Growing Pains

Lopez drove over to Brown's apartment, and found the suits in a heap by the bed. Each time Brown wore one, he would take it off, wad it up and throw it in a corner.

Lopez picked up a suit from the pile, got out the iron, and began ironing.

It was Lopez who helped Brown find his apartment, a four-bedroom condo in Alexandria. Lopez also got him a deal on a Mercedes S500, and a free cell phone, and helped him set up his cable service, and get an ATM card, and all the other things that go with being an adult. At first, Brown's mother, Joyce, was there to help, and there was a temporary roommate to keep him company, an acquaintance from Brunswick attending Howard Law School. But then his mother went home to care for her other children, and the roommate got a place closer to campus.

Finally, the condo was empty, except for Brown and Lopez. Brown looked at his manager. "Are you going to stay over?" he asked tentatively. Lopez, stunned, realized Brown had never spent the night alone before. Lopez took off his shoes.

A Man's Job

Brown's naivete poses the question once again: Is it wise for the NBA to make a foray into surrogate parenting of kids fresh from high school? What's to be done with a Kwame Brown? What is the nature of the league's responsibility to such a tender rookie? No one is quite sure. "There's a special kind of care and handling they need," says Commissioner David Stern. "The overriding issue for me is whether the pressure of life in the NBA might be too much . . . The question is whether he will suffer any permanent setbacks by being tossed in the oil too soon."

Is it worth the trouble? If nothing else, clubs will take a hard look at the issue from a market standpoint. Brown was just one of three high schoolers taken among the top five, along with Tyson Chandler and Eddy Curry, now playing alongside each other in Chicago. But Duke graduate Shane Battier has been a far more mature and productive rookie for the Memphis Grizzlies, averaging about 14 points a game. Even the Wizards' own Brendan Haywood, out of North Carolina, has offered more immediate help.

Next to them, Brown's floundering has been painful to watch. He has been benched, placed on the injured list, and staggered by self-doubt. Only in the last month of the season did he begin to look like he might someday become the starting power forward the Wizards initially projected him as.

Not even the tutelage of Jordan has been able to ease Brown's entry into the league. Wasn't Jordan supposed to help guide this rough, raw, young, incompletely formed player into professionalism? Jordan firmly contends that Brown is right on schedule. "My expectations for him were never as high as his, or other people's," Jordan says. "He's never been taught."

But nobody pretends anymore that this is a fairy tale, unless it is a fairy tale with a cautionary moral. Stern, for one, is convinced that at least a couple of years of college produce happier young men and more fundamentally sound ballplayers. And he thinks that others in the NBA are watching the Kwame Brown saga unfold, and in doing so may find an antidote to irrational exuberance in the trading of player futures. "In a funny way, I think there might be a market adjustment," Stern says. "That will be ameliorative in its own right."

Stern wants to know exactly what Jordan and the Wizards expected when they drafted a 19-year-old straight out of high school. "What we're finding is that a 19-year-old would tend to respond like . . . a 19-year-old," says Stern. "Who should that surprise?"

At least one person, Collins, is ready to admit that he misjudged Brown's readiness to enter the league. "It's not just the education of Kwame Brown," says Collins wearily. "It was the education of Doug Collins."