Be quiet and listen, Jazz rookies advised

It was eons ago, but Matt Harpring has been there. Ronnie Brewer too, just last season. It is one's initial year in the NBA, and it's something of which at this very moment Morris Almond is trying to remember all the ins and outs.

Did you pick up the doughnuts, Morris?

What about the laundry, Rook?

Yo, Mo, how 'bout some help with these bags?

Beyond remembering plays that come with no playbook and trying to earn regular-rotation playing time at shooting guard, 2007 first-round draft choice Almond — who'll make his preseason debut tonight, when the Jazz open exhibition play against Milwaukee at EnergySolutions Arena — must deal with, and overcome, all the responsibility that comes with being a rookie.

C'mon, Morris, where are the ones with the sprinkles?

That's the kind of question some teammates might have this year for Almond, the first Rice University product selected in the NBA Draft's opening round since Detroit tapped Ricky Pierce — he lasted 16 seasons, including eight with the Bucks — at No. 18 overall in 1982.

Teammates except, perhaps, the ones not far removed.

"I ain't gonna treat him bad," Brewer said, "because he's gonna go through it with the older guys throughout the year."

Instead, Brewer vowed to offer No. 25 pick Almond — a teammate on a high school all-star select team that represented the United States in the 2003 Global Games International Basketball Tournament — "advice on how to go along with some of the stuff."

It goes, Brewer said, like this: "(Don't) let your ego get ahead of yourself and act like you're a tough guy. You've got to understand everybody was 'the man' in college. You've got to kind of start off at the lowest of the totem poll and work your way up."

Not that an inflated sense of self-worth should be much of a concern for the Georgia-born Almond, an Army brat who along with his father, Willie, bounced around bases in Kentucky, Colorado, Georgia, Germany, Ohio and Kansas until settling back in Georgia as an eighth-grader.

"I think if you're a diverse person, and have a wide personality, no matter what situation you're put in you should be able to adapt and excel in that," said Brewer, who went on to the University of Arkansas while Almond was at Rice. "With him, and myself — we come from a good background, so we're able to handle adversity. I went through some, not being able to play a lot (last season) as I thought I would. Whatever his situation is, I think he's gonna be able to adapt as well."