There are pretenders, contenders and champions, and then there are rarities like Kobe Bryant.

The kind of player who prefers to sip champagne only through the funnels of championship trophies, who celebrates just long enough for his clothing to get drenched before new challenges pique his imagination and fuel his motivation.

We call it an inability to smell the roses, to enjoy the sunshine before it rains, but Bryant has had a beautifully scented garden for some time off a boulevard in Hollywood. Even when it rains, his life continues to blossom.

Bryant is 24 years old. A three-time NBA champion. A recent husband, father, and $45 million man with Nike. Yet he is so far from satisfied, he's also the potential nightmare that could paralyze Tinseltown, the very place where dreams are created.

Bryant made news on Thursday when ESPN announced that he plans to opt out of his contract and test free agency after next season expires. But for anyone close to Bryant, this hardly qualified as a surprise.

The Grizzlies will exercise the option on the contracts of forwards Robert Archibald and Chris Owens. The two are now under contract for the 2003-04 season.

The team also made a qualifying offer to forward Mike Batiste. Batiste now becomes a restricted free agent and, according to league rules, if another team signs Batiste to an offer sheet, the Griz have 15 days to match.

Troy Bell spent his NBA draft day Thursday at his family's home in Minnesota, helping arrange tables and chairs for his draft party.

"I wasn't nervous at all," he said.

Dahntay Jones, on the other hand, spent part of the day getting in one last workout for the Atlanta Hawks before rushing back to his family in New York City.

"It was crazy day," Jones said.

Both the 6-1 Bell from Boston College and the 6-6 Jones from Duke seemed a little dazed and fatigued when the Grizzlies' first-round draft choices met with the media on Friday at The Pyramid.

After Grizzlies president of basketball operations Jerry West introduced combo guard Bell and swingman Jones, Grizzlies coach Hubie Brown said trading with Boston to get the Celtics' No. 16 (Bell) and No. 20 (Jones) picks was "a win-win situation."

"Once we couldn't move up in the draft to get who we wanted, we had to go with Plan 'B'," Brown said. "We had to trade because Dahntay Jones wouldn't have been there at our 27th pick. Atlanta was going to take him at 21. Anytime you trade down, you're taking a gamble, but we're thrilled with the guys we got."

Grizzlies coach Hubie Brown didn't waste his breath after all.

Boston College's Troy Bell and Duke's Dahntay Jones were among four prospects Brown chastised two weeks ago in a workout.

Turns out Brown provided those players with a preview of his coaching style.

But instead of trading up as Brown warned that day, the team moved down Thursday night in the NBA draft and wound up putting Bell and Jones in Grizzlies uniforms.

The Griz gave the proceedings in New York their first twist when they swapped their first-round picks (No. 13 and No. 27) for the rights to Boston's selections at 16 and 20.

Griz president of basketball operations Jerry West coveted a different player who went in the top 10. Once his bid to move up fell through, West completed the deal with Boston and grabbed "two of the five best athletes in this draft."

Boston received the draft rights to UNLV's Marcus Banks (13) and Memphis recruit Kendrick Perkins (27) from Beaumont (Texas) Ozen High.

"There wasn't a player we loved up there," West said, referring to the 13th pick. "If we waited any longer, we wouldn't have gotten (Jones) at 27. . . . We're going to take the best players, period. We took the best players at 16 and 20 - better than what we would have gotten at 13 and 27."

Grizzlies point guard Jason Williams underwent successful surgery Thursday to remove bone spurs from his left ankle.

Dr. William Hamilton performed the surgery in New York.

The minor procedure will limit Williams 8-12 weeks but he is expected to be ready for training camp in October. Williams, a five-year veteran, will enter the second year of a six-year, $43 million contract extension signed in 2001.

He complained of ankle and foot pain over the past few seasons. Williams also missed three games with a sprained or sore foot last season - the point guard's best as a pro.

You kept waiting for the other sneaker to drop.

On a hot-as-a-draft-rumor Thursday in Oakland, you just knew the phone lines were burning between the Warriors' headquarters and Memphis. At No. 11, the Warriors had taken ``Jerry's guy,'' Frenchman Mickael Pietrus. Hints dropped by Grizzlies General Manager Jerry West had convinced just about every mock drafter that West would do whatever it took to land ``the Michael Jordan of Europe.''

If West loves him, went the runaway thinking, he must be something. West is the best, as a talent evaluator and draft manipulator. Surely he had worked some five-way trade involving the Warriors.

You waited . . . and waited . . . until West dropped the other sneaker on the head of Warriors G.M. Garry St. Jean.

Interviewed on ESPN, West acknowledged he had traded the player he picked 13th, Marcus Banks, plus his No. 27 to Boston for the two players the Celtics had taken, Troy Bell and Dahntay Jones. So this was his Plan B because the Warriors had snatched Pietrus two picks ahead of him?

``That's really strange,'' West said with mock surprise. ``I wouldn't have taken him at 13. We think he's a great prospect, and we could have traded up to get him, but there was somebody we liked a little better at 13.''

Somebody who was gone. Somebody the Warriors did not draft. Michael Sweetney, who went No. 9 to the New York Knicks? Jarvis Hayes, who went 10th to Washington? Nick Collison, who went 12th to Seattle?

Uh-oh. Had St. Jean read and believed too many West-manipulated mock drafts? Through the media, had West misled St. Jean into ``stealing'' a player West now says he wouldn't have taken two picks later? Had overhyped mystique created another Warriors draft mistake, considering the player St. Jean passed?

Don't be surprised to see NBA commissioner David Stern walk toward the draft podium and announce:

With the 13th pick, the Memphis Grizzlies select. . . .

Fill in shooting guard here.

This is what Michael Dickerson expects, given he's been seriously injured and mostly unavailable in two seasons - playing a total of 10 games - since the Grizzlies' move down south.

Dickerson visited with team doctors earlier this week. He limped away in obvious pain because of a lingering sports hernia. The situation forces the Griz to enter tonight's draft with no choice but to strongly consider finding a possible replacement with the 13th or 27th pick.

The 6-5 guard could require three months of rehabilitation, putting his availability for training camp in doubt. No Dickerson means the Griz lack depth at shooting guard.

When the NBA draft begins tonight at 7 at New York's Madison Square Garden, Michael Sweetney will be sitting in the Green Room, the invitation-only, backstage pad for players expected to go early in the first round.

"It's going to be a nervous situation not knowing when your name's going to be called," Sweetney said. "Once my name is called, I'll be relieved, and this'll be the greatest moment of my life so far."

Sweetney, the former Oxon Hill High and Georgetown star, averaged 22.8 points and 10.8 rebounds as a junior for the Hoyas. NBA teams have praised the power forward's offensive skills, leading many to project that he will be one of the first dozen players drafted tonight.

"You can bet that if he's around, we'll pick him," said Tony Barone, assistant coach of the Memphis Grizzlies, who own the 13th pick. "We like him a lot. But I guarantee you, he's going to be gone by then."

Barring an 11th-hour trade that would significantly improve their draft position or help land a veteran big man, the Grizzlies are poised to keep the 13th pick in Thursday's draft.

At least that was the consensus on Tuesday, the last day the Grizzlies worked out prospects.

"We can move up if we wanted to," Griz president Jerry West said. "I feel very strongly that we could. But I think after the first three picks, I'd rather keep what we have and let somebody else draft up there. We think we'll get a nice player at (13)."

The Grizzlies also own the 27th pick in the first round but are without any second-round selections.

West later said the Grizzlies "need to get out of the trading business," debunking an earlier notion that they would attempt to make a splash in the draft.

As the Rockets' brass is reminded this week of all the first-round talent it cannot choose, the decisions it cannot make and party it really cannot attend, it can console itself with the knowledge of why the Rockets do not have a first-round draft pick.

The Rockets remain sure that their decision, even in hindsight, was a good one.

They are also pleased to have picked up Steve Francis.

Technically, the Rockets do not have a first-round pick in Thursday's NBA draft because they sent their pick, 13th overall, to the Grizzlies to complete the 11-player, three-team deal that brought them Francis.

But in many ways, it is another deal with the Grizzlies, the one they did not make, that has them sitting out the first round.