July 13, 2006
- Gregg Patton, The Press-Enterprise

LONG BEACH, Calif. -- Jordan Farmar remembers coming to watch NBA Summer Pro League games when he was in high school.

"I saw (Phoenix star) Shawn Marion, the year he came out," said the Los Angeles Lakers' first-round draft pick, now a featured attraction at the Pyramid on the Cal State Long Beach campus. "I wanted to see the new guys coming up, same as everybody else who comes here."

What they see is professional basketball at its ... most illusory?

Take Andrew Bynum, the Lakers' No. 1 pick last year. As he was last year, Andrew Bynum is still the most closely watched man in the building. For a good reason.

He is a 7-foot, 275-pound centerpiece of hope for the franchise. Huge, athletic and energetic, Bynum at his best looks like a happy ending for the Lakers. If Kobe Bryant can just hang on for another year or two, and wait for the big kid to catch up, maybe they'll have something. There are days here when he looks absolutely big-time.

Bynum's every agile move to the basket, sweeping rebound and vicious shot block is met with an approving roar. In a year, he's made the kind of progress the Lakers counted on.

"It's kind of funny to think that I'm an 18-year-old veteran," said Bynum, when asked if a second swing through the summer games made him feel like one. "I'm just trying to get better and learn."

It's still hard to tell where he sizes up in the grand NBA scheme of things. In Long Beach, his competition is an amorphous blob. Occasionally that's literal. Most centers here are undersized, underskilled or underpolished, or all of the above.

"It's not what he's going to play against (in the NBA)," said Lakers coach Kurt Rambis, who makes up for the optimism in the stands with a dose of reality from the bench. "You can't really re-create that for him (in Long Beach). What he needs is playing time, which he didn't get, but he will next year."

Rambis doesn't gush. Long Beach is all about the learning experience. His mild praise of Farmar, who has looked very good these first few days, is followed by a laundry list of things the rookie from UCLA needs to learn.

The Lakers and three other NBA franchises _ Dallas, Memphis and Washington _ field teams here, but, as Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell might have put it, it ain't nothing like the real thing, baby.

Of course, it's not supposed to be.

The four NBA teams and more than a dozen other makeshift teams are comprised mostly of young players _ free agents _ looking for work.

Bynum and Jordan Farmar are the lucky ones. They are fully employed. The overwhelming majority of players are standing in line, looking.

It makes for entertaining games because everyone is working at 100 percent capacity, 100 percent of the time. That helps make up for their flaws. But even the players with the signed, guaranteed contracts have a little something missing.

Control. Size. Quickness. Toughness. A shot. Experience. Court sense.

Once after second-year Laker Von Wafer tossed in a 35-foot buzzer-beater, the crowd went crazy and Rambis went straight to Wafer. He admonished him for losing track of the time.

The Lakers team is about as big-time as it gets. The squad, coached by Rambis with staff members Frank Hamblen and Brian Shaw at his side, includes three players who saw limited action in the NBA last year _ Bynum, Wafer and Devin Green _ and two draft-day additions, Farmar and second-round acquisition J.R. Pinnock.

That makes them a lot more interesting than, say, the Dallas Mavericks' entry that doesn't have a single player from their NBA roster. Several of the Mavs' active players, as well as their first-round pick, Maurice Ager of Michigan State, are playing in the Las Vegas summer league this week.

In any case, the "pro" teams will spend the next week playing the rest of their eight games against each other, doing their best to replicate what most of us are used to seeing on television, with mixed results.

Most of the other games involve basketball's wandering army of just-miss talents. The caliber of play is a sizeable cut below the NBA games. It's not necessarily a giant falloff in individual skills, but in the mission. The Lakers are teaching a system and structure, and looking to polish a few prospects. Their games aren't playground style.

The free-agent games are. Substance is less, showcasing talent is more. There's an uncoached look to the product.

Not that it matters. The crowds come mostly to see the Lakers, filling or nearly filling the 5,000-seat arena when they play.

They are looking for good news in a few of the "guys coming up," as Farmar put it. Even if most of the hustling, hard-working, full-of-hope players here are guys going out.