Ray Glier

LaMarcus Aldridge, according to newspaper reports, spent Valentine’s Night watching tape of his game against Baylor.

Understand, this is a guy who everyone figured back in January was going to be stuffing millions into his pockets come June. It isn’t like he doesn’t have suitors monitoring his every breath, someone who really wanted to be his Valentine.

This information should be valuable to the NBA team that wins the lottery May 23 and has the No. 1 pick in the draft.

It is one thing to have talent at 6-foot-11 — the wingspan of a giant who is 7-5 — and a graceful shot to go with it.

It is another to have the 24/7 desire to get better, even on Valentine’s Day.

It’s why Aldridge, the Texas center/power forward, should be the No. 1 pick in the NBA draft.

The draft, as we know, is full of flops whose motors turned off the day after they banked the first check or were never turned on to the intensity of the league in the first place.

There was Kwame Brown, who failed in Washington and is trying to revive himself in L.A. There was Darko Milicic, the No. 2 pick of the 2003 draft, who did not keep pace with the intense Pistons and was shipped to Orlando.

Aldridge, I think, has the motor of someone like Michael Redd, the 43^rd pick of the 2000 draft. I remember Redd at Ohio State. He got into the lane a lot, shot those lefty 10-footers or blew by the defense to the rim. He went in the second round of the draft because he had no range to his game at 6-foot-6.

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But Redd worked and worked and he is now top shelf.

Aldridge will work, too.

I know, you were turned off by Aldridge’s 2-for-14 shooting against LSU in the Atlanta regional final. You said he was bothered by the 310-pound Glen Davis.

But when you look at that film you see Aldridge took uncontested shots that missed. That’s all. He just missed. They were some of the same shots he made in a 26-point performance against West Virginia in the regional semifinals.

We wanted to believe it was media darling Davis who bullied Aldridge into that poor shooting night and that Aldridge was too soft. It wasn’t all Davis. It was a bad game and bad timing on a big stage.

What was impressive after the loss to LSU was Aldridge’s presence in the locker room. No whining, no alibis.

Here is the other thing. Aldridge didn’t shoot well against the Tigers, but that did not mean he didn’t play well. He had 10 rebounds and five blocked shots. A 20-year old kid will sometimes let a bad shooting night ruin the rest of his night. Aldridge tried to play through it.

Tyrus Thomas, on the other hand, does not play through adversity. I watched him get pushed around by older players in some games and everything fell apart. He was finally benched in the national semifinal against UCLA, which led some scouts to accuse LSU coach John Brady of benching Thomas to discourage him from going pro.

Slide show   Draft dreams See images of the players expected to be picked in the NBA draft’s lottery.

Thomas was benched because he was a non-factor. The Bruins were in his head on defense and under the boards.

The NBA has an infatuation with Thomas because of his intensity and leaping and shot-blocking. I was one of the last to get on that bandwagon because Thomas has only shown flashes of a game outside the lane and a tendency to disappear when teams beat him up.

Sure, Thomas creates turbulence because of his leaping. He can come out of nowhere to block a shot or slam an alley oop.

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