Gritty by the Bay

There has been one constant in Gary Payton’s life, from the first shot he made on a hoop tacked to a tree in the driveway through every jumper he swishes at Staples Center, from the days Payton didn’t measure 6 feet, even if you included his Jheri curls, until the top of his bald head stood 6 feet 4 inches above the ground.

It’s the man they call Mr. Mean.

“Mean guy, man,” Payton said. “He never smiled. He’d always go around not smiling.”

“Everybody knew who he was,” said Brian Shaw, an Oakland buddy of Payton’s who also made it to the NBA. “Everybody was kind of intimidated by him.”

Gary Payton’s father wears the title “Mr. Mean” with pride. He has it printed on caps, shirts and his license plates. But he does want to set the record straight.

“I’m not mean,” Al Payton said. “I just believe in doing the right thing.”

The right thing changes, depending on the situation. Sometimes it required taking the ball from an older son and handing it to little Gary to stop him from crying. Another time it might have required whupping Gary in front of his high school classmates to stop him from misbehaving.

If teenager Gary scored 40 points in a game, Al harped about the pass Gary missed or the times he let his man drive by him.

Now, when Gary complains about a lack of playing time, Al tells him to calm down, that the 35-year-old Gary isn’t as young as he used to be and that Laker Coach Phil Jackson knows what he’s doing by conserving his point guard’s minutes to keep him ready for the playoffs.

Whatever the scenario, Al Payton was there to show Gary the proper path. Al definitely wasn’t going to follow the footsteps of his own father, who left his mother when Al was 1 1/2 and didn’t reappear in his life until Al was 18.

He taught Gary toughness, taught him not to back down for anybody. Some things Gary learned, some he must have picked up whether or not he wanted to -- such as “the look.” It’s when the head tilts to the side, the jaw angles up and the eyes lock in.

“It comes from his dad,” said Annie Payton, Gary’s mother. “I’ve seen it a lot.”

Al dispensed his lessons at the place he still calls home, the house on 41st Avenue. Al bought it in 1968, using his earnings as a diner cook and his winnings from a hot run at the craps tables in Reno. Gary used to divide his time between his parents after they split up when he was 9, but when Gary kept hiding when his mother came to pick him up, she finally decided to just let him stay with his father.

Both parents attended his high school games and traveled to Oregon State for his college games.

“We did, for the kids’ sake,” Annie said. “We were good friends. We went to all the games. A lot of people thought we were still together.”

The house is a modest place that Al has fixed up over the years. A sign above the porch identifies it as “Payton’s Place.” Other than a big-screen TV, most of the signs of success are trophies, large and small, that dominate the living room.

It won’t be appearing on “MTV Cribs,” as Gary’s off-season home in Las Vegas did.

“This house won’t even touch his garage,” Al Payton said. “But this is where he came from.”

Over the years, Gary has tried to buy Al another house. His offers have been refused.

“When we first came out of the projects, this was my first house,” Al said. “I love the neighborhood. People, they love me. I’m just more comfortable here. And it reminds me of [Gary], of all my kids. This was my house. I just love the place.”

It was where everyone gathered after school. Sure, Al had that Mr. Mean reputation, but kids still wanted to be there because he could do some serious work on the barbecue grill.

“He gives you access to his house, he gives you access to food,” said Joe Henry, Gary’s childhood friend who, at 39, still addresses Al as “Pops” or “Dad.” “He sees that you don’t have shoes, he’ll come over and say, ‘Son, you need some shoes? Let’s go see if we can get you some shoes.’ Things of that nature.

“If you don’t get hard love, sometimes that can make you into a bad individual. You’re already upset because you don’t have income, parents around or a father figure in your life. That’s what Mr. Payton is all about. You don’t have a father, Mr. Payton will step up and talk to you and let you know there’s other ways and other means of making ways come good instead of the negative.”

The saddest part of NBA draft night is how rarely you see fathers standing next to the mothers as they beam with pride. Al Payton not only guided Gary to the league, he helped Jason Kidd, Antonio Davis and Greg Foster make it to the NBA.

“He was always the father for everybody,” Gary said. “Not just me and my brothers and my sisters, he was the father for everybody in the ‘hood.

“Most of the people we grew up around didn’t have a daddy, they had a mother. They’d be home by themselves because their mother had to work. No Pops. So everybody would come over to my house and he would be there and everybody would look out for each other.”

They played ball outside on a rim nailed to a tree. Not one of those standard orange breakaway rims. First it was a coat hanger, then a metal ring pulled off a wood barrel.

From there, Gary trudged down to Jefferson elementary school for full-court games. That’s also where he practiced, rain or shine, for his club teams. Al helped out the coach by driving kids to and from games. Eventually Al Payton became a coach himself, with a team called “We Are Family.”

He was a tough coach. If a player made a turnover, missed a free throw or failed to box out for rebounds, he would be running laps at the next practice.

And no one had it worse than Gary.

“If I took it hard on Gary, then they knew I was going to take it hard on them,” Al said.

“At times I would think, ‘Man, what can I do right?’ ” Gary said. “As I got older I was like, all he was trying to do was be perfect. You might not have a perfect game, but you can have close [to perfect].

“In college one time, he gave me, like, a perfect game. I had a triple double. It was my freshman year. He was like, ‘You played cool.’ He didn’t say nothing else negative. I was like, ‘I’m getting there.’ When my daddy says that, that’s a big plus.”

All of the cockiness, the toughness, it came from Al. So did the talking.

Al didn’t want his players fighting, but he didn’t want them backing down, either.

“I taught them, ‘You better speak up,’ ” he said. “ ‘No matter how big he is, whatever, if he talks to you, you talk trash back.’ ”

Most of the basketball courts at Jefferson have been replaced by portable classrooms. Only two backboards remain and one has a bent rim, the other a wisp of a net hanging from it.

Al Payton drives by and shakes his head, before he drives off to Claremont middle school.

“This is where Gary got famous,” he said.

By the time Payton was finished at Claremont he was a prized commodity. Geographically, he should have gone to Fremont High School. But a student had been killed there. And Al wanted a change for his son, wanted him to go to a school with a better scholastic reputation, and to spend some time in an environment that wasn’t strictly African American.

Al went behind the counter at Fremont, swiped Gary’s transcript and enrolled his son at Skyline High.

Driving up in the hills above Oakland, Al recalled how he’d caught flak from people who’d said Gary was leaving the black neighborhood behind, as if he were too good for it.

“I wanted to let him have the experience of not playing with all blacks,” Al said. “Martin Luther King, that’s what he always wanted. I still believe in that philosophy.

“I’m an African American, but I believe in the best people. I don’t believe in black or white. If you’re right, you’re right.”

It wasn’t that easy for Payton to fit in. He was academically ineligible to play ball his first year -- he’d gotten an F in citizenship.

And he kept running into trouble, disrupting classes. At first, Al didn’t punish him. He went to the administrators and told them if anything else went wrong to call him.

Gary started a fight. Bad move. Mr. Mean came to school and clocked him in front of his friends, in front of the girls he wanted to impress, in front of the whole class.

“I said, ‘I’m going to show you what kind of man he is,’ ” Al said. ‘You’re not a real man. I’m the man.’ ”

Gary’s friends clowned him for a week. But Al’s lesson lasted even longer. Whenever any of Gary’s friends brought it up, he said, “You won’t see it again.”

And they didn’t. They saw Gary regularly go for 20-plus in the two seasons he played at Skyline. They saw him attract attention from colleges nationwide before he went to Oregon State.

And after Gary left for college and then a 13-year NBA career with the Seattle SuperSonics, Milwaukee Bucks and Lakers, they still saw him around town.

The court in Skyline’s gym was paid for by Gary. So were the scoreboards in all of the Oakland Athletic League schools.

Gary donated $100,000 to the East Oakland Youth Development Center, a gift Al didn’t discover until he saw his son’s name on a plaque there. At the San Leandro Boys and Girls Club, there’s a framed newspaper article describing a basketball clinic put on by Payton and Shaw.

“Seeing [Al] help people when he didn’t have to, it’s the same with me,” Payton said. “I just wanted to follow in his footsteps. He’s, like, my idol. I respect what he did for me, so that’s what I wanted to do.”

Regina Jackson, executive director of the East Oakland Youth Development Center, said, “Al Payton has been working with youth for an awful long time. I know he’s obviously had a big impact on his son. There’s certainly much love and appreciation he’s had, primarily with black males.”

Said Al: “It’s more blessed to give than to receive. That’s what my philosophy has been about. It seems like everything has come easy when we give.”

Late in the afternoon, after a day of driving around Oakland to revisit Gary’s old haunts, Al said, “There’s good people all over. But what makes you feel good is when you know where you came from.”

The tree that used to serve as a backboard at the house on 41st Avenue is gone now. Still, it’s impossible to spend any time with Al Payton and not see Gary’s roots, still firmly entrenched.