Big Johnson

Then Johnson goes back to his bedroom and emerges wearing a Team Roc outfit similar to the one he'd worn two weeks earlier. He's also carrying two fist-sized pendants with the Team Roc logo in glistening gold, silver and diamonds.

Before long, 50 Cent is chanting his summer anthem "Just a Little Bit."

Johnson is scary-good for the photographer. His poses work. He has already figured out a way to drape his pendants across his bare arm to show off his rounded muscles.

Johnson knows his best side, even if Kansas City doesn't.

"My reputation is I'm crazy. I beat women. I carry a lot of guns," Johnson says. He doesn't argue some of those points. "Everybody's crazy to a point," he says. "I am crazy to a point."

Johnson isn't likely to turn the other cheek when slighted, even by teammates. He remembers losing his temper during a practice when a coach asked him to block the towering defensive lineman Eric Hicks. "Apparently, I did a good job. He got frustrated. He ripped my helmet off."

In return, Johnson says he blindsided Hicks, knocking him to the turf. "I tried to kick so hard to try to break his neck through his helmet."

In public, Johnson appears stoic. "I don't say much. I just stand there." He knows how that comes across. "I look like I've got an attitude problem."

He describes himself as bipolar — not in a clinical way, he says, but in a way that causes different people to see different men. Even his friends get a moody Johnson, one who smiles and jokes one day and scowls and broods the next.

And he does own guns — or he did. That's one reason his treatment of women has become an issue.

He'd been in town only a few months when Leawood police were called to his house. An ex-girlfriend was visiting, and the two of them had begun arguing. "She wanted to get back together," he says. "I didn't."

Johnson summarizes their exchange: "She shoved me. I shoved her. I went to sleep, woke up, the police were at my door."

The woman wasn't hurt, but she told police that Johnson kept guns in the house — which upped the charge to felony assault.

Johnson entered a diversion program; the charge will disappear if he can stay out of trouble through February.

He gave his guns to a friend and attended the required anger-management classes, though grudgingly. "It's hard to admit you have a problem when you don't have a problem," he says.

But that's not what's on his mind now. Today, he's eager to show the world that he's more than a uniform and angry strides. Johnson has the legs to follow football greats such as Walter Payton and Emmitt Smith. But he's also got his eyes on rappers-turned-cultural icons such as Russell Simmons and Sean "Diddy" Combs.

During the offseason, Johnson opted out of his endorsement contract with Nike, signing instead with Team Roc, the athletic apparel line owned by rap star Jay-Z.

Nike had given him free clothing but had never featured him in any of its ads. Johnson says he had to make an appointment just to buy new outfits at Nike Town — with a $1,000 limit. "If you're not Lebron, Vick or Tiger Woods," he says, "Nike could give two shits about you."

So Johnson went where he was wanted.

Rapper-designed clothing was pioneered by producer Russell Simmons, who launched his Phat Fashions in the early 1990s. Garments that he'd created for a niche market of his fans grew into a label sold at department stores across the country; Simmons unloaded the business last year for $140 million.

Combs replicated Simmons' success with his own Sean John line in 1998. Jay-Z, with partner Damon Dash of Roc-A-Fella Records, followed suit — and may have done it best of all. Rocawear has quickly become a top contender for the urban market (in 2003, Jay-Z told The New York Times that Rocawear would produce $300 million in sales that year), and company officials have designed the Team Roc athletic apparel in a push to expand to other markets.

Larry Johnson is the first athlete signed to the new label. His modeling debut is a full-page ad in the October issue of Men's Fitness. More national ads will follow. Johnson will be getting a lot more attention. "As soon as they are with Team Roc, they are a part of Rocawear," explains Anthony Doran, Team Roc's director of promotions and marketing. "We'd like to put Larry in music videos and in campaign ads."

Rocawear sells better than Sean John or Phat Fashions at the Harold Pener clothing store at the Landing shopping mall. Cashier Nicole Stewart sees the wisdom of bringing in Johnson.

"You've got a young, black athlete, and who better to put on your label?" she says. "With the body and the look ... did I say he was fine?"

Johnson wants an image apart from the man in a bright-red Chiefs jersey. But that will be a challenge — and not simply because he may be dogged by legal questions following the alleged altercation at The Drink. Everything about Johnson's day job is designed to unify him with his teammates.