It’s OK to Be Nice, and Nasty : Divac Still Learning About Transition in 4th Year With Lakers

He’s rich, he’s famous, he’s adorable. Most of you, with the particular exception of that fan in the $500 courtside seat who kept running down the Forum baseline screaming “Get off the floor!” at him Sunday, know and love him as. . .

Vlade.

What kind of name is that for an NBA player? Vlade Divac (VLAH-day DEE-vatz) of Prijepolje, (pree-EPP-ole-yea), Serbia.

Who ever saw one like him? Seven feet tall, sees the floor like a point guard, handles the ball as if he learned the game in a U.S. schoolyard, shoots it from downtown.

Great, but he is not only a center, he is the second-highest paid center in the world ($3.6 million) to David Robinson ($5.7 million). As anyone who has seen both men play knows, there’s a difference.

With Divac, something always seems as if it’s getting lost in translation.

His schoolyard was in Prijepolje, where to be so gifted--not to mention on your way to seven feet tall--sets you hopelessly apart, from another planet. There are not thousands of you, as in the United States, sharpening skills on each other. There is but a handful of artists, who won’t discover they have a peer until they get to the national level. Not only would post offense and defense be a mystery to Divac, but so would the whole American concept of competition-from-infancy.

To be Divac or Toni Kukoc is to be a national treasure. Divac’s wedding was televised throughout what was then Yugoslavia.

“I don’t like too much media about it,” Divac says. “They just ask, ‘Couple minutes.’ But they stay longer than they say. (Laughing) You know media.”

But national treasure status in Eastern Europe means precious little in Downtown, U.S.A.

The thing about Divac, he’s so nice.

The thing about NBA ball, it’s not.

“You can’t learn that,” Magic Johnson said last summer before the U.S. Olympic team met Croatia and Kukoc.

“Vlade tried to learn that, and he can’t. The first thing that will happen, just like they do to Vlade, they’ll hit him (Kukoc) with an elbow and say, ‘Let’s see what you’ve got.’ ”

Having run a gantlet of elbows, Divac is still puzzling out the challenge.

“I thought, ‘I’m going to play in Yugoslavia, then I’ll go to play in Italy or Spain,’ ” he says. “Then I’ll be 28 or 29 and I’ll try NBA. “I never thought I can play in NBA because NBA was totally different world for us in Europe. We play couple times against NBA in McDonald’s Open. We play (Boston) Celtics in Madrid. I remember when we were in warm-ups, nobody warmed up. We were just looking at the Celtics, looking at Larry Bird and everybody else.

“But I really like dangerous situations, so I said: ‘I’m going there. That’s my big chance.’ My wife is very big support. She told me always, ‘You can do it, you can do it.’

“Now is easy, but first couple of years was hard. . . . I was in shock. Before I came here, I spoke with my wife and I said, ‘Now we are going to the end of the world. Nobody will be there who speaks same language. It will be a hard time in the beginning.’ But when we came to Los Angeles, we met a lot of people, friends who help us, especially from Lakers.

“NBA is totally different in style. In NBA, we play much more aggressive, much harder. It’s not time for thinking. In Europe, we play every week, one game. Here we play every second day so if you lose, you don’t have time to think about losing. Just go forward.

“More physical? Oh definitely. You see game against Orlando and Shaquille (O’Neal)? It’s totally different story playing in Europe.

“I think first day in Hawaii (in training camp as a rookie in 1989), it was really hard practicing. I couldn’t believe it. I said, ‘If I not can do this, I can’t play in NBA.’ I try my best. It was hardest time in NBA for me.

“Now I really like NBA. I like style. I played last summer for my national team. I see difference. It’s unbelievable. I can’t believe I played in that type style. It’s totally no organization.

“I have a lot of friends who play over there (in Europe). If you are a foreigner there and your team starts losing, you’re always a foreigner and everybody points at you. It’s not like playing for team. If you score 25 points, grab 20 rebounds and your team lose, everybody say it’s your fault because you’re a foreigner and they pay you to play. It doesn’t happen here. I’m foreigner, but I don’t have feeling like that. I’m just like everybody else.”

He hasn’t averaged 25 points or 20 rebounds, but he has survived his apprenticeship and then some.

He had offers to return to Europe last spring, but the Lakers, keenly aware of the scarcity of 24-year-old seven-footers, kept him with a six-year, $21.6-million contract.

Meet the newest convert to the American Way.

“I’m real young to have some big plans,” he says, “but for now, I think I’m going to stay here. My son is born here. He’s going to go to school in the United States.”

Vlade and Ana Divac, proud parents of one-year-old Luka, are moving into a home in Pacific Palisades. Vlade’s tastes are American to the core.

“I like Rolling Stones, (Red Hot) Chili Peppers, Queen,” he says. “I like these musics.

“I don’t have a chance to buy tapes (in Europe), just listen on radio. But I come here, I go to concerts and speak with them. I know Flea (of the Red Hot Chili Peppers). I play against him in basketball--MTV Rockin’ Jam.”

The U.S. team did shut Kukoc down. However, when they met again in the final, Kukoc stepped his game up and a player emerged. It’s a whole newly internationalized game, and Kukoc and Divac are its pioneers.