This was 1995-96, the 76ers' 18-victory season of first-round draft choice Jerry Stackhouse and the team of Clarence Weatherspoon, Vernon Maxwell, Trevor Ruffin, Shawn Bradley, Jeff Malone, Sharone Wright and Derrick Alston.

And, during the preseason workouts and scrimmages at Saint Joseph's University ... Lower Merion High senior Kobe Bryant.

"He was better than anyone we had," said Chicago Bulls assistant coach Ron Adams, then a 76ers assistant.

Bryant, in his 12th season, became the NBA's Most Valuable Player for the first time this season. He has won three rings with the Los Angeles Lakers, but when the Finals began last night in Boston he was aiming for his first title without Shaquille O'Neal.

"I brought him to the Spectrum when we were playing the Chicago Bulls, to introduce him to Michael Jordan," then-76ers coach and general manager John Lucas said. "Kobe was very polite, calling Michael 'Mr. Jordan.' When we left, I said, 'Kobe, you're coming into the league, you can't be calling him Mr. Jordan.' "

Looking back, Lucas said his wife was the one who turned him on to Bryant.

"Our daughter went to Lower Merion, and my wife went to the games," Lucas said from his home in Houston. "She told me about a kid named 'Kobe Bean.' She said he was better than I was in high school. I told her she was out of her mind.

"I went to the Palestra to see him play against Chester, and ran into Joe Bryant, 'Jelly Bean,' who I knew in Houston. I hadn't put the two together. He laughed and said, 'That's my son.' "

Eventually, Lucas had Kobe working out with him at 6 a.m., before school, then going through after-school drills with Adams and current Celtics assistant Tom Thibodeau. And then he would play in the scrimmages.

"He was precocious at that age, but a promising prospect," Adams said. "It's one thing to talk about what a player might be able to do, but it was another thing to see him play against other people, to see it firsthand."

When it was time to draft in '96, the 76ers and everybody else had a pretty good picture of who Bryant was and what they thought he might become. The 76ers had the No. 1 overall pick, and were zeroed in on Allen Iverson. But doing their due diligence under the watchful, veteran eye of Gene Shue, they worked out the kid from Lower Merion. Lucas, by then, was gone. Brad Greenberg was the general manager, Johnny Davis the coach.

"He had an incredible workout," said Shue, who still scouts for the 76ers.

The 76ers took Iverson, who went on to win four scoring titles and the MVP in 2000-01, helping them reach the Finals for the first time since 1982-83. Bryant went No. 13, to the then-Charlotte Hornets, and a few weeks later was traded to the Lakers.