PHILADELPHIA — The pictures are the wallpaper of Damone Brown’s life.

Brown’s mother, Alaine Hodge, opens the photo album that chronicles her son’s four years at Syracuse. There’s Brown and his best buddy Allen Griffin decked out in tuxedos. There’s Brown hanging with former SU teammates, including Kueth Duany sporting mobster garb and a top hat.

There’s a full page of studio shots with Brown and his sisters wearing Brown’s No. 25 Syracuse jersey. And there’s Brown’s son, Damone Jr., in a bathtub, wearing nothing but a toothy grin. (‘He looks just like Damone did when he was a baby,’ Hodge says. ‘Spittin’ image.’)

Save three small pictures of Brown with several Philadelphia 76ers teammates that sit on his coffee table, the photo album’s plastic pages hold the only pictures found in Brown’s bare-walled yet plush living room.

Brown moved into the ninth floor apartment on the city’s outskirts last year and stocked it with the latest amenities. A wide-screen TV, complete with surround sound, takes up nearly an entire wall. An Xbox video game system sits on the floor next to a rack of countless CDs and DVDs. Brown even owns a pair of coveted Allen Iverson duck-style bobble head dolls. (They collect dust on his end table).

‘It’s straight,’ Brown says, lounging back in one of his two black leather couches. ‘I can’t complain. You try and hook it up as much as you can.’

Brown is in the first year of a two-year contract with the Sixers that pays him more than $330,000 annually. He’s been on the injured list since Dec. 30 with a strained lower back and has missed the last week of practice with a sprained left ankle.

Brown hopes to return to practice this week after the All-Star break. He appeared in 16 games in the first half of the season, averaging 3.2 minutes and played a career-high 18 minutes against Memphis on Dec. 8.

‘The team is great guys,’ Brown says. ‘It’s just like a new team. I came from Syracuse. Now I’m here in Philly. There was a little transition, but you get used to it pretty quickly.’

For the most part, Brown is the same East Buffalo kid who roamed the SU campus for four years.

Perhaps the navy blue sweat suit he’s wearing doesn’t drape off his coat hanger frame as much as it once did. But at 22 he’s still casually quiet and polite (he ignores his cell phone and beeper, letting them ring and buzz hopelessly on the coffee table). His trademark wispy mustache and neatly trimmed goatee still frame a sheepish smile disturbed only by a crooked left, front tooth.

Along with his mother, Brown’s father Michael Respress, sister and two friends from Buffalo are visiting for the weekend. They’ll later cruise over to the First Union Center for the slam-dunk contest in Brown’s luxurious black Yukon. (He hooked it up with a TV).

Though Brown’s family plans to stay in Buffalo, they make trips to Sixers games whenever they can. Brown talks to his mother almost every day, and Damone Jr. visits once a month. The only item on Brown’s refrigerator door is his son’s finger painting marked with the words: ‘This is my family.’

‘Being at school, you get used to not being at home and seeing my son every day,’ Brown says. ‘You adjust.’

Brown has also had to acclimate himself with the rigors of an NBA lifestyle. Practices, card signings, charity events and travel time fill his day. And then there are the minimal playing opportunities.

‘You just have to go hard every time you’re out there,’ says Brown, who now plays his natural small-forward position.

The transition from studly senior leader to rookie hazing target certainly isn’t one of Brown’s favorite NBA perks. He has to get up an hour early on the road to drop the practice gear off and sing for a teammate’s birthday. He stays close to most of his fellow hazing victims — the Sixers’ younger cohorts Raja Bell, Alvin Jones, Speedy Claxton and Sam Dalembert.

‘The older guys show us the ropes,’ Brown says.

Twenty miles from Brown’s apartment building — across the Schuylkill River, past West Philadelphia’s sardine-packed housing projects and Overbrook High (Wilt Chamberlain’s alma mater), past the morbid scrap yards and countless hoagie shops — 19 of the NBA’s finest young players ham it up in the Rookie Challenge.

The Warriors’ Jason Richardson nails a 360 slam that draws an ‘oooh’ from the bedroom, where Brown’s friends are watching the game.

‘Oh my god,’ Brown says in awe, eyes as wide as the TV he’s watching.

‘Hey Slink Dink,’ his friend yells from the other room.

‘I see it man,’ Brown says, shaking his head at the replay.

Richardson and the rest of the participants all live the same lavish NBA lifestyle as Brown, but he has one thing seven of them don’t — a college degree.

‘I figure if you’re going to go to school and you’re going to stay there for four years,’ Brown says, ‘you’ve got to get something out of it.’

Brown picks up the photo album and runs his finger on the outside of it. He doesn’t open it, instead reflecting on the friendships inside.

‘You’re with them for four years like every day,’ Brown says. ‘You build a bond with them. Everything about it, you miss it. I tell people all the time that college is the best time of your life.’

Brown follows the Orangemen as much as possible. He talked to Griffin, now playing in Italy, two weeks ago. He hooked up former Orangeman Tony Bland (now at San Diego State) with tickets to a Sixers-Lakers game in Los Angeles. Brown even plans to attend SU’s Feb. 28 game against Villanova.

He offers an interesting comparison to former teammate DeShaun Williams: ‘He’s kind of like Allen Iverson in his approach to the game. He feels like he’s got to put a team on his back right now in order for them to be successful.’

Apparently Brown has been watching. So has he caught wind of the Orangemen’s nickname for freshman Hakim Warrick (a.k.a. Baby Damone)?

‘Yeah, that’s pretty good,’ Brown says with a laugh. ‘But ‘Baby Damone,’ you gotta step up and use that. Don’t let that name go to waste.’

As for the Syracuse degree that separates him from so many other NBA rookies, well, that’s at home in Buffalo for now. Brown will wait a while to bring his diploma down to Philly.

‘When I really get settled,’ he says. ‘Get me a home. Be the family man.’

Sure would look nice on those walls.

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Darryl Slater’s column appears each Tuesday in The Daily Orange.

Published on February 11, 2002 at 12:00 pm