Who Is This Player Who Masquerades As Shawn Kemp?

Something is wrong with Shawn Kemp. The fire has flamed out of his game. The energy is drained. The toughness has gone slack.

All of the promise of last spring has died. Shawn Kemp no longer is a great player. He is a good player. No longer is he a late-game go-to guy. Too often he is a late-game go-to-sleep guy.

Something is wrong with Shawn Kemp. He isn’t himself.

Last summer, he seemed poised to replace Karl Malone as the league’s pre-eminent power forward. This season, he’s not even in the top five.

Malone is making a serious argument for MVP. Kemp is making a serious argument for RIP.

On a team filled with consummate professionals; a roster of players who care, Kemp has been a professional fraud.

Even the mute and moody Gary Payton cares deeply about winning. After Tuesday night’s pathetic 99-97 loss to the shell of a team that was once the championship-contending Los Angeles Lakers, Payton met with Coach George Karl for 26 minutes.

But it only takes one guy to drag down a basketball team. Even this team, rich with veterans such as Nate McMillan, Hersey Hawkins, Detlef Schrempf and Terry Cummings, has played distractedly in the 10-day freefall that has seen it lose three of its past four.

“This basketball team is an energy basketball team,” Karl said, as McMillan waited nearby for another meeting. “Over the year, maybe we’ve gotten too boring. We play best when we’re aggressive and on and angry.

“We haven’t had a lot of problems and now we have some distractions. You have Shawn’s problem with being late. And then you have the team reacting to it. And then you have me reacting to it.”

When it comes to distractions, Kemp is worse than Chicago’s Dennis Rodman. At least when Rodman is on the floor, the Bulls know what to expect. And even Rodman - between movie premieres, book signings and Oscar nights - shows up.

Kemp is tardy so often it’s almost a bigger story when he gets to the bus, the plane, the practice, the game on time. He missed the team plane to Phoenix on Saturday. It was a morning flight to a Western city for a game the following night. Those seem to be the planes Kemp most often misses. He says he overslept, but he didn’t have the courtesy, the empathy, the professionalism to call a team official and explain himself.

Those of us who covered the NBA in the dark days of the late 1970s know that repeated unexplained tardiness often is symptomatic of more serious problems.

What’s wrong with Kemp? Don’t ask him.

He doesn’t talk much these days. Even though he owes the ticket-buying, Reebok-wearing public an explanation for arriving late to Phoenix, he hasn’t given one. Apparently Kemp doesn’t feel the need to be accountable to his fans.

For the second game in a row, Kemp didn’t start. When he entered with 4:36 left in the first quarter and the Sonics trailing 18-8, the boos outnumbered the cheers. And when it was announced that he had just scored the 10,000th point of his career, the applause was lukewarm at best. And this reception is from a crowd that wants to love him; wants him to be Malone and Charles Barkley; wants to know what’s up.

What’s wrong? All we know is what we see on the floor. He rarely fights for position in the low blocks. Too often he settles for perimeter jumpers. It’s hard to believe this is the same guy who muscled Malone and Rodman in last year’s playoffs.

His numbers last night - 21 points, 10 rebounds - look impressive. But he only had one field goal in the last 10-1/2 minutes and didn’t score in the final 5-1/2 minutes.

The Lakers were without Shaquille O’Neal and Robert Horry. Elden Campbell missed the second half with bruised buttocks and backup center Travis Knight hurt his knee in the first quarter and never returned.

The middle was a soft belly that Kemp should have battered. But with first place in the Pacific Division riding on this game, Kemp was silenced by Corie Blount.

CORIE BLOUNT! The Kemp of last season had the Corie Blounts of the NBA for breakfast.

It’s sad these days watching Shawn Kemp. It’s uncomfortable to see someone with so much talent use so little of it.

Something’s wrong with Shawn Kemp, and with the playoffs less than a month away, his problem is every Sonic’s problem.