Leo Rautins came to the 76ers in the 1983 draft, the 17th overall pick and the first Canadian to be chosen in the first round of any selection process ever.

Then the late Jack McMahon, the Sixers' superscout, did something really silly, something that would ultimately prove to be as silly as picking Rautins in the first place: He likened the Syracuse forward to Larry Bird, if only as a passer.

"The comparison to Bird," McMahon told the Philadelphia Daily News at the time, "is very fair. He has superior instincts for looking for the guy under the basket."

It would later come out that McMahon was so enamored of Rautins, he would have recommended that the Sixers take him over future Hall of Famer Clyde Drexler, had the team been presented with that choice. As it was, Drexler went 14th, to Portland.

McMahon was a lovely man, he really was. He was also an astute judge of talent; he did the legwork that brought players like Maurice Cheeks, Andrew Toney and Clint Richardson to the Sixers' championship team of the year before.

But he couldn't have been more wrong about Rautins, who played exactly 28 games for the Sixers in his single season with the team, and 32 NBA games in all.

Turns out that the best passing Leo did, post-Syracuse, involved his genes. Which explains why he was in the stands at Madison Square Garden last Thursday, when this year's Orangemen, featuring his son Andy, faced Georgetown in a Big East Tournament quarterfinal.

The elder Rautins, who turns 50 Saturday, had flown all night from Sacramento, where he worked as a television analyst for the Toronto Raptors' game against the Kings. And the night before that he had flown from Toronto, where he had done a studio show, to Sacramento.

"I haven't slept for two days," he said as he stood near his end-zone seat, not far from the Syracuse bench and right next to the pep band.

His son's game, meanwhile, has awakened these last two years — never more so than in this one, which finds Andy averaging 11.7 points and five assists for a 28-4 team. While the Orange lost a dazzling, high-level affair to the Hoyas, 91-84, they begin the NCAA Tournament as the No. 1 seed in the West Region. They face Vermont in Friday's first round, in Buffalo, N.Y.

Syracuse forward Wesley Johnson was named the conference's Player of the Year, but it is the younger Rautins, a 6-5 shooting guard, who has emerged as the team's catalyst. He is deadly from deep, and, like his dad, a deft passer. And both Rautinses long ago came to grips with whatever comparisons might be made between the two of them.

"I tried to discourage him from coming to Syracuse because of that," said Leo, who doubles as the head coach of Canada's national team. "I didn't want him to hear about me every time he played. He thinks it's cool. He thinks it's great. … As a matter of fact, he takes great pleasure in telling me when he's passed me or when he's done something that I haven't done."

Andy was born in 1986, when Leo was in the second of eight years he would play overseas, and immediately took to the game.

"He's one of those visual people, where if he sees a jump shot, he'll do the jump shot," Leo said.

And if he saw something involving the game — even then — he wanted to soak it up.

"Put it this way," Leo said. "When everybody's watching Sesame Street and your kid's watching 'Red on Roundball' over and over and over again, you've got to figure there's something in there, right?"

He also grew to love Syracuse, and when the Orange lost to Kentucky in the 1995-96 national final, Andy, then 9, grew so distraught he called Leo, who was out of town.

"It took me an hour and a half to calm him down," Leo said. "I just told him, 'They're waiting for you.' "

So after starring at Jamesville-DeWitt High School in Jamesville, N.Y., there was only one place for the younger Rautins. His first two years at Syracuse were ordinary, and he missed his third with a knee injury. But he emerged as a 3-point threat off the bench last year, and is something more now.

"I'm an Andy Rautins guy; I like him," said one NBA scout, speaking under the condition of anonymity. "He makes me nervous at times, because I think he tries to do things he can't do. But that makes him who he is. He's a very good shooter; he has great range. He has size. He has a chance to play in our league."

This is what Leo Rautins passed along. It is, no doubt, his best assist of all.