The cocoon Chris Webber is about to shed sits in a remote corner of a gated community well outside Sacramento. It's not visible from the road, and the house number at the top of the drive is painted over. Some would call it a modest four-bedroom mansion, what with the vaulted ceilings and circular drive and split-level Jacuzzi/pool, but that would suggest it is a home. Not to Webber—never has been, never will be. It simply is where he has stored his belongings, collected his thoughts and rested his head between performances that have lifted the Kings from an NBA joke to the league's most entertaining attraction. It's the cocoon from which he hopes to spring anew, spread his wings and have the career he expected upon arriving in the NBA as the No. 1 pick back in 1993.

***

"It's like I've been reborn," says Webber, who will turn 28 in March. "I'm ready to be that kid back at Michigan again. I'm just waiting to come out."

The popular public opinion is that Sacramento has everything he needs, but CWebb, a world-class worrier, considers that presumptuous. He has not won a championship here, he has not been recognized as the game's best power forward, he has not come close to making up for all those years when his game fell short of his expectations in Golden State and Washington. So how could it have everything? Sure, he hasn't had any more scrapes with the law for marijuana possession. He's an All-Star and an MVP candidate for the second straight season. And he's being mentioned in the same breath as Tim Duncan and Kevin Garnett among elite power forwards. But that's hardly enough for someone whose career started as storybook as CWebb's did, with two NCAA finals appearances in two tries. For someone who longs to return to storybook status before it's all over.

So he winces at the notion that he needed a boring place like Sacramento to get his act together, because the accompanying notion is that he needs a boring place like Sacramento to keep his act together. For CWebb, who will be a free agent after this season, that's like telling a great musician to keep his steady gig in Peoria instead of moving on to the Village Vanguard. And if you want to get CWebb barreling off in a particular direction, just tell him he shouldn't go there.

"Before, I wasn't ready to go to New York or L.A.," he says. "Now it's like I've paid my dues and had my quiet time. I've played with friends, and I know it hasn't worked out. That makes me more anxious to prove I can do it. At the same time, I can just hear people saying, 'Hey, you're not going to make the same mistake again, are you?'

"All I want is for all this to be worth something. Above all, I want to be with a group that I can help, and can help me win a championship. I just don't know how to go about finding that."

Fact is, he already has told his real estate agent to spread the word that the house will be available this summer. Packing won't take much time. Webber opens a door at the top of the stairs, revealing a room littered with moving boxes, a dozen dress shoes and workout apparel, a treadmill half-buried in the midst of it all. "All the rooms used to be like this," he says, pulling the door shut again.

Generally, he's kept to his bedroom and the room directly across the hall, which he converted into a soundproofed music studio complete with sound and mixing boards and two keyboards. (He has started a fledgling label, Humility Records, and lays down beats for various rap groups. He has also taken up bass guitar, traveling with a teach-yourself video.) The rest of the house was practically unfurnished until last December, when a visit from his parents forced him to outfit a guest bedroom and buy dining room and living room furniture.

But it still looks as if he's a squatter rather than an owner. He parks his silver 600S Mercedes-Benz coupe and black Suburban (with Sprewell Racing license-plate frames) in the driveway, never in the garage, as if he's just visiting. Next to the pool, a patio table without a top lies on its side. The real estate lockbox used to hide a key still sits just to the left of the front door.

No one has lived with him since he moved here three years ago, and Chris says he hasn't dated in the last six months. His spot for The Magazine with Ray Allen is the first major commercial he's done in years, in part because his brushes with the law on suspicion of marijuana possession didn't recommend him as a spokesman, in part because he decided to focus on basketball. A few months ago, he fired both his longtime agent, Fallasha Erwin, and his longtime personal assistant, Yvette Watson. He spends far less time off the court with his closest teammate, point guard Jason Williams, than he did last season. He has let his hair grow out and is reading The Celestine Prophecy, a spiritual book about learning from your mistakes and trusting your instincts—and about finding the environment that fits you best.

***

Asking Webber if he plans to leave Sacramento is the wrong approach. In his mind, you can't leave a place you never intended to occupy in the first place. Even after all the positive results, Webber still considers Sacramento the place to which he was sent. If he is a King next season, it will be because he looked at the entire landscape and decided no better place existed. He hasn't made a formal list yet, but playing in New York with his best friend, Latrell Sprewell, is enticing. Orlando, Phoenix and Houston also intrigue him. Where Sacramento sits on his scale changes from day to day, game to game, but it does not sit at the top. That spot stays empty for now.

Webber's father, Mayce, threatened to fly down from his Detroit home and have a knockdown drag-out if Chris refused to report to Sacramento after Washington traded him in '98. Mayce, who grew up picking cotton in Mississippi before working for General Motors, reminded his son that the paycheck he received every two weeks was more than the Webber family made in their entire Mississippi lives. His point: Be grateful that you get paid like this to play basketball—anywhere.

Mayce feels vindicated, since the move to Sacramento has been so beneficial. But he won't insist that Chris stay. "He has to make his own decision," Mayce says. "I'm not 100% sure where he's going, but if I were the owners, I wouldn't get too nervous. He considers the Sacramento players his second family."

Everyone on the Kings apparently feels that way. "We're like 12 brothers who could go home after a game and live in the same house," says JWill, who, like all his teammates, looks to Webber in every possible way—on and off the court.

It's about 90 minutes before a recent game in Dallas, and Webber sits at his locker facing the room. Williams and Vlade Divac are joking about a 12-year-old kid in a suit who's just appeared on the locker room TV. The kid bears a striking resemblance to backup guard Darrick Martin, who hears this sort of thing often. The three bring it before Webber, who will pass judgment on where the blame falls so Martin can return the jab.

Williams: "Vlade said, 'Who's that look like?'"

Divac: "Okay, but you were thinking it too."

All three look to CWebb for his verdict. With a smile and a glance he lets Martin know that both are guilty of capping on Martin.

This is why Divac says the Kings are the "Comedy Channel." In several languages. Lawrence Funderburke is a Bible thumper. JWill is constantly cracking wise in his West Virginia drawl while wearing a cloth bracelet in games that says, "I Hate You." Euro imports Peja Stojakovic and Hidayet Turkoglu look like the NBA's version of SNL's old wild and crazy guys. Their presence has made broken English a second language, thrown around the way playground slang is elsewhere. "All time, shoot more!" says Divac, in purposely fractured English, after Webber buries a couple of jumpers against the Mavericks.

No star has more fun bolstering his teammates' confidence than Webber. When he sets a pick for Peja to launch a three, and the defenders don't react quickly enough, he'll yell "too late!" as the ball leaves Peja's hand. CWebb answered Scot Pollard's complaint that he wasn't being demonstrative enough by throwing down one dunk against the Mavs and high-stepping through the paint like a drum major, then throwing down a second and flexing like Hulk Hogan.

His confidence is also contagious. In a home game against the Celtics, CWebb went to the bench with foul trouble and a six-point lead. By the end of the period, the Kings were behind by two. Vlade, JWill, Stojakovic, Pollard and Turkoglu hung their heads as they returned to the bench, but CWebb flashed a confident smile and gave dap to each of them. The Kings recovered for a 111-106 win. "Personality that magnetic is hard to find," says Kings guard Doug Christie. "You can replace talent, but you can't find a guy who leads in more ways than one."

Never was that more evident than after their Jan. 20 road win over the Blazers on national TV. It was the biggest regular-season victory in Kings history, putting them atop the Pacific Division and offering evidence they have the grit to roll with the Lakers, Blazers and Spurs. When Peja knocked down a crucial late-game jumper while being fouled by Steve Smith, CWebb shouted, "That's why you're The Roller! The European Roller!" And when CWebb iced the game by putting back a missed free throw by Turkoglu, he credited Divac for charging into the lane and distracting Rasheed Wallace from boxing him out. "Vlade let me know in half-English, half-Serbian, what he was going to do," Webber says.

Nick Anderson, averaging all of eight minutes a game this season, prides himself on giving CWebb a double pound before every game and telling him, "There's no one in this building who can check you." CWebb's pregame embrace with Funderburke is so routine that even when Funderburke wasn't with the team in Houston, CWebb hugged the air where Funderburke would have stood. "What's amazing is he brings it every night, puts up the numbers he does and doesn't have a selfish bone in his body," says Martin.

All this comes with a price. Webber is more than the 27 points, 12 rebounds and 4 assists he puts up each night. He's not only the cornerstone, he's also the mortar. So when CWebb leaves a franchise, it's as if the life force has been sucked out of it. The Warriors are still reeling from dealing him to the Wizards, just as the Wizards have been dead men walking since shipping him to Sacto.

Oddly enough, it is the Kings' closeness, the lack of friction between the players, that may push Webber away from this team, too. "This is a team I would love to play against—and I don't like that," Webber says. "I don't like the playfulness, the softness about us. We don't have that swagger. I feel like we're a prep school, and everybody else is a public school."

He made that clear to Kings owners Joe and Gavin Maloof before the season started, warning them that some players would return out of shape, satisfied with having pushed the Lakers to five games in the first round last year. Webb prefers being the good cop, encouraging teammates and leaving it to the coach to crack the whip.

But coach Rick Adelman isn't a taskmaster, and no one else on the team has the power or personality to pull it off. Webber, reluctantly, has taken up the role. The Kings were practicing the day after a home loss to the 76ers when Pollard checked in for Divac during an intrasquad game. Webber noticed that Divac wasn't looking to get back into the scrimmage and let him have it. Losses eat at CWebb; he believes they should so affect everyone.

"When you're having so much fun, you may not pay as much attention to detail as other teams," he says. "If I retire and lose, I know the first thing I'll think of is, 'Man, I was having too much fun.' And I can have fun after practice."

***

Geoff Petrie, the Kings' VP of basketball operations, gambled when he sent Mitch Richmond and Otis Thorpe to Washington to acquire Webber, who immediately asked to be moved elsewhere and then promised he wouldn't stay a second longer than his contract required. Petrie won the first part of his gamble—getting Webber to be productive—by making him the main attraction of an up-tempo team that features passing flair, shooting prowess and personalities that appeal to all levels. They're an international conglomerate with Turkey's Turkoglu and Yugoslavs Stojakovic and Divac. They're consummate showmen, with JWill's rule-bending, defense-shredding passes, Peja's dead eye from long range and CWebb's one-hand reverse dunks and deft finger-roll finishes.

Petrie figures that because of the franchise's face-lift, the deal will have been worth it even if CWebb leaves. But he knows what he'd be missing. Webber will thread bounce passes through such tight spaces that the ball will sometimes bounce off the hands of a teammate, stunned by its arrival. He's the only King who is routinely doubled in the low post, creating space for all those talented shooters. And he's the team's only true shotblocker.

"It's like dominoes leaning on each other," says Divac. "Pull him out and the rest fall."

People no longer dwell on what Webber doesn't do, especially since that list is so much shorter now. Don Nelson and Wizards GM Wes Unseld, accomplished NBA toughs, saw the sculpted 245 pounds on that 6'10" frame, the 7'6" wingspan, and wanted him to punish people. What they didn't understand is that Webber envisioned himself more as Magic than Moses.

Webber's offensive game has also grown dramatically. He can still recall telling himself as a Warriors rookie, "You have no offensive skills whatsoever," and seeing a Phoenix scouting report that read: "Dunks, makes layups, give him the jumper, might make a jump hook." Webber will post up hard now when it's absolutely necessary (against the Blazers) or particularly enjoyable (torturing insolent Dookie Christian Laettner), but he prefers operating from the high post, where he can utilize his passing skills, improved midrange jumper and face-up moves off the dribble. He's still not a defensive banger, but he works hard on D, and uses his long reach to deflect passes and block shots.

"When people have talent, we always want something more than they are doing," Adelman says. "We've just tried to let him do what he does." That's been enough to turn the Kings into a playoff team the past two seasons. They have a nice blend of talent that should finally get them past the first round, but don't expect a ring this season—the art of winning a seven-game series usually takes several tries to master. Then again, no team is better stocked with young talent. Yes, the question remains whether JWill can evolve into a championship-caliber point guard. And Peja or Turkoglu has to become a perimeter go-to guy. But only Divac in the eight-man rotation is past his prime. If Webber is looking for a team with a shot at the title, he could do a lot worse.

Webber won't take a wait-and-see approach, as Tim Duncan is doing in San Antonio. Having yet to meld his identity with a particular franchise, he wants to sign the maximum seven-year deal and make the next stop his last. "I've given my all, but I don't know if I've given that extra mile because I always knew my time was going to be up," Webber says. "I want my name to be up there among the best players. Michael Jordan said I was in an interview once, but the world doesn't know it. I want that ... that ... "

Consensus?

"That's the word."

***

The Maloof family, which bought the Kings 21 months ago, has courted Webber like a guy who proposes to his girlfriend on a scoreboard—at the World Series. Joe and Gavin Maloof made their money largely off the development and sale of a Las Vegas casino/hotel, so they know something about playing over the top. They started with a banner on top of Arco Arena proclaiming, "CWebb's House." There's also a billboard on the stretch of I-80 CWebb takes to his house that shows Joe on a riding mower and Gavin saying, "Joe will mow your lawn if you stay. (Gavin)."

Webber would prefer a quieter, face-to-face approach. "All that stuff makes me feel like they're not trying to keep me as much as cover their backs if I leave," he says. "They haven't talked to me once since the season started."

The Maloofs say they simply didn't want to be a distraction, and they plan to talk to Webber after the All-Star break. They'll remind him then about the $9.1 million practice facility they've built, and that they've doubled the payroll. They'll promise to give him a voice in personnel decisions. If they don't know how much convincing it will take, they do know how important it is to succeed. "With all that's happened," Joe Maloof says, biting his lip, "I don't know how he couldn't stay here."

But it's more than the Maloofs' commitment that makes Webber wonder about staying. Despite the Kings' recent success, most players still aren't wild about Sac-town, just about the least cosmopolitan stop in the league. Portland owner Paul Allen and Orlando chairman Rich DeVos have overcome similar problems with big payrolls and by spending tons of money on things like practice facilities and private planes. But the Maloofs' money won't help Webber find a restaurant open after a game. Things like that don't bother family men or small-town kids like Peja, Hedo and JWill. But Webber's a Detroit native who has played in the Bay Area and D.C. The taste for urban life is in his blood.

"I'm bored to death here every day," he says.

***

Before the Maloofs can sell Webber on Sacramento, they have to sell him on themselves. Showy sentiment doesn't fly, not after the Warriors traded to get Webber and then summarily dispatched him, not after the Wizards talked of him in such glowing terms and then gave up on him.

All he wanted in Oakland was an open door to owner Chris Cohan as protection from GM/coach Don Nelson. Webber's concern: Soon after drafting and then trading No.3 overall pick Penny Hardaway and three future first-round picks to Orlando for his rights, Nelson announced Webber would be his center. One minute he's the prototype power forward playing alongside Shaq, the next he's stuck guarding Shaq, Hakeem, Mr. Robinson and a host of other quality centers in their primes. Webber, all of 20 years old and the highly touted leader of Michigan's Fab Five, felt that to justify being chosen No. 1, he had to match or surpass what Shaq had done as a rookie the year before. Playing out of position for a Warriors team that had gone 34-48 the previous season didn't seem like the right recipe.

Despite that, CWebb lived up to his billing, putting up 17.5 ppg and 9.1 rpg and winning Rookie of the Year. He and Spree led the Warriors to 50 wins before the Suns swept them out of the playoffs. But the following November, Cohan was at his door to explain that he was casting his lot with Nelson, who was sending Webber to Washington for Tom Gugliotta and three first-round picks.

Webber's experience in Washington was worse. After being sidetracked by injuries early in his four-year tenure, he led the Wizards to the playoffs in '96-97—their first appearance in 10 years—and thought he had found a home. But that lasted just one more year. Several brushes with the law soured owner Abe Pollin, and Webber was dealt again.

Three seasons later, the leverage is finally in Webber's hands. This time he'll get to pick the town, the owner, the teammates. He misses having someone who will get in his face and demand his best, as Spree and Fab Five teammate Juwan Howard once did. Webber recalls the letters he exchanged with Juwan before the Wizards faced the Bulls and Jordan in the first round, their emotions so high that they had to write them down. "I want to be with people like that," he says.

So the questions that haunt CWebb are the same that worry a man deciding if he should marry his girl. Right now he's caught between Mary Ann and Ginger. Yeah, Mary Ann's safe and solid, the best thing that ever happened to him. But CWebb wonders: Am I settling rather than settling down? Am I afraid to test the waters for fear I'll drift forever? Will I regret this the rest of my life?

There's really only one way he can find out: Marry Ginger.

This article appears in the February 19, 2001, issue of ESPN The Magazine.