"Antawn Jamison is sitting in a folding chair in a cramped locker room in Pittsburgh, intently staring at absolutely nothing. His left knee is still cold, but the ice pack is already gone.

A couple of hours earlier, Jamison was on the floor of the Petersen Events Center, writhing in pain and grabbing at that bothersome knee again. Early in camp it was tendinitis; this time, an opposing player had crashed into him while diving for a loose ball. He exhales while slowly getting out of the chair and a slight groan escapes.

Jamison has plenty of reasons to groan this year, but he won't do it.

He turned 34 over the summer and his remaining time in the league is quickly dwindling. That's part of the reason he's here in the first place.

Jamison has never won a championship on any level - not even AAU or high school. He was the fourth overall pick in 1998, he has scored more than 17,000 points and he has played in two All-Star games. But the yearning for a championship is why he wanted out of Washington last season. The Wizards were reeling from the Gilbert Arenas gun scandal, which wrecked the season and forced them to begin rebuilding.

Jamison knew the alarm on his body clock was about to ring and all he wanted was a chance at a championship. We all know how that ended.

''As everyone knows in this league, players who have chased championships very rarely find them,'' said Wizards coach Flip Saunders, Jamison's former coach in Washington. ''I'm sure he felt last year there was a good opportunity the way everything was. But then they had some injuries and LeBron [James] got hurt. So many things have to fall into place. You have to be good, but you have to be lucky.''"