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(copyright) by David Brauer
For the record, Andrew Lang's first smile in a Minnesota Timberwolves uniform came approximately 20 minutes after his second game with the club, recalling how 19-year-old phenom Kevin Garnett had tried to pump up his game.
"He's 19, and he's telling me how I should play," said the 29-year-old Lang, with an expression just a bit sunnier than the Mona Lisa's. "In the back of my mind I was thinking, `Man, I must be playing pretty bad."
Minutes later, when Garnett publicly bestowed the nickname "Da Punisher" on Lang, the former Atlanta Hawk's grin turned down. "We're going to have to talk about your giving nicknames in public like this," he said evenly.
Lang's shell-shock after being traded from a team seven games over .500 to one with seven losing seasons perhaps was wearing off, but he was not the sort to forget the right way to do things in the NBA. Unlike the man he was traded for, Christian Laettner (whose teammates privately nicknamed "Damien" for the malevolent child in the "Omen" movies), Lang did not rip his teammate in public. "I don't critique teams, I don't critique players, I only critique myself," he explained later.
However, Garnett accepted Lang's quiet message with deference, quickly offering to come up with another option at a later - and presumably more private - moment.
In a league often focused on prima donnas, Lang has been an unheralded success. He has earned coaches' admiration for his disciplined, team-oriented play, while demanding and receiving unqualified respect from teammates and team officials. "Forget how smart and hard-working he is on the court," said former Hawks teammate Grant Long after Atlanta came to town three days after the Lang-Laettner deal. "You will not find a better human being in this league."
In Lang, the Wolves received their first true center in several seasons, a 6-11, 250 pound banger in the prime of his career, gifted with a ferocity for shot-blocking as well as a graceful hook shot, and an obsession with setting picks and doing the little things that set teammates up for flashier accomplishments.
However, for his first few hours in the Twin Cities, Lang was unable to mask his disappointment. As it turns out, Lang's mini-depression was quite understandable. Everyone knew he came from a winner in Atlanta, but few recalled that Lang had been stripped off a championship contender and dealt to a losing program once before- as a bit player in the 1992 blockbuster that sent Charles Barkley from Philadelphia to Phoenix.
Lang shifted from a team that won 53 games in '91-'92 to a squad that triumphed just 26 times the next season. To make matters worse in Cheese Steak City, Lang was hobbled by an ankle injury that sapped his playing time. After four seasons shooting 51 percent or better with the Suns, Lang shot just 42 percent with the Sixers. Philadelphia dropped Lang after one season.
Enter the Hawks and Lenny Wilkens. " Andrew was just in a bad situation," says Atlanta general manager Pete Babcock. "If you look at his career from the first day in the NBA, except Philadelphia, he had improved. Look at his free-throw shooting."
And sure enough -- Lang, a 65 percent free throw shooter his first two seasons in the NBA topped 75 percent by his final season with the Suns and was above 80 percent when he was traded to the Wolves. "Andrew demonstrated a work ethic and a commitment to the game," Babcock notes. "Philadelphia was rebuilding, trying to install a passing game, a wide-open system, and that's not Andrew's strength. He like the half-court offense, and he knows right where to be on every play. He fit Lenny's style."
Says Lang, "Here's how coach Wilkens won my respect: when they signed me, I was a back-up. They had Jon Koncak in the post, and they were paying him a lot more money. He let me know what to expect right away, but as I worked hard and improved my hook shot, my offense, he started running a few plays for me - he was the first coach to do that for me. And that really solidified his reputation as someone who was fair and rewards hard work."
Wilkens was rewarded; Lang did not miss a game in his two-plus seasons with Atlanta, nearly doubled his career scoring average to 13 points per game and ranked among the top 15 in shots blocked. He was so respected that the Hawks made him their captain. Atlanta team officials say that of all the players who have passed through Ted Turner's basketball property, only Doc Rivers was a match for Lang's graciousness with the press and public.
While marriages in the NBA rarely last till death, Lang enthusiastically signed up for a long-run with the Hawks: a six-year, $13 million deal that he thought would tie him to the squad through his prime. "No disrespect to Flip or the Wolves, but I was prepared to play my entire career with Atlanta," Lang says. "I have a wife and two young boys, and you do things where your family's concerned - that's why I signed for six years - I had moved three times in two years."
Teammates say that especially on long road trips, Lang would lament the time spent away from his wife, Bronwyn, and his two young sons Trey (Andrew III) and Chad. "I know I should have a hobby - I keep meaning to pick up golf clubs or buy a pool table, but I never do. I just read, play music, and play father-son games. I don't care for a lot of other things."
But while Lang thought he had finally secured stability in Atlanta, Christian Laettner was becoming unglued in Minneapolis, popping off about his teammates' impertinence and the "right way to play the game."
Ironically, Laettner may have gotten a one-way ticket out of a perennial loser by being insensitive and divisive, but class and diplomacy may have gotten Lang shipped out of the Atlanta situation he loved. "To me, coming to Minnesota is deja vu with the Philly trade - sometimes, you're easier to deal because you have a good attitude, a good work ethic. Coaches always want you."
Babcock says that Lang's reaction was not unexpected. "His whole life is organized and meticulous," says the Hawks general manager. "That makes it difficult with the changes going on, when things are not regular and orderly."
Indeed, former Hawks teammates say that besides Lang's commitment to hard work and team play, they will remember his fastidiousness. "You see a lot of it in the guy," says Atlanta's Long. "For example, he comes into a locker room before the game, he takes his pants off and folds them very carefully, and then he takes of his shirt and hangs it just so, his jacket same thing. He takes off his socks, rolls them into a little ball, and puts them in his shoes, which he lines up in his locker. Look at my belt here" - Lang points to something strewn haphazardly in an upper shelf of his visitors locker - "Drew will actually take his belt off, coil it very nearly, and place it just so."
And indeed, in the Wolves locker room, Lang's belt does look like a tightly wound spring in a Swiss watch. He cracks a rare smile when Long has busted him. "Every player has their ritual, of course," Lang says. "But I do think everything has a certain order. Whatever you have, you take a certain pride. If you drive a Yugo, that's your Mercedes. If you have a shack, that's your castle."
The attitude, Lang says, has been with him from his early years growing up in Pine Bluff, Arkansas, just a few towns away from NBA superstar Scottie Pippen. "Both of my parents are disciplined people," he notes. "My mother is the principal in the Pine Bluff public school system, and my father manages seven rental properties ranging from college student housing to apartments for married couples with children."
Babcock says Lang's diligence will pay big dividends for the team. "He works 12 months at his game - he's absolutely serious. There is no wasted effort, no wasted motion."
Adds Long, "What fans in Minnesota will see is a very consistent low-post player that teams will double-team by the basket. You'll have to put some outside shooters on him, because he will take care of business under the boards."
Babcock cautions Wolves fans, already in love with the elastic Kevin Garnett and the rocket-powered J.R. Rider, to judge Lang on style points. "He is not a creative rebounder," Babcock insists, "But you will look up and see him in double figures in points and rebounds all the time. And watch out for that hook shot - he can make it with his left or his right hand. It's just one of those things he's developed with hard work."
As for the bi