William "Smush" Parker is sitting in the middle of the Lakers locker room about a half hour before playing the Nuggets. He's swiveling around in his chair, his right hand resting atop his purple headband-wrapped head.
While the rest of his teammates are playing with their cell phones, putting on their uniforms or allocating game tickets for friends and family, Parker has been dressed for some time and is intently watching game film from the season opener against Denver four days earlier. Suddenly the flat screen in front of the room grabs everyone's attention as Parker's third quarter dunk over Andre Miller elicits the collective "ohs" and "ahs" from everyone in the room.
Parker, wanting to savor the moment one more time, gets up and rewinds the tape to when he drove down the court.
"Look at Andre laughing," says one of the trainers. "I don't know what he's laughing about."
"That's all you can do," says Lamar Odom as he puts on his shoes. "Sometimes you just have to laugh because you can't do anything else."
Parker, simply smiling as he sees the play again, doesn't say anything while he watches his entire 20-point debut. After spending most of the past season in the NBDL, he knows he has much more to prove and isn't about to start bragging after a hot beginning.
"It was great to play well in the first game," says Parker, whose nickname was a pet name given to his father, William, and was passed on to him by Smush's mother, Lisa. "It was on ESPN, so everyone back home was watching, but it's was only the one game. I want to show that I can do that every night as a starter."
If Parker's debut on the road against the Nuggets was his introduction to being a starter in the NBA, then his Staples Center debut the next night against the Suns was his introduction to being a starter in Los Angeles.
Parker knew that playing for the Lakers would mean bumping into the occasional celebrity, but his home opener took that to the extreme. His night began during pregame warm-ups, when he chased a loose ball that found its way to the feet of Denzel Washington, who smiled at Parker. "Hello, Smush Parker," said the Academy award winner as he handed the ball to the star struck point guard. "From one Fordham man to another." About an hour later, as Parker dived after a loose ball in the second quarter he found himself at the feet of Jack Nicholson.
"[Jack Nicholson] helped me up and kind of patted me on the butt and said, 'Good job. Good Hustle,'" says Parker, who joined Shaquille O'Neal and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar as one of only five Lakers to score 20 or more points in their first two games with the team. "That's gonna go down as one of the greatest things that ever happened to me. There's a big picture [of the play] in the newspaper, and I'm gonna frame it and be able to show my children, 'Hey, look. Jack Nicholson helped me up off the court.'"
With fans at Staples Center already chanting "Smuuuush!" and wearing purple and gold headbands, the question on everyone's mind is, "Who is this Smush Parker anyway?" "Well, if you don't know by now," says a grinning Kobe Bryant. "You better ask somebody." And who better to go to then the man who brought Parker to the Lakers this summer.
"I'll tell you a story about the first time I saw him," says Phil Jackson, adjusting his three-piece suit as he recalls the tale. "We were playing an exhibition game against Cleveland in San Diego three years ago and he came in during the fourth quarter and I turned to (Kurt) Rambis, who was scouting them, and he tells me, 'Don't worry about this kid, he can't hit 3-pointers.' Well, he had 24 points in the last quarter and in overtime so that was impressive and we've been keeping in tune with him ever since."
Keeping in tune with Parker's whereabouts though hasn't been an easy task the past couple of years as he has played for three different NBA teams in between stints in the FIBA Europe League and D-League. "Playing in the NBA is all about opportunities and finding the right situation," says Parker, who played in 16 games for the Pistons and Suns last season and has played a total of 82 games with three teams in two seasons. "Unfortunately I wasn't getting the opportunities that I think I deserved."
One of the main reasons he became a human Mapquest at the beginning of his career was most in the league believed he left school too early and wasn't prepared to play at the next level. He had played only one year of varsity high school basketball, one year at a JC and one year at Fordham before entering the draft as a 20-year-old sophomore. After going undrafted he was signed by the Cavs, but was let go at season's end despite starting in 18 games. "I have a do or die attitude," says Parker, a 6-foot-4 native of Queens, N.Y. "I knew that I belonged in the league. I knew I could play at this level."
While Parker, 24, is shy and soft-spoken off the court, preferring a night of bowling with his cousin to a night on the town anytime, his game on the court is anything but quiet. He has battled Bryant in terms of highlights this season with his fast break dunks, alley-oop passes and clutch shots en route to scoring 20 or more points in three of his first four starts. That might come as a surprise to some of his opponents but it shouldn't to anyone who saw Parker earn the nickname "Grim Reaper" while becoming a local legend inside of "The Cage," the infamous basketball court on New York's West 4th Street, which was once dominated by point guards such as Stephon Marbury, Mark Jackson, Kenny Anderson and Rod Strickland. "The name came from killing guys on the court," says Parker, who has the nickname tattooed on his right arm and back. "Every time I step on the court, all I do is kill."
Parker's confidence was evident from the moment he signed with the Lakers in August. Although his contract wasn't guaranteed and the Lakers were busily trying to add a veteran point guard, Parker knew that no matter who they brought it in, the starting job would be his once the season started. "When I signed here I here I said the starter's position was mine," says Parker. "My attitude was that any point guard they brought in I was going to bear out. I knew what I could do and I think I'm showing that this year."
As Parker continued to shine during the Lakers' summer league games and during the preseason, he began to earn the confidence and trust of coaches and teammates, most notably that of Bryant. "I have 100-percent confidence in him," say Bryant. "I didn't have any expectations when he came in but the way he's playing right now I have 100-percent confidence in him and that's saying a lot because I don't say that about anybody. It takes a lot to earn my trust."
Even the Zen Master, who is just as a tough as Bryant when it comes to trusting young players, can't help but love the way Parker has embraced his role on the Lakers. "I've never really had a player him like before," says Jackson. "Obviously I've had various players that have played exciting roles, but he has a little style that is simply enjoyable to watch."
After notching their second win against the Nuggets in a week, Parker is back in the locker room, surrounded by television cameras, microphones and reporters who want to know how he went from being a relative unknown to one of the focal points on the Lakers. After he politely answers their questions, and then shakes hands with the media members as he leaves, he tries desperately to look at the highlights from the game in between the horde, no doubt waiting to watch the tape again as soon as he gets home. "He's a student of the game," says Bryant. "He's always studying. He's real smart. Like I said, I have 100-percent confidence in him."
