SYRACUSE, N.Y. -- Is it the creativity on offense, or his work at the defensive end?
Is it the way his team usually wins, or how he was nearly a part of Arkansas' run to the NCAA title last season?
None of the above. With Michael Lloyd, the topic of discussion is usually his scarlet letter, and in his case, the A stands for attitude.
The putdowns and pained expressions that were accepted on (( the playgrounds of Baltimore don't always sit well with teammates, coaches and referees. As the biggest star on a Dunbar High team that was the nation's best and now as the point guard for Syracuse University, Lloyd has labored to get his emotions under control and cease being his own worst enemy.
"If I'm playing or practicing and something's in my way, I might not respond the right way," Lloyd said. "It got to the point where I was tabbed with an attitude problem, but I'm just so high-tempered and competitive, people tend to take it the wrong way."
Lloyd has talked about the flaw in his otherwise grand game so much it's no longer a sore subject. "I can still be impatient with people, but I'm not as negative as I used to be," Lloyd said. "I don't talk as much as I used to. It detracted from my game."
Keith Booth, the Maryland forward who was a teammate at Dunbar, said Lloyd recognized he had a problem.
"In pickup games this summer, I found he had calmed down a little bit," Booth said. "He's more focused about what he wants to do, which is become a professional basketball player. All the emotion he shows on the court, people might look at it in a negative way, but it's just a part of him being a great player and wanting to win.
"In high school, whenever a guy made a mistake, Michael would get on your back. He'd scream, 'Catch the damned ball,' or 'Man, get him out of the game,' something like that. When you're young, you take it personal, that he's trying to make you look bad, but he wasn't. Besides, I'd talk back to him. That's the type of team it was."
When Maryland and Booth meet Massachusetts and Donta Bright at the Baltimore Arena on Saturday, two-thirds of the core that led Dunbar to a mythical national title in 1991-92 will be represented.
It was Lloyd, however, who was the area's Player of the Year, was a McDonald's All-American and won a dunk contest over Jason Kidd and Exree Hipp.
After two seasons of relative obscurity at a junior college in Texas, he's eager to perform in front of the Carrier Dome crowds of 30,000 and show that Allen Iverson and Felipe Lopez won't be the only newcomers to make a major impact in the Big East Conference.
Coming out of Dunbar, Lloyd wanted to take his talent and drive to Arkansas. Michigan's Fab Five and North Carolina's sophomores are the two best recruiting classes of the 1990s, but the trio of Lloyd, Corliss Williamson and Scotty Thurman that Nolan Richardson signed in 1992 wasn't too shabby either.
Lloyd's standardized test scores were a hang-up, however. He would have had to sit out 1992-93 as an academic non-qualifier to be a part of Arkansas' NCAA championship team last season.
A year's inactivity didn't interest Lloyd, so he followed the lead of Sam Cassell, an earlier Dunbar hero who faced a similar situation, and moved to San Jacinto Junior College. Lloyd led the nation's two-year players in scoring the past two seasons, then reconsidered Arkansas and briefly looked at Maryland. The starting guards were back on both teams.
"You've got to look at where you're going to fit in," Lloyd said. "I've got to be at a place where I'm going to be able to play right away. If I had gone to Arkansas, I would have shared so much playing time. I wouldn't have gotten what I needed to help me.
"I've got a lot of friends at Maryland, but their situation was similar to Arkansas'. If I had signed there, it would have been like I'm coming there to take somebody's starting spot or something. That would have been too controversial."
Another Sweet 16 team, however, had an opening, and Syracuse, with the freedom coach Jim Boeheim allows his point guards -- see Pearl Washington and Sherman Douglas -- appears to be an ideal setting for Lloyd.
Shooting guard Lawrence Moten, who is expected to break the Orange career scoring record this season, is averaging 17.0 points after last night's Big East win at Miami, while Lloyd is at 16.4 to go with his 6.2 assists per game.
"We like our point guards to score," Boeheim said. "Michael's pretty astute, and that's why he came here. He can play both guard positions, and that will help him as far as going to the next level. He needs to become more consistent with his outside shot and assume a leadership role, but that takes time.
"People said he'd be difficult to handle, he'd need to score, but he's been easy to deal with."
Ah, yes, the attitude.
The assumption that Lloyd gets on people who can't do things that come easily to him ignores the time the 22-year-old has invested in his game. Lloyd works on his shot, his ball-handling, his defense, his muscular, 6-foot-2, 190-pound frame and, of course, his emotions.
"He's learning to deal with his temper," Boeheim said. "He tends to show displeasure at calls, and referees, particularly in our league, don't like that. Against Colgate [last week], he threw a pass, and maybe a guy wasn't where he was supposed to be. He gave an expression like the guy screwed up. It was right before a timeout, and we addressed it right then.
"He has to learn he can't do that."
He's working on it.