John Blanchette: NBA a grind: Just ask Morrison

NEW YORK – It took 33 seconds for Adam Morrison to get his first shot up Wednesday night and of course it went in, because that’s how it all started here three years ago.

He was a rookie then, too, only at Gonzaga University, and the Bulldogs were playing Saint Joseph’s in Madison Square Garden on national television, and this twitchy rope of a kid picked off a rebound, hurried upcourt with that quirky shuffle of his and lofted in a long fadeaway over a befuddled defender.

Hello, world.

Now the world knows all about him, and his shuffle and shot and everything else are scrutinized and picked apart rather than marveled at, and basketball is a business and not so much a thing of fun and wonder.

Well, there was some fun and wonder Wednesday night at MSG, but none of it rubbed off on Morrison and the Charlotte Bobcats. They were beaten in two overtimes when the New York Knicks – Gotham’s disgrace – pulled off a second straight miracle at the buzzer since that silly business that got the commissioner all riled up. This time just a tenth of a second was on the clock when Stephon Marbury rocketed an inbounds pass above the rim and David Lee – the best rebounder you’ve never heard of, by the way – reached up and slapped it in as the buzzer sounded.

Morrison watched the unhappy ending from the bench. In fact, he watched the entire second overtime from there, having played his way out of coach Bernie Bickerstaff’s comfort zone. You could say Wednesday’s game was Morrison’s season in microcosm.

“Up and down,” he said.

This night, they came in that order. Morrison came into the game late in the first quarter firing – he made his first three shots and was a significant force as the Bobcats built a 19-point lead. But he missed two 3-pointers in the last minute of the first half and that carried over into the second, when he missed on all six tries.

So, 6 of 18, 14 points. It could be worse. It has been worse.

Morrison recently endured a well-publicized stretch of four games, all at home, in which he made just 4 of 34 shots – so dire that Morrison’s father, John, made a trip out to see if he could be of help. Morrison has scored in double figures all four games since, though he characterizes his play only as “a little bit better.

“You have to understand that this league is all about playing game after game,” he said, “and you have to learn how to wash the bad games away. I wasn’t doing that. I let each one of those games affect me and finally I decided I needed to start over and just play.”

Was he putting too much pressure on himself?

“At home, maybe a little bit,” he admitted. “But there’s a lot of pressure on me anyway, back home and everywhere.”

Everywhere is right.

It comes from fans, who obviously want an instant return from the most heralded player in last summer’s draft and his four-year, $16 million-plus contract.

It comes from every opponent. Whether its critics want to believe it or not, the NBA game is relentlessly scouted and schemed. Though he is not the focus of the offense he was at GU, disrupt Morrison and you disrupt the Bobcats: In Charlotte’s wins, he’s averaging 18.7 points and shooting 46 percent, but just 12.1 and 34 percent in the losses.

And it comes from the media – most recently from ESPN.com analyst David Thorpe of the Pro Training Center, who delivered a stinging critique of Morrison’s game, everything from effort to angles of attack, though he summed up his findings by saying he “loved this guy as a player.”

The fact is, Morrison is a rookie – in a year in which every rookie is struggling to find himself. He’s averaging 13.8 points a game, easily the best in the group. His shooting has been erratic – 37.3 percent – but Rudy Gay of Memphis and Marcus Williams of New Jersey are in the same ballpark, as was Portland’s Brandon Roy before he was hurt.

The game is different, and it’s played by better players. What worked in college doesn’t necessarily play here, and there are times, too, when a player is limited by a system. Probably the most telling number about Morrison is 2.8 – that’s how many times he gets to the foul line each game. As a senior at Gonzaga, that number was 9.4. The website 82games.com reported recently that 90 percent of his shots are jumpers – the runners and postups have disappeared.

“I need to get into the key more,” he conceded.

Bickerstaff can only counsel patience – and he’s getting good at it, with a team so young.

“Look, he’s navigating the mountain,” said Bickerstaff. “But he’s going to be really good because of his courage. He’s got good courage. He’s a tough kid. It’ll happen for him.”

There’s something else. The loss to the Knicks was Charlotte’s 18th in 24 games. In three seasons at Gonzaga, Morrison experienced defeat just 12 times.

The first of those was his debut at MSG.

If memory serves, things got better.