Talent Runs in the Family

Once, they were just young boys with big dreams.

John Cox wasn’t a high-scoring guard at the University of San Francisco about to forge his professional career. And Kobe Bryant was merely his cousin.

Back then those summers in and around Philadelphia were mostly about growing up and being together.

“We’d hang out like any cousins would,” Cox said. “We did a little bit of everything from baseball and swimming to playing basketball. We’d go to the movies.”

Basketball was different. It was a part of their lives from the very beginning and became a path to their future.

“Baby courts, big courts, we’d go back and forth all night long,” Bryant said.

Bryant, of course, is a superstar with the Lakers and one of the most identifiable people in the game. Cox understands that he may forever be known in basketball circles as his cousin, but it isn’t stopping him from finding his own success.

As he leads San Francisco into tonight’s West Coast Conference first-round game against Portland, the 6-foot-5 senior is about to complete a prolific college career that has had its share of adversity.

Given a sixth year of eligibility by the NCAA after a knee injury wiped out all but one game of his 2003-04 season, Cox earned first-team all-conference honors by leading the league in scoring with a career-high 20.4 average. He helped the Dons to a 15-12 record and tie for fifth in the conference with Pepperdine.

“For one, I stayed healthy which is a blessing,” said Cox, who has 1,470 career points. “I’m really thankful to have the opportunity to show everybody what I can do.”

Some of those people include NBA scouts. He is a longshot to be drafted, but Cox has the ability to create his shot and make it with regularity, a quality that pro teams covet.

“John Cox is tough because he scores from distance and he’s good in two-man games,” said Portland Coach Michael Holton, a former UCLA and NBA player. “Those are skills that obviously have premium value in our league and at the next level as well.”

As an advanced college player, the 23-year-old Cox has also helped the transition of first-year Coach Jessie Evans to the WCC after seven years at Louisiana Lafayette. The two hit it off last summer after Cox returned from China with a team of other collegians.

“He has taken it upon himself to be a leader of the guys, on and off the floor,” said Evans, a former Arizona assistant under Lute Olson. “It’s not coach-speak when I say that he’s a joy to coach. I have never heard him complain about anything.

“Everyone looks at him as a scorer, but he has to do a lot more on the floor for us to be successful.”

Cox has been able to step out of not only Bryant’s shadow but that of an accomplished basketball family. His father, Chubby Cox -- whose sister is Bryant’s mother, Pamela -- was an all-conference player who teamed with Bill Cartwright on the 1976-77 San Francisco team that went 29-2 and was ranked No. 1 in the nation. His uncle, Joe Bryant, had a lengthy pro career in the NBA and overseas.

The two families spent a great deal of time together in west Philadelphia and a few minutes away in the suburbs of Lower Merion where the Bryants lived. As they grew up, Bryant said the two were “extremely close, like brothers.”

“We had our dunks that we do and we’d compete against each other,” Cox said. “Usually, it was him, my older brother Sharif [Butler] and I. They were three years older so I had to keep up, especially if I was going to get a run in a game.”

As the teenage years would arrive, he and many other basketball followers would see something extraordinary in his soon-to-be-world-famous relative.

“Even the immediate family saw his passion and how hard he worked,” Cox said of Bryant. “We saw him every day and we knew the drive he had.”

But Bryant wasn’t the only one who made a name for himself in Philadelphia high school basketball. At Carver High, Cox scored 1,798 points, the ninth-highest total in the city’s history, and averaged 29 points, eight rebounds and four assists as a senior in making the all-state team.

“He’s extremely talented,” Bryant said.

If Cox can lead the Dons to victories on four consecutive days this weekend, it would fulfill his goal of reaching the NCAA tournament. But the conference is unusually strong this season, making a stirring run unlikely.

Ultimately, if he is known only as Kobe Bryant’s cousin, so be it.

“It’s cool,” Cox said. “He’s one of the best players in the world and I am glad that I am related to him. We talk about anything, not just basketball.

“As far as basketball, I’m just trying make my name and build my own little legacy.”

Times staff writer Mike Bresnahan contributed to this report