The Man In The Iron Mask

NOTHING HAS CHANGED.
"Alon-zo sucks!"

He's at the foul line. People rise from their seats, and with just 35 seconds left in the game, they fill Washington's squeaky-new MCI Center with this December night's first unanimous jolt of fan voltage: a cascade of boos, snarls, chants.

"Alon-zo sucks!"

It's as if he never left. Seven months have passed since Alonzo Mourning, the 6'10" Miami Heat center, last played an NBA game, but the Wizards have gotten the usual dose of Mourning glory: four blocked shots, nine rebounds and 24 points; the flailing of his Robocop arms and the controling of Washington forward-center Terry Davis and the contorting of Mourning's face into a mask of puzzled fury. "That boy is wild," Davis will say later. No one cares that the game is Mourning's first since surgery repaired a partially torn tendon in his left knee in September. No one cares that he played for four years at nearby Georgetown.

"Alon-zo sucks!"

Mourning misses the first shot and stares at the rim with an expression of profound sadness. He hits the second.

"Alon-zo sucks!"

"He's kind of a hated man," says Heat power forward P.J. Brown. Kind of? Mourning is arguably the most hated man in the NBA. His on-court demeanor—defensive, dour, the purest distillation of Georgetown coach John Thompson's Hoya Paranoia—makes Mourning an instant villain, but for much of his career he has worn the black hat with relish. Word has gotten around: Mourning refused autograph requests as a rookie with the Charlotte Hornets in 1992-93, brushing off kids like lint. He wanted a woman reporter to be kicked out of the Hornets' home locker room before a game. Last April, after being outplayed by Danny Schayes in Game 4 of a first-round playoff series between Miami and the Orlando Magic, Mourning snapped at reporters gathered around his locker, "Why don't y'all get the f—out?" After hitting a victory-sealing three-pointer against the New York Knicks in Game 6 of last year's Eastern Conference semifinals, Mourning screamed nationally televised curses at the Madison Square Garden crowd.

Fans and reporters are not the only ones whom Mourning has left with a sour taste. Point guard Tim Hardaway, who joined the Heat from the Golden State Warriors in 1996, says no other player in the NBA is bad-mouthed by his peers as much as Mourning is. "Nobody," he says. "Until I played with him, I thought he was an a———."

Brown, too, disliked Mourning as an opponent. "He was a little dirty and went out of his way with officials—acting surprised, crying," says Brown, who played for the New Jersey Nets before coming to Miami in 1996. Now that he's with the Heat, Brown says, players on other teams ask him about Mourning constantly. "They think he's arrogant, they think he's conceited," Brown says. "I say he's not like that. They don't believe me."