PHOENIX — D.J. Strawberry once was ashamed of his last name.

Now 22 years old and a rookie with the Phoenix Suns, he is strong enough to admit it. Maybe not in those exact words, but he says with remarkable honesty and maturity that he once tried to run away from being the son of Darryl Strawberry.

D.J. remembers the instance. He was in high school, turned on the television and saw his father in trouble.

Again.

He did not identify the particular transgression. How could he? His father’s rap sheet is long. Cocaine abuse, a solicitation of prostitution charge, numerous arrests, domestic violence, tax evasion, failure to pay child support, the times he went AWOL, and even public talk of suicide. It’s a tragically sad tale about one of the biggest stars of his generation, and it made people everywhere shake their heads in disbelief.

Now imagine how his son felt.

“I never wanted to deal with it,” D.J. said quietly at his locker before a recent Suns game. “I didn’t want to go to school the next day. I just wanted to avoid it. I wanted it to go away.

“Everybody knows who you are. You kind of just want to mellow out for a couple of days, lay low to let me get my feelings all together, then go back.”

Living in the shadow of his father’s problems “made me grow up faster,” he said. “I think it made me a better person. I just think it made me more humble and more laid-back than most people are.”

D.J. used to play baseball, too. He even was an outfielder, just like his old man. But during his sophomore year of high school — at the peak of his father’s problems — he quit baseball. Basketball, and only basketball, would be D.J.’s sport.

“I played a different sport,” he said, “to create my own identity and create a name for myself.”

He doesn’t regret that decision. Basketball has served him well. It earned him a scholarship to Maryland and a guaranteed 2007-08 contract with the Suns for $427,163.

But D.J. does regret one thing from his teenage years. In retrospect, he believes he should have supported his father instead of running away.

“I dealt with it immaturely,” he said. “But I was young at the time. I think you got to go in and face your problems. He’s my dad. I’m going to love him no matter what. I should have supported him instead of shy away from that.”

When that message was relayed to his father a day later, Darryl paused for a second, almost as if he didn’t know what to say. He was on his cell phone, about to fly back to St. Louis, which is where he lives now. He’s been out of jail for nearly five years, time he’s spent righting his life and telling others not to make the same mistakes.

“He was pretty young then and wasn’t aware of my lifestyle — who I was and what I was, and under the media microscope,” Darryl said. “My life had a tremendous effect on my children. I regret a lot of things that happened, and that my kids had to go through it.”

Darryl plans to visit Phoenix later this month to see his son play in the pros for the first time. And D.J. is looking forward to it.

“I’m not a person who holds grudges,” D.J. said. “You can’t really do that. He’s going to love me no matter what. He brought me in this world. You can’t really take that away from him.”