Short in stature, Klatsky comes up big

Look at David Klatsky, that pipsqueak junior with a buzzed-close-to-the-scalp haircut. He's listed at 5-foot-11 and claims he's 5-10, but c'mon, he can't really be more than 5-9.

Look at David Klatsky, that scrawny Penn point guard. He's listed at 175 pounds, but jeez, that's gotta be his weight in full uniform after a five-course meal and a rainstorm.

Look at the little guy who set a Penn single-season record with 162 assists last year. Underestimate the man who led the Quakers in minutes played. Go ahead, David Klatsky is used to it.

He's been used to it ever since he first got in a game, back when he was three-and-a-half.

That's right, three-and-a-half. At that age, most kids aren't able to throw a ball more than five feet. Not Klatsky. When someone on his six-year-old brother's team couldn't make a game, the excited, barely-more-than-an-infant Klatsky would fill in, instantly becoming one of the best players on the floor.

So go ahead, look at the Holmdel (N.J.) High graduate, the guy who admits he's a point guard because there's not much else someone of his size can do. Go ahead, dismiss him. You wouldn't be the first.

"He was always the smallest one on every team, in every league," said Klatsky's father, Fred. "But by the end of the game, his opponents would say, 'Who is he?'"

So who exactly is Klatsky, besides the smallest player on Penn's roster, besides a two-time New Jersey Group II State Champion, besides a guy who once scored 38 of his team's 48 points to win an eighth-grade championship?

He's a guy that won't ever do to himself what you're doing -- selling the little man short.

"He has such a confidence when he steps on the court," Tom Stead, Klatsky's coach at Holmdel, said. "He's calm, cool and collected. He's the kind of kid at the end of the game that you want to have the ball in his hands. Nothing bothers him."

You hear that? Nothing bothers this guy. Not your taunts, and especially not any sort of pressure.

"He loves being on the [foul] line," Klatsky's mother, Kathy, said. "He always hoped to be in that situation. I think he's crazy."

You want crazy, look at the pressure this Lilliputian has gone through.

Senior year in high school, state championship game? No problem, Klatsky hits all 10 of his foul shots in the last five minutes.

Up by one against California, his freshman year at Penn? Sure, he can handle that. Klatsky steals the ball, hits both shots in a one-and-one and makes another steal seconds later.

Needing to make three free throws with nine seconds left just to tie Davidson last year? Can do. Although Klatsky said, "For some reason I couldn't feel my legs in those foul shots," he drains all three.

First collegiate game? Well, give the man a minute. Klatsky committed a turnover the very first time he touched the ball against Kentucky and was taken out of the game, but he came back soon after and hit a key three-pointer.

"I love pressure situations," Klatsky said. "I want to be in there. I want to be the guy taking that shot."

Penn coach Fran Dunphy said he wants that too, but he also might want something else this year. There's a good chance Klatsky, a guy who started all but one of Penn's 26 games last year, could be the Quakers' sixth man this year, supplanted by junior transfer Andy Toole in the starting lineup.

"Maybe we bring someone like Klatsky off the bench," Dunphy said. "... But at crunch time, I don't want to be on the floor without David."

And although Klatsky doesn't want Penn to be on the floor without him at the end, either -- "There's a big difference between starting and finishing, and finishing is more important," he said -- he also doesn't want Penn to be on the floor without him at the beginning.

"Granted, if it were all up to me, I should be out there," Klatsky said. "Like any athlete, I think I should be out there."

But that's all right, overlook the short guy. Klatsky's AAU coach, John Rivera, did that when he first saw the diminutive baller as a high school sophomore.

"He was an undersized point guard with no real game plan of what he's going to do beyond the high school level," Rivera said.

Now? Well, Rivera's quick to point out how much respect Duke point guard Jason Williams gave Klatsky when they played together in the Jersey Shore League.

"Jason probably paid [Klatsky] the best compliment in the world by saying, 'I'm the two-guard. I don't mind giving the point up to him,'" Rivera said.

That's Jason Williams, mind you: an All-American last year, probably the best player in college basketball. And he didn't undercut Penn's mini-hoopster.

Of course that doesn't mean you won't, right? The Quakers' No. 3 is short, he's certainly not stocky, so you think you can push him around.

Well, maybe you can, but only to an extent.

"I'm used to it," Klatsky said. "I've got my tricks. Being small you've got to make up for it in other ways."

Other ways? Yeah, Klatsky's got a feisty edge to his playing, an edge he no doubt got from endless competitions with his older brother Mike, a 2000 Penn graduate who played varsity tennis and junior varsity basketball.

"Dave was always trying to get the better of [Mike]," said Adam Fleischner, a former Holmdel teammate of Klatsky's and a current Emory (Ga.) basketball player.

That goes for everything, including checkers and ping pong. And if you ask Klatsky, he gets the better of his older brother in everything but tennis.

If you ask 5-foot-9 Mike, though...

"I beat him every time in every sport."

Yeah, even Klatsky's brother, his shorter brother, undersells him.

And really, c'mon, there's no secret as to why. Just look at Klatsky, a guy who'll never have a body-builder's physique, a man who wouldn't have to try too hard to look like a teenage boy.

Go ahead, look at Klatsky, and be like everyone else. Undersell him. Forget his four first-team All-Shore honors, how Stead said he "made people look silly" in the New Jersey Tournament of Champions three years ago, how he hit four threes in Penn's season finale against Princeton last year.

Sell David Klatsky short, but be warned -- he might just make you wish you hadn't.

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