NEWEST LAKER GETS THE POINT ATKINS' JOURNEY LEADS HIM TO A COVETED STARTING SPOT.

Byline: Ross Siler Staff Writer

EL SEGUNDO - The man who will walk into training camp this week in San Diego as the Lakers' starting point guard watched the NBA draft eight years ago in Orlando, Fla., with only his father by his side.

They made it through the first round before Chucky Atkins was out the door and headed to his grandmother's house.

He had read enough to believe he was one of the top five point guard prospects in the draft. He had seen enough to know there was nothing worth celebrating that night.

A total of 58 players were selected, starting with Allen Iverson, Marcus Camby and Shareef Abdur-Rahim. A high school senior from Pennsylvania named Kobe Bryant was among them. But Atkins, a four-year starter at South Florida, would not be part of the 1996 class.

``I went from one extreme to totally the opposite,'' Atkins said. ``You're supposed to be a guy that's getting drafted and everyone's telling you how great you are. Then you don't get drafted and everyone's saying how you're not going to amount to nothing.''

Fast forward a few months and the man who stands to inherit the position once belonging to Magic Johnson couldn't even make the final round of cuts for the CBA's Oklahoma City Cavalry.

He wasn't quite Florida Beachdogs material, either, with a tryout ending just 15 minutes after it started courtesy of coach Eric Musselman.

But Atkins finally found a home with the La Crosse (Wis.) Bobcats, where he started for a 19-37 team, slept in minor-league motels from Shreveport to Sioux Falls, rode the bus to the Quad Cities and learned how to stretch a $15 per diem like silly putty.

``You're a rookie making $500 a week in the CBA,'' said former La Crosse coach Don Zierden, now a Minnesota Timberwolves assistant. ``You've got to believe they're days when you want to hang your head.''

By the next year, the man who will raise more eyebrows than anyone on opening night at Staples Center was off to Croatia. With bills to pay and a daughter on the way, the guarantee of $200,000 for one season was enough to take Atkins halfway around the world.

``We never let him see it,'' said Atkins' father, Chucky Sr. ``We never let him see the fact that we had some reservations about him going.''

The civil war that tore apart Yugoslavia had been settled by a cease-fire two years earlier. But you could have fooled Atkins as his Cibona Zagreb team rolled into Belgrade for a game, with armed guards escorting the bus and fans lighting flares in the stands.

``I was scared because it wasn't just about basketball,'' said Atkins, whose team won two league championships. ``To them it was about life and death, and I was kind of in the middle.''

But Atkins kept going, as always. Twenty-nine players from the 1996 draft no longer are in the league. The Calvary and Beachdogs have long since folded. And Atkins can look back on war-torn Croatia as the only time in his career he has been treated like a star.

Now he's set to begin his first training camp with the Lakers on Tuesday.

``I always considered myself as a hard worker,'' Atkins said. ``And I think that anybody who works hard on their game and works hard at anything they do is going to survive.''

The road more traveled

Maybe it says something about the post-Shaquille O'Neal Lakers that Atkins is in this position, playing for a franchise that has won 14 championships when no one is quite sure what road map he followed to get here.

Maybe it also says something about Atkins that he was delivered to this fate. Left unprotected in the expansion draft only three months ago, he's now batting leadoff for the team he calls the New York Yankees of the NBA.

``The thing that's funny about it is I've kind of prepared for this,'' said Atkins, who came to the Lakers along with Chris Mihm and Jumaine Jones in the Aug. 6 trade that sent Gary Payton and Rick Fox to the Boston Celtics.

``I can play any role. I enjoy coming off the bench, I enjoy starting, so it doesn't really matter. But in my opinion, I think it's my time.''

The 30-year-old only got his shot in the NBA after catching Doc Rivers' eye during a summer pickup game in Orlando. Atkins spent one season in his hometown with the Magic before signing a six-year, $22.5 million contract with the Detroit Pistons.

There was no guarantee of stability included. Atkins came to Detroit with Ben Wallace as part of the Grant Hill trade. But the Pistons ended up giving his starting job to Chauncey Billups, then shipping Atkins to Boston four months before winning the NBA title.

He went back to visit during the playoffs. But there was no champagne in the locker room for Atkins and no championship parade through downtown Detroit. There was no validation for what Atkins knows in his heart.

``Even though I wasn't there,'' Atkins said, ``I helped form that team for what it is. I understand what it is to win a championship because I was a part of that team.

``It was me and Ben in the beginning. I was a part of that team before those other guys got there.''

Once he arrived in Boston, Atkins appeared to have found a good fit. The starting job was his and Rivers had been hired as the Celtics' new coach. Then Atkins found out from reporters that Danny Ainge had left him unprotected in June's expansion draft.

``It was just basically that they lied to me,'' Atkins said. ``Danny Ainge was telling me one thing but he was doing another. I wanted to win. It was like, 'What are we trying to accomplish?' That's what I wanted to know. Are we trying to win or are we trying to rebuild?

``I felt like Danny could have just picked up the phone and told me what his intentions were and everything would have been cool.''

It took only two more months for Atkins - due $8.7 million over the next two years - to be traded from Boston. But a funny thing happened when Atkins took a look at the Lakers team he was joining: He thought he finally saw the right situation.

``I just look at it as an opportunity to make something happen,'' he said. ``From what I'm hearing, a lot of critics, a lot of media people don't expect a lot out of the Lakers since Shaq is gone. But I think we have a good team.''

What the Lakers have is five small forwards on their roster but only one backup point guard in 20-year-old Sasha Vujacic. And even though Bryant and Lamar Odom also can handle the ball, everything keeps coming back to Atkins.

``It's a great situation for Chucky,'' said Zierden, who had Atkins over for spaghetti dinners in the CBA. ``He's going to be in the spotlight, playing in one of the meccas of basketball. This is his chance to shine.''

Let me introduce myself...

So what are the Lakers getting in the 5-foot-11 Atkins? They've found a point guard who can't wait to run in Rudy Tomjanovich's offense and a career 36.6 percent 3-point shooter who can make a defense pay for double-teaming Bryant or Odom.

They've found someone who has been told he's too small so many times that his father says: ``If he had a nickel every time he's probably heard that, he wouldn't need to play in the NBA. He could buy a team.''

They've also found someone who has no problem deferring to Bryant, whom Atkins describes as the best one-on-one player in the game.

``Kobe's a very intelligent player, he knows exactly what he's going to do on the court,'' Atkins said. ``I don't have a problem with that because I have a little bit of two-guard in my game, too. If he gets the ball, I'll hit the wing. That's just the way that I am.''

His former coaches note that Atkins has seen the game two ways after five seasons as a starter and reserve. He has been to the playoffs and also been on bad teams. He is old enough to appreciate the opportunity given with the Lakers.

What won't be questioned is Atkins' determination. He beat out a junior college transfer to start as a freshman at South Florida, the only school that strongly recruited him. And in the days after the 1996 draft, South Florida coach Bobby Paschal can remember sitting down with Atkins to talk.

``I think the disappointment stayed there but he wasn't discouraged,'' Paschal said. ``He's a difficult person to discourage. We just talked and I said, 'This might be the best thing because you'll end up with the right team for you.' ''

One of Atkins' closest friends from childhood, Donovan Williams, tells the story of finding Atkins shooting jumpers late one night this summer. The two played together in junior high school and promised each other that one of them would make it big.

Williams is one of the few who knows Atkins. The job now is introducing him to a city that does not.

``He'll always say, 'They don't know who I am so I have to stay sharp,' '' Williams said. `` 'I don't have the household name so I got to do what I need to do to be on top of my game.' ... He's going to do well here. He's going to make a lot of people happy.''

Ross Siler, [phone]

ross.siler(at)dailynews.com

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