Lakers get 'A' on chemistry lesson

0 Comments | USA TODAY, May, 2008 | by David Leon Moore

LOS ANGELES -- He looks like the unlikeliest of stars.

His shaggy hair, curly and parted in the middle, falling over his ears, has stylists all over the country sharpening their shears.

His wispy, untrimmed beard looks as though it never met a razor it liked.

He's 7 feet, yes, but he looks like he could be blown out of his sneakers by a moderate wind, not to mention a pointed elbow.

He wears braces, for heaven's sake.

And he is from Spain, a country that has sent basketball stars to the NBA about as often as the USA has sent matadors to Madrid.

Yet it is Pau Gasol, the string-bean son of a doctor (his mother) and a hospital administrator (his father) in chic Barcelona, who now is a big man in L.A., having become a...