Wise Harper Benefits Team

The elder statesman has a don’t-ignore-me baritone voice, and when he uses it to pass out advice, it rumbles through the Laker locker room.

“You’ve got to change your attitude about signing autographs for kids, man,� Derek Harper intoned to a young Laker player late in the night after a recent exhibition game.

“You’ve got to sign for them, or it makes you look like a butthead.�

The younger Laker squawked a little, and pointed out that he doesn’t always bypass the kids. But he also grabbed a pair of shoes to give away outside the locker room.

And Harper chuckled, another moment gone by as a mature 37-year-old on a team of super-talented 20-somethings.

To put it in perspective: Harper is starting his 16th NBA season; the other 13 Lakers on the roster have an average experience of 3.5 seasons, and only Elden Campbell (eight years) has even half of Harper’s service time.

Also: Harper has a 14-year-old son named Darius. The Lakers have a 20-year-old millionaire named Kobe Bryant.

“After 16 years, you have to be able to set an example in some sort of way,� said Harper, signed by the Lakers before training camp to be a part-time point guard behind Derek Fisher, and full-time veteran presence and defensive specialist.

Harper sure did not arrive quietly, barking out orders on the court during the first camp workout, flying around the floor like a player five years younger, and earning a co-captainship from Coach Del Harris after less than a week.

In the Lakers’ two exhibition games last weekend against the Clippers, Harper, who perhaps teasingly (and perhaps not) suggests he could play five more years as a backup, zipped up and down the floor with vigor.

For a player who says he considered retirement last season while toiling with the Orlando Magic, after stints with the Dallas Mavericks, New York Knicks and Dallas again, what happened?

The easy answer, Harper says, is that he has found a perfect fit: The Lakers were looking for leadership, and he is looking for one last shot at a title.

The 6-foot-4 Harper, who has never played less than 65 games in a season, reached the NBA finals with the Knicks in 1994, but lost to the Houston Rockets.

The young Lakers might give him some good-natured grief, but he says they all understand why he feels he has to make his voice heard.

“My cry is that I want a championship,� Harper said. “And unlike these guys, I don’t have a lot of time left to get one, you understand what I’m saying? So I’m in a whole different frame of mind when I say I want a championship.

“I’m not saying that, and then going, ‘Well, you know, if I don’t get the championship, then I’ll get the $70 million or I’ll get this or I’ll get that.’

“So they’re going to have to take me serious when I say that I want a championship.�

To a degree, with Fisher remaining the starting point guard from the end of last season, at the backup spot, the Lakers have exchanged Nick Van Exel’s explosiveness and inconsistency for Harper’s steady hand and energetic enforcement of discipline.

“I think we need that from him,� said guard Eddie Jones, who campaigned for an older veteran before Harper was signed. “I think that’s the reason they brought him here, for him to really get into guys and make guys see what’s the real picture.

“If he doesn’t do it, then we may have problems. No matter who it is, he needs to get on them, you know, make them work harder.�

The Lakers also expect Harper to contribute solidly playing behind Fisher, matching up against the bigger point guards, and at times alongside the third-year guard.

At his peak, in the late-1980s and early ‘90s, Harper averaged close to 20 points and about seven assists, then became a role player as he moved from the Mavericks to the Knicks and back to Dallas.

Last season with the Magic, Harper averaged 27 minutes and 8.6 points a game, but watched all the Generation X shenanigans around him and wondered if maybe it was time to retire.

“I just sort of became burned out on all of what was going on, all of the new things that were starting to take place in the league,� Harper said. “Sometimes, I feel outside of that . . .

“But after a long layoff [because of the lockout], my juices got going again. And I just decided to give it a shot, be prepared provided some contending team like L.A. would call.�

And Laker Executive Vice President Jerry West did call, offering him a two-year deal starting at the $1-million veteran minimum.

Then West watched him in Santa Barbara at training camp, and knew he’d landed one veteran who hadn’t lost his legs.

But if Harper was tired of the new NBA attitude, how well would he adapt to life with the Lakers, one of the league’s glitziest teams?

“Coming in, I thought the same thing, that this is a very talented team, but a team that was young and a little bit immature,� Harper said. “But I think guys are trying to clean that up.

“I see guys making a conscious effort to take things a little more serious, to be a little more professional. To approach this as work, as opposed to all play . . .

“On the basketball court, it’s basketball. I’m not going to hang out at the nightspots, all that kind of stuff with these guys, because that’s not my thing. I don’t play video games and all that kind of stuff, and that’s what they enjoy doing.

“But on the court, we’re going to play basketball and hopefully find a way to come together and win basketball games.�

Laker Notes

Shaquille O’Neal, who sat out Saturday’s exhibition game against the Clippers because of tendinitis in his left knee, participated in the full 110-minute Laker workout Sunday. “I could’ve sucked it up and played [in the game], but Del was gracious enough to give me time off,� O’Neal said Sunday, before adding with a smile: “My motto was, if [newly arrived Clipper rookie center Michael] Olowokandi didn’t play, then I won’t play.� O’Neal also renewed his call for the Lakers to acquire a “thuggish� power forward, and, though he has suggested in the past that he wouldn’t want to be involved in the Dennis Rodman circus, hinted that he’d like it to be Rodman. “Changed my mind,� O’Neal said. “If we had a rebounder like that . . . I need a thug in my life.�

Coach Del Harris said he was pleased that his team threw itself into Sunday’s practice after back-to-back exhibition games. “Obviously, after playing back-to-back and [on] Super Bowl Sunday, they would like not to have done this,� Harris said. “And under normal conditions, we wouldn’t have done it. But this isn’t normal. And they worked at it like it was playoff time or something.�