He was supposed to be inconspicuous. After all, as an 8-year-old in a league full of 10-year-olds, Mark Jackson was playing only because he and his parents had fibbed about his age.

So there he was, yelling out instructions to the older players, pointing them in the right direction, patting them on the backs, acting like a coach on the court.

"That's the only way I knew how to play," Jackson said of his days on St. Pascal's C.Y.O. team in St. Albans, Queens. "Everybody I had watched that was a leader ? the point guards, the quarterbacks ? did those things. So I learned at a young age that those were the things that leaders did."