Mobley aims to take some giant steps

Laid end to end, Eric Mobley's five baskets in the third quarter Friday night might not equal his shoe size. But they don't pay for mileage in the National Basketball Association, just results.

Four dunks and a put-back add up to 10 points on any court in the land, even one shared with New Jersey's distressed Nets. When you combine them with 11 points by Mobley's fellow rookie, Glenn Robinson, in the same 12 minutes, two conclusions are inevitable.

One is that the Nets will disappear without a trace. The other is the Bucks were wide awake at the draft last June.

When they were through pounding a sixth consecutive lump on the Nets' bewildered noggins, their freshman class had contributed 39 points to an important step in the sack race known as the Eastern Conference playoff drive.

Robinson accounted for 25 of those, which is slightly above average for him. The Bucks expect to measure their rookie-of-the-year candidate's production in double digits, but until quite recently they had no idea what to expect from Mobley.

Certainly not 14 points and 10 rebounds, which is what he produced against New Jersey, giving him a career scoring high, his third double-double of the season and another important boost to his self-esteem.

Mobley has started 14 of the Bucks' last 16 games after spending most of the year as a 6-foot-11-inch, 250-pound bench ornament. For the first 50 games or so, he was so far back in Mike Dunleavy's personnel rotation, you thought the coach had shipped him back to Pennsylvania for additional seasoning.

But Dunleavy understood that he couldn't get by with a cruiserweight in the pivot if he wanted to visit the playoffs, and that meant Mobley was going to have to grow up sooner rather than later.

"We knew when we drafted him that he was raw," he said, "but we also knew he had a big up side.

"The things he does well he does very well. He has great hands and timing; he finishes strong; and he runs the floor better than most centers.

"The key for him is to understand what we're doing and not have to think about everything."

Spend 10 minutes with this Pittsburgh project, and you know thinking will soon be the least of his worries. If there's anything missing from his Mobley's game, it's not between the ears.

"I'm feeling very comfortable right now," he said. "I think I'm making the right decisions, and the other team has to make decisions when they play me.

"There's no question that this game is played off reactions. The coaches can draw up the X's and O's, but when things don't go the way they're drawn up, you've got to react to what happens.

"I've been able to react instead of think about everything for the last seven games or so. That's really helped my confidence."

It hasn't hurt his playing time either, although as recently as two games ago, Mobley spent 48 minutes on the bench in Houston. Dunleavy still considers him kind of a spot starter, with Dunleavy picking the spots.

"There's still a matchup situation with him," he said. "His big project this summer is to get a consistent go-to move so that he can be an everyday player against anybody."

Dunleavy's idea of a go-to move is anything that requires a defender to find Mobley more than 6 feet from the hoop. He needs a shot, just about any old kind of a shot, because even the strongest centers can't live by dunks alone.

All of Mobley's baskets Friday night were jams or rebounds. He can catch anything that's not shot from a canon, and he's never met a lob he didn't like. But he's not so short-sighted as to settle for a short game.

"I always seem to progress in the off-season," Mobley said. "I'll be in the gym every single day this summer, and when I come back I'll have that go-to move."

If he's as teachable as he is determined, there should be more double figure games next year, and the baskets laid end to end will exceed his size 17s by a considerable margin.

The young man is planning on leaving some big-time footprints in the paint for the Milwaukee Bucks.

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