Not The Same Old Bull

Tyson Chandler's sketchy track record is nothing a fresh start and a featured spot in a high-rev offense can't fix, right?

Nearly two dozen relatives had gathered in Chicago to celebrate last New Year's Eve. There was mingling, and there was music. There was also an absent host. Tyson Chandler was in no mood to entertain. He'd just spent 14 minutes over the previous couple of hours scoring two points, committing three fouls and snaring zero rebounds in a loss to the Suns. What was there to party about?

Besides, the conversations had become pretty predictable. Everyone had an opinion about how to fix his game. The coaching staff, the talk radio junkies, even well-meaning family members. So rather than subject himself to any more Monday-morning quarterbacking, Chandler decided it best to sit this one out in his bedroom and mope.

Then the one man who had always refused to meddle in Chandler's on-court affairs, his stepdad of 15 years, entered the room. "What's wrong with you?" asked William Brown, as only an ex-Marine can. "Why are you shooting free throws like that? Why aren't you running the floor? Why are you dropping passes?" He didn't wait for answers. He just said his piece and left.

"I was like, Wow," Chandler says. "He just went off on me. That was my low point."

How could he even make that distinction? Last season was pretty much one long bottom-scraper for Chandler. Fresh off signing a six-year, $63 million deal with the Bulls, what was supposed to be the best of times was instead the most disastrous. Five points a game, nine rebounds, just half his free throws made. It was embarrassing, frustrating and depressing, and it got him off-loaded to the New Orleans/Oklahoma City Hornets during the off-season.

That misery is an ancient memory now. On a Tuesday in September, a smiling Chandler works out with three Hornets rookies and second-year forward Brandon Bass at Southern Nazarene University, just outside Oklahoma City. The way the seven-footer explodes off the floor in a dunking drill makes you look for the concealed trampoline. "He looks like a dang video game," says one observer. But that's only part of what makes you stare. Chandler certainly looks out of place in his purple practice gear, but that's not it either.

His hair. It's doing strange things. The curls are gone, the waves hard to find. The fade is awfully high. Wait, is that a … Yup, he's sporting a li'l Mohawk. "My mind-set this summer was to get down and dirty, so I had to get something grimy," Chandler says after the three-and-a-half-hour session. "I thought about throwing on war paint, too." The man means business. His mediocre five-year career has left a bad taste. He's had enough of watching cats who used to look up to him—guys not worthy of being mentioned in the same breath as he was back in high school— blow up while he's called a buster. So to all those waiting to see how the former man-child will blow it this time, he just wants to say: Hope you're not in any rush.

His back is fine, his head is clear and his aspirations are sky-high. Chandler is thinking something on the order of 15-plus points, 12 boards and two blocks a night. He's so confident, he's literally putting his money where his mouth is.

"What are you going to play in this season?" someone asks Chandler as he unlaces his blackand-gray Nike Huarache 2K4s in the kitchen of his plush new digs in the OKC.

"I don't know," he says. "I'm not talking to any shoe companies now."

Why not? "Because I ain't Tyson Chandler, I'm this other dude everybody has been talking about. When I become Tyson Chandler again, when I become the All-Star I know I can be, then I'll talk." THE WARRIOR'S cut was just the first step. Starting in June, Chandler worked out five days a week with his personal coach, Jerry DeGregorio, at the Santa Monica Boys & Girls Club, where he lifted, ran and shot for four and a half hours a day. He worked on jump hooks and sky hooks with both hands, and a turnaround J. He honed off-the-dribble moves, eliminated a nasty hitch in his jumper that had been there since a back injury two years ago, and stuck it out until he made at least 75 of 100 free throws every night. He hired a nutritionist and even slept in a room separate from his wife, Kim, and 5-month-old daughter, Sacha-Marie, so he'd be assured of a good night's sleep. "He worked as hard as any player I've ever seen," says DeGregorio, a former Clippers executive and assistant coach.

That's a beat Chris Paul can dance to. The Hornets' precocious star has long been a fan. In 1997, Paul was a ball boy for his older brother's AAU team at the national championships in O r l a ndo . C h a nd le r wa s a 14-year-old beast on an opposing team. "They ran one play the whole time," Paul says. "Somebody would set a back screen, then they'd throw Tyson an alley-oop. He was just catching alleys and dunking on everybody. I was amazed." So Paul literally jumped for joy when Hornets coach Byron Scott called him after midnight to say the team had traded P.J. Brown and J.R. Smith for Chandler. "All I could think of was those alley-oops," he says.

If anyone knows how to mesh a pass-first point with a highwire big, it's Scott. It wasn't too long ago that he rode Jason Kidd and Kenyon Martin to back-toback Finals with the Nets. Is it so far-fetched to see Paul and Chandler as a younger version of that pair? Paul's knack for finding big men for easy hoops has Scott's head filled with visions of Chandler hovering above the rim. And then there's the buckets he'll get off the glass and on the break now that the Hornets are planning to rev it up even more.

"I look at him like a Marcus Camby," Scott says, confirming savvy fantasy players' wildest dreams. "A guy who can change the game on the defensive end, knock down the occasional open shot, run the floor and protect the paint. I don't see any reason why he shouldn't average a doubledouble this season."

But not everyone thinks talking about a major transformation will make it so. How could they, after what little has come before? While no one doubts that Chandler, who had the fourth-most offensive rebounds last season, will hit the boards and defend, many wonder if he can thrive as a leading big man. Even the scouts who like him think he's much better off playing alongside a physical center like Eddy Curry; from that vantage, he can avoid the heavy banging and swoop in to shake things up from the weak side. As for any promise of more offense, well, they'll believe the box scores.

"I've seen nothing to suggest he's capable of being a serious threat," one Western Conference scout says. "I'll be more than happy to let him try to beat us with faceup 15-to-17-footers."

Chandler understands where the doubters are coming from, but he also knows he used to stroke college-distance threes in high school. He says he began to feel like his old self again after DeGregorio fixed his shot, and he's sure he'll capitalize on slack D when opportunity knocks.

And it will knock often in Scott's Princeton set.

THE NEW Hornet's first glimpse of his future at Southern Nazarene is eye-opening. "You mean when I catch it here, I can do whatever I want?" Chandler asks as he stands at the foul line.

"Yeah, you can pass to a cutter, take a jumper if your man sags or take him off the dribble," his new coach says.

Chandler, who guesses he had five plays called for him last season, doesn't quite know what to make of this information. When Scott puts him on the low block and tells him that once the cutters go through he'll have one-on-one coverage about 90% of the time, the big man looks like he will break into a cheer. "I'm so happy," Chandler says later, leaving SNU in his black Range Rover. "It's crazy how things have fallen into place." On the passenger's seat is Beyoncé's new CD, B'Day. Chandler will have a B'Day of his own soon. He turns 24 on Oct. 2. If his family descends on his home to celebrate, it'll be a different scene than the one last winter. This time around, Chandler won't be the sulking killjoy off by himself. He'll be the life of the party.

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