Section 15: Love for the Lakers If fandom is a religion, Eric Sawnders-McGuire, 13, is a true believer. He's not so much a member of the canon of basketball fans or an adherent to the order of the N.B.A. as he is a worshiper at the church the Los Angeles Lakers. The first basketball game Eric watchedon television, at age 4, was a Lakers' victory, he said. Since then, he has been a Kobe Bryant acolyte who made a pilgrimage to the Staples Center last season with his mother to see his beloved Lakers live for the first time. He came to the Barclays Center for the first time on Tuesday wearing a No. 24 jersey and a Lakers hat he received for Christmas to witness Bryant's first visit to Brooklyn. The tickets in Section 15 for him and his dad were another Christmas gift from mom. "I hope Kobe dunks on Deron Williams," Eric said more than an hour before tipoff. Actually, I just want to see whoever get dunked on by Kobe. That would make me happy. "That's my goal right now, be happy," he said. And get an autograph from Kobe. Eric and his father, Deron McGuire, drove from Jersey City, N.J., and arrived more than three hours before the game to get that autograph and watch the teams warm up. They saw the Lakers' drive up to the arena and a camera-phone flash through the bus' tinted windows had Eric convinced that one of his Laker heroes riding inside was as interested in a snapshot of him as he was of them. Eric wasn't sure if it was Bryant who took the picture or maybe Dwight Howard, who sat out the game, his third in a row, with a torn labrum in his right shoulder. "I told him I didn't know," his father said, "But you think it was Kobe, that's your story, you should stick with it." Inside, Eric was hanging over the railing above the players' tunnel waiting for Bryant to sign his jersey. Eric, an eighth-grader at Elysian Charter School in Hoboken, N.J., carried the black, gray and purple tank with him all day and said he put it on for the first time when he arrived at the arena. "He was coming in with the tags on and I told him you got to take the tags off," his father said, adding: "You can't come in here looking like a fool." Eric tore the tags off his shirt, but left the sticker on the brim of his crisp New Era cap. He managed to snag the signatures of Jodie Meeks and Earl Clark on the top of the brim on either side of the label when they hit the court for a shoot-around. A Barclays employee ushered Eric away from the railing before he could get Bryant's autograph. Eric did get to see his dunk before 40 seconds had elapsed in the second half when Bryant, who had just hit a jumper, made a steal and dashed to the hoop, two more points on the way to a Lakers' victory.