williams’ home.

As good as he was as a rookie, Van Horn was even better the next season. He averaged 21.8 points and 8.5 rebounds, although he played only 42 games because of a broken thumb. Injury aside, Van Horn was turning into a franchise player, a go-to guy, a young man of great character who could lead the Nets into the uncharted territory of deep playoff runs and a packed arena.

In his third season, though his scoring (19.2) and rebounding (8.4) averages dropped a bit, Van Horn played 80 games and seemed deserving of his big, new contract. But a year later Van Horn spent 32 games on the injured list with a broken leg. His scoring dropped to 17 points a game and rebounds to 7.1. And this season his scoring average has dropped again, to 14.8.

Now people were asking what it was the Nets were stuck with.

“You definitely start wondering how much you are capable of,” Van Horn said. “... In my mind, I don’t think I lost faith in myself. But maybe I did, a little. You begin to wonder if you can ever contribute what is expected of you.”

Against Boston Sunday night, during New Jersey’s 104-97 victory in Game 1 of the Eastern Conference finals, Van Horn showed all the parts of his game, good and bad.

Van Horn made an on-the-run blind pass to Martin for a dunk and perfect cuts that resulted in three slams for himself. But twice Van Horn took passes from Kidd when wide open for three-point shots. Once he double-clutched and threw up a brick. Once he looked at the basket, cocked his arm as if to shoot, then threw a pass to a surprised Martin, who stumbled and shot an off-balance jump shot.

The crowd booed, but only softly. The Nets were winning, after all, and what was the point?

Van Horn is what he is. A player of great talent. A player of some ego but maybe not enough. A player who will get mad but not all the time, who will be pushed but who won’t always push back. A man who didn’t beg for all the money but who takes it, who didn’t ask to be a superstar but who could be. And isn’t. But might be. Or not.

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Diane Pucin can be reached at diane.pucin@latimes.com.