KURT STREETER - Oakland is no place for Baron Davis

"I'm the king of L.A.," Baron Davis likes to say, with a smile on his bearded face.

But he doesn't even play here. He plays in Oakland. And it's not right. They don't deserve him.

We do.

"Comfortable everywhere," he likes to say, grinning some more. There is a chuckle in his voice. "From Compton to Malibu."

Everybody knows, after all, that Davis was a stud at UCLA before he became an NBA star in New Orleans, then was injured, barked at coaches, got traded, and came back to California, but to the wrong place.

Oakland.

He's pure Los Angeles. Up in Oakland, you can't even see his Aston Martin. Too much fog. They don't have that kind of fog in Malibu.

People who love him, who have been there from the start, they're not from Oakland. Snoop Dogg. Kate Hudson. Penny Marshall. Jessica Alba. Owen Wilson. Brian Grazer. Those kinds of folks aren't Oakland. They're not even San Francisco. They're pixie dust. Hollywood.

Other folks around here love him too. They're not pixie dust. He has fans in Long Beach and Orange County and the San Fernando Valley and downtown Los Angeles and on the street corners south of downtown, where he grew up.

Last season, Baron Davis worked like a snake charmer. He lifted the Golden State Warriors, Oakland's team, from their perennial pit. Then he led them to the postseason for the first time in more than a decade.

He steered that undersized team to one of the most stirring upsets in NBA history: a cold-hearted drubbing of title-favorite Dallas.

It was the Twilight Zone.

Those games up north looked like Lakers games during the best of times. Wall-to-wall crazies. The pixie dust had star-trekked north to watch their boy do his thing.

In the wrong town.

Now it's 8 a.m. Thursday, and he's down here -- in the right town.

Dressed in loose jeans, he is standing next to Paul Pierce of the Boston Celtics, in a studio at radio station KJLH, promoting their gig this weekend for LA Stars, a charity they've taken over from Magic Johnson.

The highlight comes today, with a community carnival at USC that starts in the late morning followed by an NBA and celebrity all-star game that tips off at 5 p.m. in the Galen Center. The proceeds go to inner-city neighborhoods.

From his KJLH interview -- with Stevie Wonder -- he's off to a daily workout he refuses to miss. His beefy black SUV pulls up at a gym populated mostly by men with biceps the size of volleyballs. But he notices a middle-aged mother struggling with a weight machine.