SEATTLE — Umbrellas were everywhere. Slender ones, small ones, thick ones, tall ones, tattered ones, tanned ones, Husky blue ones and black ones. Umbrellas for the fashionable. Umbrellas for the practical. Everyone was having a brolly good time.

Everyone, it seemed, except Shawn Kemp.

Kemp did not need a parasol this drenched autumn afternoon. The empty and hollow arena where he spends many an off-day provided ample shelter for what he had in mind.

Inside, Kemp was playing basketball like a shadow boxer, putting himself in imaginary situations against the game's giants.

\o7 Game 7. NBA finals. Seattle SuperSonics against the Chicago Bulls. Kemp vs. Jordan. Five seconds left. Kemp takes the inbounds pass, fakes two defenders and drives . . .

\f7 It is, perhaps, a timeless endeavor; the childlike innocence of playing the hero against impossible odds. Yet for Kemp, who will turn 23 this month, there exists a reality in all this make-believe.

Many in the NBA say the tableau has been set. Shawn Kemp, SuperSonic forward, is on the verge of SuperStardom.

"I think we all see it on the court, it's there,"

said his coach, George Karl.

As Kemp enters his fourth professional season, he no longer is considered an anomaly--the teen-ager who pole vaulted college basketball en route to an NBA career. He no longer is merely another roadside attraction, taking his place alongside Joe Graboski, Bill Willoughby, Moses Malone and Darryl Dawkins, others who played in the NBA without going to college.

Last season's sparkling postseason put all that to rest.

So much so that it is easy to forget Kemp was part of a 1988 high school class that included Don MacLean, Chris Mills, Alonzo Mourning, Anthony Peeler and Stanley Roberts. MacLean, Mourning and Peeler are entering their rookie seasons, Mills is a college senior and Roberts is in his second year.

"At times, it seems like I went from the age of 17 to 25," Kemp said.

A past littered with controversy underscores that observation. Simply by being a highly touted recruit, Kemp was entangled in one of college basketball's biggest scandals at the University of Kentucky four years ago.

Controversy, said his Elkhart, Ind., high school coach, Jim Hahn, followed Kemp off the court for no other reason than the fact he was such a talent. Perhaps that is why it was easier to break his mother's heart and forgo a college scholarship for a professional contract in 1989.