No Bull, Knight a Pivotal Laker

The rookie was catching a nap in his room in Minneapolis on an 18-below-zero day, but thought about going to the mall. He had drawn one of his sisters’ names in the family’s traditional Christmas grab bag and planned to buy her something back in Los Angeles until an older teammate told him: “No, man, do your shopping on the road. Nothing else to do on the road.”

That reminded the rookie of a warmer day, a different mall.

“Funny story,” says Travis Knight, the 7-footer from the University of Connecticut who is making an unexpectedly quick impact in the NBA, spelling Shaquille O’Neal at center for the Lakers. “When I went to Hawaii, for training camp? Well, I got there a day early and I didn’t know anybody. So I went to a mall by myself, to get something to eat.

“All of a sudden, I heard a lot of noise, coming from down the hall. And when I looked up from my lunch, I saw what it was. It was Shaq. A bunch of people were following him, naturally. I just sat there looking at him, same as everybody else.”

He could have gone over, said hello.

After all, how many other people in that mall could have stood up to Shaquille O’Neal, eye to eye?

Knight says, “Me? Nah.”

Why not?

“I wouldn’t want to bother him.”

A day later, O’Neal came up and introduced himself, at camp. He also had a few words for Knight on what was expected of a rookie in the NBA, assignments and such. Shaq had been around. This would be his fifth season in the league. It really didn’t matter that O’Neal was only 24 years old, while Knight already had turned 22. A rookie was a rookie.

Training camp began. The club was pretty well set at center, with the 120-Million-Dollar Man in the middle most of the time, plus the 6-10 journeyman Sean Rooks--practically an old-timer on this team, at 27--having just joined the Lakers as a free agent. Seeing as how Elden Campbell was capable of moving from forward to center for a few minutes himself, whenever necessary, the chances of Travis Knight making an immediate contribution did not look too hot.

Nor did he know what to expect.

“I had no idea. None. Zero,” Knight says. “I had heard this about the NBA, I had heard that about the NBA. All I knew was that I was a Laker and that Hawaii was nice and warm.”

As was Los Angeles.

And to think he was supposed to be working and living in Chicago, this time of year.

“Yeah, I know.” Knight says. “That’s another good thing.”

See, it was not the Lakers who claimed Knight in the NBA college draft, it was the Bulls, a world-beating team that needed very little help. Knight was the 29th and last pick of the draft’s first round. He had led UConn in rebounding and blocked shots, and along with Ray Allen, who was taken fifth in the same NBA draft, Knight and the Huskies had gone to the NCAA tournament’s Sweet 16 three years in a row.

Now he was a Bull.

For, oh, all of two weeks.

“Did you at least get to meet Michael Jordan and Scottie Pippen?” Knight is asked.

“I got to meet nobody,” he replies.

Nobody?

“A couple of phone calls from [General Manager] Jerry Krause. I think that’s it.”

Let go on July 12, his draft rights renounced, Knight had gone from a championship team to no team, overnight. There was not enough money left for him in Chicago because the Bulls were too busy giving hefty raises to Jordan, Dennis Rodman and their coach, Phil Jackson, as well as signing a free-agent center old enough to be Knight’s father, Robert Parish.

What the Bulls couldn’t have known at that point is that, come the end of July, the team from Los Angeles that already had shelled out $120 million for one center would have enough spare change to sign another. Nor could Krause and company have known that their starting center, Luc Longley, would use the season’s first visit to Los Angeles to work on his bodysurfing, in the process injuring himself and leaving the Bulls short-handed at center.

“Would you be the starting center for the Chicago Bulls right now?” Knight is asked.

He doesn’t hesitate.

“No, I don’t think so, no way. From what I was told, Phil Jackson doesn’t play rookies, period.”

And so it was that when Knight made his first official trip to Chicago to meet the champs, last Tuesday night, the Lakers mopped up the United Center with the Bulls for the better part of three quarters, running up 101 points before the fourth one even began. O’Neal overpowered everybody Chicago threw at him, until the final period and overtime, when Rodman did everything in his power to hold Shaq scoreless, as the Bulls won one of the wildest games either side had ever played.

Knight won’t soon forget that. He played only six minutes, scored only one point. But being a spectator for a game such as that wasn’t a bad thing to be.

He says, “That was a roller coaster, wasn’t it? That press of theirs, Georgetown used to press us like that. The Bulls have such athletes. They just smothered us out there. I mean, you know there were only supposed to be five of them out there, but you could swear there were nine or 10 sometimes.”

That was the beginning of a cold Midwest trip for the Lakers, who next go to Phoenix for a Christmas Day game, before returning home. After a game against the Boston Celtics, their rookie center has permission to leave the team for a day, to attend his sister’s wedding in Utah. There he can compare notes with his younger brother, Nate, who currently is playing basketball for Oregon State.

“What will your family ask about? You or Shaq?”

“Shaq, probably,” Knight says. “I would.”