By Bob Hertzel
For the Times West Virginian
MORGANTOWN —
This is going to be an implausible stretch and I know it, but there’s something deep down inside, perhaps the same thing the Los Angeles Lakers felt when they drafted Devin Ebanks, that says he is going to become an NBA star.
Might as well begin with the stretch, for we certainly never thought we would go there. The original idea today was to point out how strong an influence West Virginia has had on the Los Angeles Lakers franchise, right from the day the team moved from Minneapolis to L.A.
The first coach was Fred Schaus. On the team he picked up coming out Minneapolis was Hot Rod Hundley, about to have what could be considered his best season of an NBA career that fell short of his collegiate heroics and was cut short by creaky knees.
And, of course, there was Jerry West coming out of West Virginia to join his coach following an Olympic Gold Medal on what well may have been the first real “Dream Team.”
That was where we were headed, but we got sidetracked as we looked at the Lakers history and saw during those years of Schaus and Hundley and West that the Lakers were always stymied by the Boston Celtics and Bill Russell.
It was so bad that Hundley was once moved to say:
“If we played Boston four-on-four, without Russell, we probably would have won every series. The guy killed us. He’s the one who prevented us from achieving true greatness.”
And, as we thought back to Bill Russell, something came to mind, something that never before had entered our mind and something that history may prove never should have entered our mind.
Could Devin Ebanks be the next Bill Russell?
Have your laughs now, but then let us just state the case, for it isn’t as farfetched as you may think.
Bill Russell is listed at 6-foot-9, 215 pounds. So is Devin Ebanks.
Now, in Russell’s day, 6-9 was a giant. He played center, rebounded like no one before him and no one since, and blocked shots with such devastation that he completely changed the way the game was played.
Ebanks, we understand, is playing in a game where he is no giant, where he must play more outside than inside, but his game, like Russell’s, is one of rebounding and shot blocking. And, rest assured, he comes into the NBA as one of college’s best at both.
Can Ebanks dominate like Russell did, can he lead the Lakers to 11 championships in 13 years?
Of course not.
But remember, Ebanks comes out of college after his sophomore year. Russell
played his whole career at San Francisco and, yes, was so good that they team won a pair of national championships and strung together 55 victories in a row.
But that was during his last two years … the two years that Ebanks is missing in college, years in which he can develop in the professionals, build his strength and size, concentrate 10 and 12 hours a day on the game rather than having to split his concentration with the college life, be it academic or simply social.
Here he learned from Bob Huggins, but there it well could be that he will learn from Phil Jackson, and even if Jackson leaves there’s Kobe Bryant to lead him toward what could be greatness.
See, the talent difference between Ebanks and Russell isn’t nearly as great as you may think. In truth, put Ebanks in Russell’s era and he might have been a dominant player both rebounding and defensively.
The difference, however, is found not in the legs or the arms or muscles, but between the ears.
Russell was Russell because of his personality, because his mentality. There never has been anyone to compete like he did, never anyone to approach the pride he carried into every game, never anyone to play with the chip on his shoulder that Russell carried.
This separated him from everyone else, even Jerry West, who probably ranks right behind Russell in those categories.
Devin Ebanks, who we saw all too often at West Virginia disappear on the court, who missed a couple of games early this season for unexplained reasons, who would sometimes sulk and sometimes act selfishly on the court, is light years away from Russell in the area that may matter most.
That is why he was a second-round draft pick, not a first, and why there was even some doubt that he should come out of college early at all.
But give him a couple of years to grow up, to learn how to grind it out in the NBA, to improve his outside shot and see how Kobe Bryant does it and maybe, just maybe, his mind will be able to match his body and he will become a dominant NBA player.
E-mail Bob Hertzel at bhertzel@hotmail.com.
