As Strange as It Seems, Kaman's the Real Deal

Welcome to Christmas with the Kamans.

There is no tree, no lights, no carols.

"That's because there's no snow," said Chris Kaman, the jolly Clipper center from western Michigan. "It's like, a rule. You can't have Christmas without snow."

Staring outside the window of his stately Redondo Beach home overlooking boats gently slicing through the Pacific, he shrugs.

"I don't even own a suit," he says.

Welcome to Christmas with the Kamans where, at least, there are toys.

On the second-floor balcony, there is a collapsed pingpong table.

"We lost all the balls," he said, peering down to the winding street.

In a narrow side yard, there is an archery range. A Styrofoam target and plastic deer are at one end. Kaman, with a John Deere cap on backward, is standing 20 yards away and shooting from the other end.

"This is how I relax after games," he says between shots that zing past my quivering frame as I stand pressed against the outside wall. "Don't worry. I don't miss."

Welcome to Christmas with the Kamans, where there are pets (a dog and a python), a piano (inherited from the previous owner, nobody can play) and, yes, a posse.

Three of Kaman's buddies from his hometown of Grand Rapids, Mich., keep the common areas meticulously clean, cook healthy food and, like their leader, don't drink or party and rarely curse.

"A weirdo posse," Kaman says.

Ah, that every NBA player and his gang should be so strange.

What the Clippers have done to the NBA this winter, Kaman has done to the public perception of scruffy-faced 7-footers with shoulder-length blond hair.

Just as the terminally unhip Clips are now cool, so is their center, a 23-year-old lug who is eccentric enough to be known to teammates as K-Pax, but delightful enough to laugh about it.

Says Sam Cassell: "Kaman is like a far-away island, farther than Hawaii, way, way out there."

Says Kaman: "I'm just trying to be myself, you know? Doesn't everybody try to be themselves?"

In a town built on phony, in a league that sweats perception, Kaman is as refreshingly delightful as a regulation national anthem.

He is one of the few NBA players who openly despises rap music -- "I hate rap! (pause) Can I say that?"

He is also one of the few who has little concern with how he looks on the floor, refusing to cut his dangling locks in nearly two years -- "I kind of want to cut it, but I'm scared to cut it, because it's, like, me."