Nov. 11, 2006

By Adam Lucas

Ty Lawson is on a magazine cover this week. Bobby Frasor is not.

Somehow, that seems right.

In two exhibition games, Lawson has proved to be everything he was advertised to be. He is lightning fast--with the ball, he's still quicker than everyone else on the court. He is slick with the basketball and slippery enough to get into the lane most anytime he wants. He has an improving jump shot, but a perimeter game doesn't really matter when you're slashing to the basket and shooting layups--he was 6-for-9 from the field in Carolina's 140-101 obliteration of Pfeiffer Saturday night--all the time.

Bobby Frasor is none of those things. He is not especially fast. He is not especially slick with the basketball; he just dribbles it the way it needs to be dribbled to get from point A to point B. He would probably tell you himself that the thing that disappointed him the most about his freshman season was his shooting. He entered Carolina with a reputation as a shooter and then made just 37.4 percent of his field goals and 31.0 percent of his three-pointers last season.

But here's what Bobby Frasor is, and this is why he's probably going to start the season opener Tuesday night, why he'll be difficult to displace from the starting lineup, and why he will always fit somewhere in the Carolina rotation: he's a point guard.

Way back in the old days--you know, before there was more than one channel of ESPN--they hadn't yet invented a "scoring point guard" and a "distributing point guard" and a "shoot-first point guard." There was just one position: the point guard. That player was responsible for running the team, for knowing not only his job but the jobs of everyone else on the floor, and for hustling. That player was sometimes Phil Ford but more often was Jimmy Black or King Rice or Derrick Phelps. That player did not have to be a superstar but the superstars on the team had to respect him.

That player sounded a lot like this: "Bobby has poise out there on offense," Marcus Ginyard said. "He gets everybody set up. He's a great floor general. He doesn't have that speed or the wow factor, but everyone feels so confident and comfortable when Bobby is at the point and has the ball. That's something you need coming down the stretch in a big-time game."

His teammates respect him, but they also delight in the fact that at first glance Frasor looks like he's trying to find the YMCA tryouts.

"You should've seen me the first time I met him," Ginyard said. "We were in Colorado Springs at the USA Basketball Youth Festival, and all I had heard about before we got there was Bobby Frasor. We all walk into the dorms, and he comes out of his room and someone says, `What's up, Bobby?'

"I'm like, `That's Bobby Frasor? That is Bobby Frasor?'"

Ginyard laughs. Frasor heard a similar variation on this same theme all throughout his freshman season. In December, players were discussing the most frequent comments they get from fans. Frasor couldn't come up with anything. That left an opening for Tyler Hansbrough, who deadpanned, "That's because they don't believe you're on the team."

He's definitely on the team. In a breakneck game against Pfeiffer in which the Tar Heels attempted 87 field goals, he took just one shot. But he also had a team-high 7 assists, 2 steals, and just 2 turnovers, both of which came during a sloppy stretch late in the second half.

And on a team that's searching for someone to fill the leadership void left by David Noel, he has significant leadership potential. Already his teammates listen when he talks, already his voice is often the final word in pickup disagreements.

"Let's just play," he says. And then they do.

Roy Williams wins with players like that. He wins with point guards like Ryan Robertson (the point guard on Kansas's 35-4 team in 1998) and Aaron Miles (who started every game except one during his two seasons under Williams while compiling a better than 2:1 assist/turnover ratio), players who understood their role without needing it to be explained to them.

Like the play during the second half when Frasor ended up sitting down near midcourt, yet somehow managed to corral the ball and volleyball it ahead with his left hand on a play that led to yet another Carolina fast break.

"It was a loose ball and someone dove near the top of the key," Frasor said. "It ricocheted out to around halfcourt and one of their players dove too early. I went after it, I was sitting down, and the ball bounced in my lap. I slapped it up to Wayne and he threw it ahead for a dunk."

This description, by the way, is all delivered in less than 20 seconds, Frasor's Midwestern rapid-fire staccato letting the words tumble out.

Lawson has the potential to take his place among Carolina's other jet-propelled point guards: Ford, Kenny Smith, and Raymond Felton. He's that good and possesses that many tangible gifts. It's almost ludicrous that the Tar Heels have the luxury of Lawson and Frasor on the same team. Other teams probably mutter under their breath about the "problem" of having to choose one as a starter the same way high school girls mutter about the prom queen's protestations that it's difficult being beautiful. Both players will play major minutes this year, maybe even in the same lineup at the same time.

Intangibles, where Frasor is strongest, aren't particularly beautiful but do have a funny way of earning players a permanent spot in the rotation.

Even if they don't earn magazine covers.

Adam Lucas's third book on Carolina basketball, The Best Game Ever, chronicles the 1957 national championship season and is available now. His previous books include Going Home Again, focusing on Roy Williams's return to Carolina, and Led By Their Dreams, a collaboration with Steve Kirschner and Matt Bowers on the 2005 championship team.