Meet Larry Spriggs, the Surprise Starter : Lakers Put Best Foot Forward With This Continental League Refugee in Lineup

Before Larry Spriggs broke into the starting lineup, the Lakers had a 3-5 record. Since then, they’re 23-7. Is Spriggs the reason or just a coincidence?

“You have to say he’s made an impact,” Laker Coach Pat Riley said.

When Riley began using Spriggs as a starting forward opposite James Worthy, it was his biggest gamble of the season. Riley benched 11-year veteran Jamaal Wilkes and passed over Kurt Rambis, both starters on the Lakers’ NBA championship team in 1982.

That left Spriggs, a refugee from the Continental Basketball Assn. who was later cut by two NBA teams. His total NBA experience before this season was 51 games.

Still, when the Lakers lost five of their first eight games, Riley made the change, and in one game, Spriggs went from not playing at all to the starting lineup.

“It was pretty wild,” Spriggs said. “When he first told me I would start, I wasn’t sure I was hearing right.”

So far, Riley’s gamble has paid off. Spriggs’ averages are hardly overpowering--7.5 points and 3.5 rebounds--but Riley said he does not measure Spriggs’ value by individual statistics.

“Larry will ultimately be judged on how we do as a team, not on his points,” Riley said.

Spriggs draws the other team’s power forward as his defensive assignment, which means he is supposed to keep his opponent off the backboards, grab some rebounds himself, run the court and bump some bodies.

Colliding with people comes easily for Spriggs. Sometimes, the people he hits aren’t even players. In a game last season, Spriggs ran into referee John Vanak, breaking a bone in Vanak’s shoulder.

When the Lakers play the Milwaukee Bucks tonight, Spriggs will draw 6-foot 9-inch Terry Cummings, who may be the best power forward in the league.

Spriggs isn’t at all close to being compared to Cummings, and not just because of talent. For one thing, Spriggs makes $90,000 and is the lowest paid among the Lakers, whose average player salary is $725,000.

Cummings earns $450,000 and is probably worth twice as much to the Bucks.

Cummings also has the luxury of job security, which cannot be said about Spriggs. Rambis has come on strong lately and seems to be getting closer to replacing Spriggs as a starter.

Riley is reluctant to make a change, but only because the Lakers are winning.

“There is one universal statement that players in this league make,” Riley said. “That is, ‘Give me my chance.’ Well, this is Larry’s.”

Only two years ago, Spriggs was bouncing along in the Rochester Zeniths’ team bus on a 14-hour journey to a game in Maine. He was making $400 a month and had already washed out with the Houston Rockets and Chicago Bulls, who kept him around only long enough for a 10-day contract to run out at the end of the 1982-83 season.

“I always thought I’d get another shot at the NBA,” Spriggs said. “I just didn’t know where.”

Riley’s assistant coach, Bill Bertka, asked Spriggs to play for the Lakers’ summer league team in 1983, and the Lakers liked him so much, they signed him before last season.

Spriggs, 25, had a reputation for being a player who too often played out of control, but Riley, Bertka and assistant Coach Dave Wohl worked with Spriggs and tried to tone his game down.

Eventually, that’s what happened. Spriggs is still an aggressive player, but the only time he comes close to being out of control is when he is behind the wheel of the new 300-ZX that he’s trying out.

“I go fast, but only when the police aren’t looking,” Spriggs said.

The Lakers, meanwhile, have been slow in accepting Spriggs into the starting lineup. Spriggs said that only Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Worthy had gone out of their way to make him feel welcome.

“Right now, they’re still pretty skeptical of me,” Spriggs said. “I don’t blame them. You test rookies and I’m a rookie starter. I would probably do the same thing.”

‘I’m just like replacing a diamond out of a ring,” he said. “I have to work my way in and be part of that five-diamond piece of jewelry.’

--LARRY SPRIGGS

Spriggs takes his brushes with cold shoulders as nothing more than business experience.

“I’m just like replacing a diamond out of a ring,” he said. “I have to work my way in and be part of that five-diamond piece of jewelry.”

It would be carrying Spriggs’ point too far to say that he is a diamond in the rough. For the Lakers at this point of the season, Spriggs is a physical player who runs the court better than Rambis, plays offense a little better than Rambis, and is stronger than Wilkes.

As long as the Lakers continue to win, Spriggs will continue to start. It’s really as simple as that.

“I’ve bounced around with so many teams in such a short period of time,” Spriggs said. “As long as I’m playing, I just try to hustle and add a little power. I do a lot of things, it’s just that I don’t do any specific one extremely well.”

Riley said Spriggs is fortunate to have landed on a team where not much was expected of him. Spriggs is a role player, Riley said.

“When he came here, he was foot-loose and fancy-free,” Riley said. “He was wide open and wild and that’s how he got into trouble before.

“Everybody on this team knows that Larry is kind of an experiment. We’ve been juggling that position all season long. But all Larry has to remember is that he’s got his chance. And he is the only one who can make it happen, not happen or keep happening.”

Laker Notes

After a 1-1 start on this four-game trip, the Lakers will play in Boston Wednesday night before returning home to face Dallas Friday night in the Forum. . . . The Lakers shot only 46.8% in losing, 121-98, Sunday at Detroit, ending a 12-game streak during which they had shot at least 50%. The Lakers still lead the league with a 53.8% mark. . . . The Lakers defeated Milwaukee, 96-89, Nov. 18 in the Forum, which was their fifth consecutive victory over the Bucks and the fewest points the Lakers have allowed in a game this season.