Locked-Out Longshot

To your original Dream Teamer, a hotel is a place like the Intercontinental in Monte Carlo, the hostelry on the Cote d’Azur, overlooking the harbor where Prince Rainier once boated out to greet the yacht of his fiance, Grace Kelly.

To your average NBA player, a hotel is a Ritz or a Four Seasons.

To your aspiring NBA player like J.R. Henderson of UCLA, it’s the Holiday Inn in Davenport, Iowa, where he’s holed up, serving an apprenticeship with the Continental Basketball Assn.’s Quad City Thunder while waiting out the lockout and the opening of Vancouver’s camp.

To even the lowest-priced NBA player, a season is something you get paid $272,500 for, or about $50,000 a month. Henderson is getting about $5,000 a month in his pro debut. But then, consider his alternatives.

“The money is a nice side benefit,” says Henderson’s agent, Joby Brannion of the Steinberg-Moorad office in Newport Beach. “Five thousand a month is more than he’d be making sitting around Bakersfield, playing pickup ball.”

There are other side benefits, like getting to experience another part of the country. Let’s face it, Californians are spoiled, so it isn’t surprising if geography isn’t their best subject. Another UCLA player, Ed O’Bannon, once admitted he didn’t know where Tulsa is.

From where Henderson is sitting, Tulsa, Okla., is bright lights, big city.

“I wouldn’t put it on your vacation list,” he says of his new home, laughing. “There’s not that many people here and it’s spread out. But hopefully, it’s just temporary.”

Hopefully, there will be an NBA season, affording Henderson a chance to make the Vancouver Grizzly roster. However, he comes in as a second-round pick, without a guaranteed contract. If he wants to know how hard that makes it, he has only to look around at his Thunder teammates.

Take Jimmy King. Once a member of Michigan’s famed Fab Five, he was a No. 2 pick in 1995 and has since been cut by the lowly Toronto Raptors and Denver Nuggets.

King is Quad City’s leading scorer. Henderson is coming off the bench.

“I’ve tried not to let it affect things too much but we have to plan for J.R.’s eventual leaving,” says Thunder Coach Dan Panaggio. “And so maybe it has reduced slightly his minutes. . . .

“He’s doing good. He’s really talented. He’s got a great pair of hands, he’s got very, very good skills, he’s very intelligent. If I had to pinpoint a couple areas where he needs to get a little better . . . he needs more strength and he needs to play more physical.

“He’s got a great attitude. I think the world of him. He’s a really good guy. He needs to get nastier. And he needs to get stronger.”

On the plus side, he’s there.

By now, the CBA is usually filled with No. 2 picks, since by now, NBA teams have cut a slew of them.

Since no one grows up dreaming of making the CBA, and since no one has officially told any of this year’s prospects they’re not NBA players yet, only four second-rounders have shown up down there: Henderson and Maceo Baston of the Thunder, Corey Brewer and Greg Buckner of Grand Rapids.

“The ones that stayed away--let’s say a guy comes in who’s a second-round pick and let’s say he plays poorly,” says Panaggio. “Let’s say he doesn’t start. He could even get cut in our league. Well that doesn’t bode well for him with his NBA team.”

For Henderson, perceived at UCLA as someone with admirable skills but questionable desire, the decision is reassuring. Last spring, he turned down an invitation to the pre-draft Phoenix Desert Classic, and then, figuring he was losing ground, played at the Chicago camp, where he bumped into physical Ruben Patterson of Cincinnati. Patterson wound up going high in the second round to the Lakers. Henderson, once considered a possible first-rounder, went No. 56, two picks from the bottom of the second round.

Henderson says the decision to go to Quad City was easy but it’s still not most players’ preferred one. Two other No. 2s represented by Steinberg-Moorad, UCLA’s Toby Bailey and Arizona’s Miles Simon, stayed home.

Of course, Henderson was hoping he’d be there and gone in three weeks or so.

Henderson and Baston tried to follow the NBA negotiations via “SportsCenter” for a while but tired of that game.

Not that they don’t have anything to look forward to. In a recent game, scouts from the Chicago Bulls showed up to watch Baston, their draftee. Nights like that and call-up dreams are what the CBA is all about.

So is Thanksgiving in the Holiday Inn, far away from Bakersfield and your family.

“There’s a trade-off,” says Panaggio. “J.R. is getting a real head start on some of the other second-round picks, getting in shape and learning the pro game. And I don’t think he’s ever made a huge amount of money so he’s putting a few bucks in his pocket. He’s able to be independent. And he’s playing basketball. These other guys got to be chomping at the bit.”

One precious, valuable month into his pro career, Henderson has one other advantage over those other guys.

He just found out what he’s playing for.