His to-do list is a monster: Justify the trade for Darius Miles. Work the same magic Jason Kidd did for the Nets. (Or Mike Bibby did for the Kings.) Pull together a locker room full of guys looking to get out. Pump up everybody's stats. Save a joke of a franchise. Take over LA.

No sweat. Andre Miller, the new point guardfor the Los Angeles Clippers, has done much tougher things.

	Andre Miller is ready to light up his hometown.

That list isn't on Miller's lap as he cruises around his old Watts neighborhood on this balmy, late-September afternoon in his mom's black Honda Accord. It's not even on his mind. He conducts the tour with the same awareness and generosity he brings to the basketball court. He points out which blocks belong to the Crips and which to the Bloods. He knows the street corners that will be teeming with people and the ones that will be empty. Those projects over there? Jordan Downs. That's where they shot Menace II Society, and you got no business over there. You've heard that Miller is as quiet as they come? Check your sources. Today he's talking nonstop.

"Everywhere is home to somebody, and this is home to me ... I used to walk along these railroad tracks to get to school … And right over there was the spot, A&T Burgers. We used to eat there all the time. Lotta people been killed right out front … My grandmother's house used to be just down there … See that guy over there? That's my cousin."

Family is important to Miller. The trade from the Cavaliers appealed to him not just because he was coming home, but because he could help out his mother. Ten years ago, his stepfather, a retired steamfitter named Albert Robinson, discovered he had colon cancer. Now, it's spread to his back, stomach and brain. So during homestands, Andre will split his time between the practice facility at Los Angeles Southwest College and his mother Andrea's house. For now, though, we pull in front of the Locke Early Education Center. Andre talks about the day in 1982 when his younger brother, Duane, had a seizure. Duane lost most of his physical capabilities and was reduced to a near vegetative state. Andre, just 6 years old, volunteered to help clean and feed and dress 5-year-old Duane, his only sibling. They would sit together on the couch, and instead of watching TV, Andre would lift Duane's arm to give him some exercise. That's when his mom started calling him Dr. Dre.

To make transporting Duane easier during the frequent trips back and forth to the hospital, Andrea bought a blue Dodge utility van with a wheelchair lift. "We went everywhere in that van," says Miller. "People knew it was us when they saw the blue van coming down the block."

The medical bills ran high, and Andrea's job at California's Department of Veterans Affairs wasn't enough to make ends meet. Or even to get them in the same room together. So Andrea, Andre and his friends piled into that blue van and sold candy all over Los Angeles. They went to malls, check-cashing joints, parks and swap meets -- anywhere people had money, anywhere they wouldn't get chased away. Sometimes they would sell enough candy to buy $8 seats up in the rafters at the old Forum for Lakers games. Then they'd sneak down in the fourth quarter so Andre could study Magic up close.

Duane was in and out of comas, and Andrea would turn quick trips to the hospital into vigils that lasted days. Andre was there too, but after a while Mom would send him home to get sleep for school. Duane died six years and two months after his attack. "I grew up a lot in that time," says Miller.

We hit the dip on 108th that Ice Cube warned about and keep mashin'. Double-back on 109th -- one of the five or six places in Watts and South Central he's called home -- and a Crip recklessly zooms by us on a bombed-out scooter. Miller pulls over in front of the Ernest Killum 109th Street Recreation Center. There's a small jungle gym next to a halfcourt concrete slab. "This is where I learned to play ball," says Miller. It's where he discovered how to use his shoulder to knock defenders off balance in the lane. Where he found he could control a game without shooting. And where he learned to be tough. The locals play a special brand of 21: The player with the fewest points at the end of the game gets kicked in the tail. And since there are no take-backs in the 'hood, you better know how to go up strong.

Behind the court is one of the few fields in Watts that is more grass than dirt. Miller drives around the block to the far side of the field, where 20 or so play a game of football best described as two-hand crush. He creeps by slowly, looking for a familiar face. The entire crew stops and shoots ice-cold stares back at the car's occupants. A few long seconds pass before a smile comes to one of the hard faces. "Yo Andre!" comes a shout, and a few players approach the car. After introductions are made, a burly, cornrowed OG named Smurf leans in the passenger window. "We don't get reporters this deep in the 'hood," he says, then flashes a smile.

"I've known him since he used to ride around in the blue van," another says while the rest surround Miller.

"We saw you on TV, Dre … Y'all gone beat the Lakers? ... Hey, hook me up with a jersey, okay?"

The last request is familiar. The Cavaliers made up dozens of No. 24 jerseys that Andre would send back to the neighborhood. The Clippers will be more than happy to do the same.

Miller guides the car past rough-and-tumble Verbum Dei High School. That's where Utah coach Rick Majerus saw him play one game and dominate so completely that he handed him a scholarship right then and there. The memories pour out, but the talk isn't about the '98 Final Four or the All-America honors that led to his being taken No. 8 in the '99 draft. Instead, he rambles on about working at a Salt Lake City junkyard the summer before his freshman year. That's when he separated bottles from cans and sent them up on the appropriate conveyor belts to be recycled. He'd fish through the bags of recyclable material and take out the occasional brick before he weighed the cans and dispensed change. He talks about his second job, cleaning a bar at 6 a.m., and about the the loneliness of sitting out his first season as a Prop 48 kid while pumping up his grades. About playing intramural hoops with football players to satisfy his basketball jones.

And about being lucky to make it out of Utah alive. It was two months before the draft. He had just lost his two great-grandparents, and to ease his mind he took one last horseback riding trip with his Utah teammates. When he mounted, his horse galloped off without warning. In the wrong direction. To avoid a collision with an oncoming horse, Miller yanked the reins as hard as he could -- and went tumbling headfirst to the ground. Somehow, he escaped injury. The crew hopped in the blue van and headed back to Salt Lake. But as they made their way through an intersection near campus, a drunken driver drilled the van on the driver's-side door. Miller saw the car out of the corner of his eye and dived from the driver's seat into the back seat. "If we were in a car we'd be dead," he says. The van rolled a couple of times and slid to a stop upside down. Miller was uninjured, but teammate Brandon Jessie, who was asleep on the back bench seat, broke both legs and tore up a knee. That was the last Andre saw of the blue van.

He wheels the Honda down Compton Avenue and turns into a tidy, lower-middle-class neighborhood. He pulls into the driveway of his mother's compact, one-story house, where she's lived since Andre was a soph at Verbum Dei. His aunt, Marsha Walters, sits out front in a lawn chair, waiting. "We heard you was driving around here," she says. Word travels fast in the neighborhood.

His mother emerges from behind a long green dumpster parked in the driveway. This is the mom who once traveled 54 hours from LA to Cleveland for a game, loves watching old NBA games on ESPN Classic and follows the league as closely as anyone. Andre has offered to buy her a new house, but after taking some time to look, Andrea decided to wait. Today, she's wearing latex gloves because she's been cleaning out the shed and backyard. Her gloves are dirty so she motions for you to give her a pound. "Like the young people do," she says.Miller's mom is just trying to stay busy. Anything to keep her mind off her husband's cancer. "It's got him bad," Andre says quietly. "Real bad." Doctors have told Andrea and Andre that there's nothing else they can do for Robinson.

Miller's biological father split when Duane got sick and hasn't been a part of his life since. Albert and Andrea met in 1990. At first, Miller and Robinson knocked heads. "Once I chased him down the block," Andre says, "or maybe he chased me." They had nothing in common, and Andre was bothered by the age difference between Robinson and his mom, who was 27 years younger. But after a while, the two men realized they had at least one thing in common: They both loved Andrea. In time, stepfather and stepson grew close. They worked on the yard together and tinkered with cars and old appliances. It was just old junk to Miller, but that was the way they connected. "We never threw anything away," says Miller. "People called us Sanford and Son."

After just 10 seconds in the driveway, Andrea is fussing over her son. "It might be nice if you wore a seat belt, young man," she says. Mother and son have the same relaxed drawl, only Mom punctuates conversations with "Ooh" and "Yes, Lord." "What are you doing back around here? Stay out of the old neighborhood." A pause. "Go say hi to your stepfather," she insists.

	More than anyting, Miller is happy to be around his family again.

Andre walks into the backyard. While he's away, his mother wipes down the dashboard and picks bits of dirt from the driver's-side floor mat. Anything to keep her mind off things.

Three days later, Miller is at College of the Desert in Palm Desert, the Clippers' training site two hours east of LA. It's the first day of their most eagerly anticipated season -- has a Clippers season ever been eagerly anticipated before? -- but there are dark clouds. Lamar Odom shows up on aluminum crutches because of a severely sprained right ankle. Elton Brand is in a walking cast, having had arthroscopic surgery on his right knee five days earlier. Quentin Richardson is hobbling with a sprained right knee, and even rookies Melvin Ely and Chris Wilcox arrive with nagging injuries.

Miller himself had a rough summer. His split with Cleveland turned acrimonious when the Cavs blamed him for their attendance woes -- conveniently forgetting Miller led the league in assists on a team that ranked 16th in scoring. There was an aborted draft-night trade with the Clippers, then more trade rumors before a deal was finally completed. And then there were two weeks of misery with the U.S. team at the World Championships in Indianapolis. As for contract talks, Miller and the Clippers have agreed to put them on hold until after the season. "We agreed that it made sense to wait," says Miller's agent, Lon Babby. "Before you have a marriage, you have to have a courtship."

If any of that is weighing on Miller, you'd never know it. He gently lofts underhand layups a few feet from the basket, calm as ever. Andre could be the league's UPS man: no tattoos, no ice chains, no 4X sweat suits; just plain packaging, dependable, always on time. But he knows what he's up against. Coach Alvin Gentry has said he should be fired if the Clips don't reach the postseason. Miller's aware that once everyone gets healthy, minutes and touches are going to be at a premium. And he understands that everything is in his two steady hands.

"When the time is right to speak up," he says, "I will."

Just something else to do.

This article appears in the November 11 issue of ESPN The Magazine.