As Strange as It Seems, Kaman's the Real Deal

<div class="quote_poster">Quote:</div><div class="quote_post">Welcome to Christmas with the Kamans.

There is no tree, no lights, no carols.

"That's because there's no snow," said Chris Kaman, the jolly Clipper center from western Michigan. "It's like, a rule. You can't have Christmas without snow."

Staring outside the window of his stately Redondo Beach home overlooking boats gently slicing through the Pacific, he shrugs.

"I don't even own a suit," he says.

Welcome to Christmas with the Kamans where, at least, there are toys.

On the second-floor balcony, there is a collapsed pingpong table.

"We lost all the balls," he said, peering down to the winding street.

In a narrow side yard, there is an archery range. A Styrofoam target and plastic deer are at one end. Kaman, with a John Deere cap on backward, is standing 20 yards away and shooting from the other end.

"This is how I relax after games," he says between shots that zing past my quivering frame as I stand pressed against the outside wall. "Don't worry. I don't miss."

Welcome to Christmas with the Kamans, where there are pets (a dog and a python), a piano (inherited from the previous owner, nobody can play) and, yes, a posse.

Three of Kaman's buddies from his hometown of Grand Rapids, Mich., keep the common areas meticulously clean, cook healthy food and, like their leader, don't drink or party and rarely curse.

"A weirdo posse," Kaman says.

Ah, that every NBA player and his gang should be so strange.

What the Clippers have done to the NBA this winter, Kaman has done to the public perception of scruffy-faced 7-footers with shoulder-length blond hair.

Just as the terminally unhip Clips are now cool, so is their center, a 23-year-old lug who is eccentric enough to be known to teammates as K-Pax, but delightful enough to laugh about it.

Says Sam Cassell: "Kaman is like a far-away island, farther than Hawaii, way, way out there."

Says Kaman: "I'm just trying to be myself, you know? Doesn't everybody try to be themselves?"

In a town built on phony, in a league that sweats perception, Kaman is as refreshingly delightful as a regulation national anthem.

He is one of the few NBA players who openly despises rap music ? "I hate rap! (pause) Can I say that?"

He is also one of the few who has little concern with how he looks on the floor, refusing to cut his dangling locks in nearly two years ? "I kind of want to cut it, but I'm scared to cut it, because it's, like, me."

Most local athletes love the Hollywood scene. Yet in his three years here, Kaman has yet to attend one of those parties.

"That's not me. You drive two hours, you stand around, you drive home, why do that?" he says.

Many local athletes are reluctant to venture out of their county for charity events. Yet this summer Kaman left the country to hold a three-day free camp for 2,000 children in Saltillo, Mexico.

He drove there in a rented minivan with his posse. It took them 31 hours. He was stopped twice in Mexico by police and bribed his way out of trouble for a grand total of $60.

"But you should have seen the kids," he says, "all the smiles on those kids."

Kaman is that rare kid millionaire unafraid to still be a kid. During a recent afternoon at his home, he shot arrows, put a rat into a cage for his python's dinner (she wasn't biting), and watched replays of one of his favorite TV shows, an early morning ESPN2 thing called "Get Wild with Cindy Garrison."

No, it's not that kind of wild. It's outdoors wild, the focus being a woman who dresses in camouflage and hunts wild animals.

"Tremendous television," Kaman says.

His biggest vice is speeding ? he was ticketed and briefly lost his license for doing 110 mph while driving home from Las Vegas this summer ? but mostly he doesn't do anything.

We spent most of the afternoon chatting in huge recliners facing a huge TV screen at the foot of his bed. This is where Kaman says he lives, playing video games online with friends back home and watching something from his collection of 1,600 movies.

"A wild night?" says friend Caleb Chamberlain. "Two movies."

Kaman's small-town sensibilities are a perfect complement to his big-city Clipper coaches and teammates, who are watching him slowly reach the potential that General Manager Elgin Baylor predicted when he made the Central Michigan junior the sixth overall pick in the 2003 draft.

Despite disappearing in the shadow of Yao Ming in Saturday's victory over the Houston Rockets, Kaman is on a pace for career-best numbers in rebounds, blocked shots and minutes, and has shown stretches of consistency.

Better than all that, he heeds all criticism, from Coach Mike Dunleavy to Cassell, surprising folks with his willingness to admit faults.

"He takes our criticism very well, all of it. I'm very impressed," says Dunleavy.

Kaman knows he has to listen more closely than others because, unlike many athletes, he openly says he suffers from attention deficit disorder.

He took medication throughout high school, then thought he could handle his lack of focus without it.

"I didn't want to feel like I needed a pill to make me normal," he said.

Now, though, he admits to sometimes questioning that decision.

"I've thought about it, because my mind does wander sometimes out there," he says. "I've thought maybe if my focus is taken care of, the rest of my game will be more free."

But, for now, constant coaching keeps him in line, with Dunleavy reminding him of things during breaks in the action, and with Cassell just hollering at him whenever.

"Kaman is the kind of guy, he's like a giant bass, you give him slack, and give him slack, then you reel him in," Cassell said. "I yell at him because I believe in him."

It's hard not to believe in Kaman, his genuine smile, his genuine sweat, an innocence that led him to laugh when he talked about a recent visit from eight family members.

Instead of sleeping in a fancy hotel, they stayed with him for 10 days, littering air mattresses across the floor and playing Monopoly all night.

"Monopoly, the Grand Rapids version," Kaman says, with a grin, as if he couldn't imagine any other kind.

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In case you were wondering, he hasn't cut his hair for 10 years.