Webber Needs a Timeout Now

Chris Webber barely paid attention to the weekend scene at the Standard hotel’s rooftop bar in downtown Los Angeles. Dancers grooved to the DJ’s beats, people sipped expensive drinks and swimmers wearing minimal-to-no clothing frolicked in the pool.

We were talking ball.

Webber, in town last week to film a shoe commercial, thinks the Sacramento Kings’ signing of Keon Clark was the best off-season move in the NBA this summer. He says Mike Bibby is a rock-solid 200 pounds and ready for some fierce ballin’. He predicts Hedo Turkoglu will blow up this season.

But if you think that franchise and its star player can forget the excruciating loss to the Lakers in Game 7 of the Western Conference finals, think again.

“Dog, it hurt worse than The Timeout,” Webber said.

He continued, talking about how he cried in the locker room afterward, but I couldn’t get past that first statement.

Worse than The Timeout?

That’s saying something. You remember The Timeout. The 1993 NCAA championship game, the Superdome, Michigan vs. North Carolina, Webber’s Wolverines down by two points with 11 seconds left. Webber had the ball, then called a timeout the team didn’t have. In the books it’s recorded as: Technical foul--Michigan bench. In sports lore it’s one of the biggest blunders ever, worthy of its own capital letters

It’s defined Webber ever since. That’s why his whole summer, from the bitter loss to his indictment on charges of lying to a grand jury, has made him want to get back to Before.

Back to the days in high school and the two-year run of the Fab Five at Michigan. Back to when ball was fun, when they would run up and down the court and yell at each other and dunk on guys and play with passion.

Back to the way he played even in the 39 minutes 49 seconds of hoops that preceded The Timeout.

He was, perhaps, a shot and an overtime away from being the most outstanding player of that game. People don’t remember he had 23 points, 11 rebounds and three blocked shots that night. They remember The Timeout.

I remember how he faced the national media and took the blame. And that relates to his current, more serious predicament.

Webber, his father and his aunt were charged with conspiring to obstruct justice and lying to a federal grand jury investigating Detroit basketball booster Ed Martin’s illegal gambling operation.

Martin said he gave Webber $280,000 while Webber was at Michigan and in high school. Webber denies accepting that much money, and he said he didn’t lie to the grand jury.

“I’ve always been a stand-up guy,” Webber said.

“Why would I lie?”

He said he hasn’t talked to Martin since he was a teenager--and the investigation has made him think back to the good aspects of those days.

“The situation has reinforced my love for ball,” Webber said. “The time I was 14 years old and a 55-year-old man wearing a gold chain and Jordans came around us kids.

“I love basketball more, I love my life more, I love God more. Hopefully, this is all for a reason.”

He doesn’t think the charges--which carry potential jail sentences of from two to 10 years--will affect his play, but he’s sure the constant questioning about them will get tiresome.

He is so confident he will not be convicted that he wishes the trial could begin earlier. (It could begin next summer, but prosecutors are trying to move up the start date.)

He’s confident about his team’s chances of dethroning the Lakers as well. He thinks Clark gives them a weakside shot-blocker, and a guy who can extend starting center Vlade Divac’s career by a couple of years. Webber worked out hard this summer, and said Bibby worked out even harder. While Webber wouldn’t leave the gym before he made 500 shots, Bibby wouldn’t break out until he made 1,000.

But he doesn’t want his guys talking smack. Someone came up to Webber at the Standard and told him that Bibby said the team would win 70 games this year. Last week, co-owner Gavin Maloof said the Kings should be “one of the greatest teams ever” and that “we believe that last year we had the better team.”

Webber can’t do anything about the owners, but he wants the players to shut up.

“This isn’t a fairy tale,” he said. “This is real.”

No cone of silence for the Lakers. After pretending not to hear questions about the Kings at media day Monday, Shaquille O’Neal finally said, “I don’t think they’ll ever have what it takes” to beat the Lakers.

Webber doesn’t hate the Lakers. He loves O’Neal’s game. Loves Kobe Bryant’s game. Respects all of the veteran savvy utilized by Robert Horry.

Webber took to heart the words Horry said with a minute left in Game 4. Webber felt confident the Kings were going to win, and let Horry know about it.

“I just play the game, man,” Horry responded. And Horry kept playing ... right up until the final seconds, when Divac batted a rebound his way and Horry fired up the three-point shot that won the game and saved the Lakers’ season.

Webber could learn a lot from Horry. Webber needs to keep playing, right through the end.

He passed up shots in crunch time last season. He and King Coach Rick Adelman said he was fulfilling his role as a playmaker. But now Webber realizes if he’s going to be the franchise player with the $122-million contract, he has to be the one to shoot the ball when the game’s on the line.

And he needs to get past that final barrier.

“I think when you’re as great a player as he is--he’s one of the elite of the elite--to get truly validated you need to win a championship,” Steve Fisher, Webber’s college coach, said on the court in Sacramento before Game 7.

“People continue to say, ‘Well he never won one in college, he hasn’t won one in the NBA.’ Well I know, because I was with him, we’re not even close to being there without him. And right here, they’re not even close to being where they are without him. And yet, until he can put that ring on his finger, he won’t be able to have that kind of inner peace.”

The fans at the Standard didn’t antagonize him. He said he gets mostly love when he comes down to L.A.

He did get accosted by a rabid Laker fan earlier this summer when he went to buy a Palm Pilot at Office Depot. Didn’t faze him, though.

He knows that to get what he really wants he’ll have to deal with the real troublemakers, the guys in the gold uniforms at Staples.

J.A. Adande can be reached at j.a.adande@latimes.com