06-25-2005, 10:21 AM
Quote:FORT MILL - I wrote last week that the Charlotte Bobcats should do what they have to, including giving up both first-round picks, to select Wake Forest point guard Chris Paul.
I hate to keep writing the same thing -- well, no I don't. The NBA draft is a mere 10 days away, and the Bobcats have to get this one right.
Look around the league. How many great point guards do you see? When the rare opportunity to land a potential great comes your way, you seize it.
But enough about me; let's climb the stairs that adjoin the court at the Bobcats' practice facility and seek another opinion.
Sir, who would you take if you were the Bobcats and had your choice of any point guard in the draft?
"Me," says Chris Paul.
It's unanimous.
Why not your buddy Raymond Felton of North Carolina, with whom you talked Thursday, or Deron Williams of Illinois?
"Because I think I bring a little excitement to the game," says Paul, 20, who worked out Friday morning for the Bobcats. "I love to play and I'm just a basketball junkie and I'm a sponge. I'm willing to learn.
"And if I'm in Charlotte," he says with a smile, "I can get season tickets for my family."
Although the most popular point guard in Charlotte history is Wake Forest's Muggsy Bogues, Paul won't trigger the box office rush Felton will.
But you figure Paul's aunt, Rhonda Richardson, who lives near Concord Mills, will want tickets. Paul's cousin, dazzling Winthrop point guard Chris Gaynor, will want some. Paul's family in Winston-Salem will. That's, what, 10?
Add Paul's former Wake Forest teammates, who will be all over him. That's another 10.
Then you kick in the tickets purchased by the hard-core, basketball-crazed, Wake Forest faithful. That's 10 more.
Like that, Charlotte's season ticket sales have doubled.
After the initial blush wears off, Bobcats fans will care more about their team's future than a player's past. Fans will love Paul. Even fans of Julius Hodge and N.C. State -- with whom Paul had an unfortunate incident that, yes, was all Paul's fault -- will come around, perhaps in our lifetime.
"My best asset is I change speeds a lot to keep you off balance," says Paul. "I go 100 miles per hour, slow down and then go. Just control the tempo of the game. If I want to speed it up I can. But if things get out of hand and I want to slow it down I can."
Nobody in the college game goes to the basket as relentlessly.
"Just got to be fierce," says Paul. "That's just the competitor coming out of me. No matter what it is, I hate to lose. Board game, video game, if I'm playing basketball in the backyard with my little cousin."
Paul will allow 9-year-old A.J. to hit a few baskets, and then go Ben Wallace on him and shut the kid down.
Even the most learned of basketball people guess wrong about the potential of a player, as the first-round picks of the New Orleans Hornets attest.
But there is a quality about Paul that is greater than his ability to handle the ball, beat his man off the dribble or find a teammate that didn't even realize he was open.
Paul will someday be an all-star. I'd rather have him doing his all-star work for the Bobcats than to them.
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