Johnson Lacks Talent To Make Dream Team

The reason Larry Johnson was not selected to play for Dream Team III, say the sports stories, is that he misbehaved last summer at the World Games in Toronto. You believe that? I don’t. The reason is simple. Johnson is not good enough.

Fellow Charlotte Hornet Alonzo Mourning, who was nice in Toronto, also was not invited to play. Mourning is a talent, the NBA’s fourth- or fifth-best center, and he’s versatile enough to play power forward.

But if Dream Team III needs a center to slide over to power forward, it can ask Hakeem Olajuwon. The way Olajuwon finished the season, he is entitled to slide over to small forward and big guard, too.

Ten players were picked Sunday for the 1996 U.S. men’s Olympic basketball team, and two more will be added before the Atlanta Games.

Not all the players are elite. But USA Basketball is gambling that Grant Hill and Glenn Robinson, who were rookies last season, will be.

They’ll join old annual all-stars such as Olajuwon, Karl Malone, Scottie Pippen, David Robinson, John Stockton and Reggie Miller, and new annual all-stars such as Anfernee Hardaway and Shaquille O’Neal.

Hardaway and O’Neal are where Hill and Robinson hope to be.

Johnson was headed there once. He roared into the NBA in 1991-92, and he was something. At 6-5-1/2, he didn’t care about the size of the man between him and the basket. If he couldn’t go over him, he’d go through him. He was Rookie of the Year and, in his second season, a starter in the NBA All-Star Game.

The Hornets chose Johnson with the first pick in the draft not simply because of his talent. They liked his approach. He might take prisoners, but they were never heard from again.

He was brash and confident, and his personality became the team’s.

He made lots of noise, but the confidence beneath it was real. Johnson had been the best player in junior college and in college, and he expected to be the best in the NBA, too.

But potential wears out. Every season a batch of young players roars into the league. We love the new moves and the new personalities. But to accommodate them, some of the old stars have to get out of the way.

Some of us persist in thinking of Johnson as a young player. Consider, however, that the average age of an NBA player at the beginning of last season was 27 years and four months. Johnson is 26 years and five months. Hardaway and O’Neal are 23.

And after his brilliant start, he got out of the way. He suffered two back injuries, and when he came back, seemed to realize for the first time that he was 6-5-1/2. And he began to do what most 6-5-1/2 NBA players do he moved outside.

His image was dirtied in the World Games. He was rude, took cheap shots and ignored coaches, the reports say. Worse, his name was always mentioned in the same sentence with Derrick Coleman, the New Jersey Net who squanders talent as if it comes from a well that will never run dry.

Antics aside, Johnson did not distinguish himself on the court last summer in Toronto. But last season, his fourth in the NBA, he often did. He made the forward-poor Eastern Conference all-star team as a reserve. He became important. The Hornets can’t win without him.

But how would you describe Johnson? Would you describe him as a great player? Only if you’re a friend, a relative or an executive who gave him an $84 million contract that will make him a Hornet forever. If you’re anybody else, you’d say Johnson is good.

If he were great, he would have proved it in the first round of the NBA playoffs by leading the Hornets past the beatable Bulls of Chicago.

If Johnson were great, USA Basketball would have upgraded his behavior in Toronto from naughty to spirited and asked him to play on the U.S. Olympic team.