Accolades For Christie -- Rainier Beach Retires No. 25

In about two months the most famous basketball player from Pepperdine University since Dennis Johnson will almost surely join the NBA in the first round of the June draft. Yesterday at Rainier Beach High School, he was given accolade after accolade by men who have coached him, men who have coached against him, by men who govern the state he lives in.

Doug Christie returned to his high-school gymnasium to have his jersey retired in proper style. Family, friends and students from Rainier Beach, South Shore Middle School and Wing Luke Elementary School came out for the afternoon assembly.

Christie, 21, led Rainier Beach to the 1988 Class AA state championship, the last state title won by any Viking team. No Viking will ever wear No. 25, Christie's number, again. David Campbell, Pepperdine's assistant coach, said he and head coach Tom Asbury would ask Pepperdine to retire Christie's college jersey.

"Doug elevated our program to a national level," Campbell said.

With the 6-foot-6 Christie, the Waves won 33 consecutive West Coast Conference games, won back-to-back WCC titles and made back-to-back appearances in the NCAA tournament. Christie was the conference's player of the year as a junior and senior.

"He's done so much for our program, there's no way we could repay him," Campbell said.

People tried yesterday. They showed a video of some college highlights. They took him down memory lane.

Christie's first high-school coach, Dave Denny, from Mark Morris High in Longview, started the speeches. Christie played for Denny as a freshman.

Mark Morris also won the state championship that season.

Former O'Dea Coach Lou Hobson followed with recollections of the nightmares he had before playing Rainier Beach.

It was Hobson, who in one sentence, summed up the afternoon best:

"If Doug Christie didn't have basketball, he would still be a success."

When Christie was in high school, no one doubted what he could do with a basketball (his mother Norma Christie said her son received an anonymous death threat telling him not to score his senior year). But plenty wondered about his grades and study habits.

Christie didn't score high enough on his college entrance exams and fell by the wayside to Proposition 48. Many thought that was the end of Christie, a player only lightly recruited by Division I schools.

Jim Harrick, the coach who recruited Christie, convinced him to come to Pepperdine anyway. Just to study.

"It was the hardest thing I've had to do," Christie said. "I didn't know how to study. I was ready to quit and go home. I called my mom. I cried.

"Not only was I away from home, I didn't have basketball. When you take basketball away like that, after I've played it all my life, it was like taking food away from a baby."

Christie and his mother already had a life's worth of hard times. Norma was a single parent at age 16. She hardly had the financial resources to raise a son by herself. But she did.

"It's hard to explain the kind of adversity Doug had to overcome," said Norma Christie, in tears after yesterday's assembly ended.

"Doug is the only thing I have. It's a very emotional day."

Four years ago, when her son called from Malibu, Calif., to say he wanted to come home, she told him no.

"I told him, you only get one chance," Norma said. "He was getting a great opportunity. It was extremely rare for a school like Pepperdine to keep a Proposition 48 athlete. I told him he was lucky, that he should take advantage of it."

Christie stayed. He found tutors, went to summer school and got himself back on the team. By the end of his junior year, it was becoming clear Christie was destined for a higher level.

A knee injury in the WCC tournament was the last thing he needed, but he said it made him stronger.

"Everything seemed to be going so well when it happened," said Christie of his injury, which foiled his chances of making the Pan American Games team. "Scouts were coming out to see me. Then, boom, one trip down the floor and it was all over. But to me, it was just another hurdle I had to get over."

Christie found out who really cared about him. His mother. His friends in Seattle, Gary and Kyle Hansen. And Theresa Landeros, his girlfriend. They stayed by his side when others left.

Christie is 24 credits short of earning a degree in sociology and criminology. He plans to take eight credits at Pepperdine this summer. And in June, if the projections of NBA scouts prove correct, Christie will do what O'Dea's Clint Richardson, Cleveland's Jawann Oldham and Roosevelt's James Edwards could not do - get drafted in the first round.

By his own admission, yesterday's ceremony was a little hard for Christie to take. When Williams approached Christie with the idea, Christie was apprehensive.

"I told them `I don't know,' " Christie said. "When you do something like this, people get this idea that you think you're better than them, like you're superhuman or something. I don't want people to get that idea."

When it was his turn to speak to the crowd, Christie said he wanted to be a role model.

"A role model should be someone you can touch, someone you can talk to," he said. "I want to come here and visit a lot. I want to be able to talk to you. If you think I'm better than you are, you're wrong."