CLAYTON OLIVIER : With All His Injuries, Just Playing Is a Feat for USC’s 6-10 Center

There’s an old joke about the guy with an arrow in his chest who says that it only hurts when he laughs.

USC basketball center Clayton Olivier knows the feeling. His feet only hurt when he runs or jumps.

Olivier, 24, a fifth-year senior, has a partnership with pain. He had surgery after a redshirt freshman season in 1980-81 to remove bone spurs from his right ankle and to reconstruct his heel. He had another operation last February to remove bone spurs in his left ankle.

When Olivier isn’t in a hospital, or his feet aren’t in casts, he doggedly tries to play--always with some pain.

He has started every game for the Trojans this season, and says that his left ankle doesn’t hurt him as much as it did in other years.

“The foot feels fine, but I have some problems with tendons in my left ankle,” he said. “I have to take injections from time to time to dull the pain.

“When I start a game, I’m OK. But when I sit down at halftime, the ankle stiffens up on me.”

Olivier’s availability previously has been on a day-to-day basis because of his recurring foot problems. When he played, sometimes ineffectively, he didn’t get much sympathy from fans, writers or perhaps his teammates.

After Olivier had been criticized by the media for an unproductive performance last season, he said bitterly: “I’d like to see how a reporter can write a story with a knife (stuck) in his hand.”

As for his teammates, he said: “They stand behind me pretty good, but I’ve had my ups and downs with them. They don’t always understand what is the matter with me. I think Derrick Dowell (sophomore forward) understands more than anyone because he has gone through surgery. He knows what it’s like.

“Last year, when the players visited me in the hospital, they looked scared. They saw me lying there like a dead horse and their eyes were wide open as if to say, ‘Gosh, Clayton, what are you going through?’ I think they understand better this year than they did before.”

USC Coach Stan Morrison said that because Olivier didn’t complain about his injuries, his teammates didn’t realize how much he was hurting.

“But they’ve matured in their understanding now,” Morrison said. “I remember when he came out of the first game he ever played for us as a freshman and his face was white as a sheet. He said, ‘Coach, it’s like someone stabbed my foot with a knife.’ The players now respect what he has gone through. He has always had my respect.”

Olivier can’t participate in practice or pregame drills requiring any cutting. Instead, he rides a stationary bicycle in the training quarters at Heritage Hall.

Olivier has flaming red hair and he is often the target of abuse from opposing fans, especially UCLA’s. The Bruins taunted Olivier in a 1983 game, chanting, “Bozo! Bozo!”

He silenced his antagonists by scoring a career-high 16 points, making 8 of 10 shots.

“That Bozo business is still going around,” Olivier said, laughing. “I heard some Bozo stuff when we were playing in Oregon a few weeks ago.”

Olivier’s foot problems are similar to those incurred by another red-haired center, the Clippers’ Bill Walton.

“We have something in common,” Olivier said. “My doctor, F. William Wagner, also operated on Walton and he told me that when he put my X-rays on top of his, he couldn’t tell the difference.”

Olivier, at 6-10, 235 pounds, is not a mobile center, but he has more mobility this season than previously, and has made a contribution to USC’s winning season, 10-4 overall and 4-1 in the Pacific 10.

He is shooting 51.3% from the field and averaging 7 points and 3.8 rebounds a game. Those aren’t glowing statistics, but he is playing only about 20 minutes a game. He often gets into early foul trouble, which is a sure way to find the bench.

Olivier averaged 30.7 points a game as a senior at Los Amigos High in Fountain Valley. He has a nice touch on medium jump shots but he doesn’t shoot very often, leaving the scoring to others.

“I feel I’m the guy to put things together,” Olivier said. “I pick up what other guys don’t do. If we need rebounding, I concentrate on that. If we need scoring, I’ll do that. I just pick up little pieces that are dropping off.”

Olivier used to lift 150-pound bales of hay when his parents’ owned a feed store in Santa Ana and he is exceptionally strong.

“If I had a nickel for every bale I’ve lifted, I’d be a millionaire today,” he said.

“Clayton set a screen in our game at Oregon and he made contact with Blair Rasmussen, the Ducks’ 7-foot, 250-pound center,” Morrison said. “Clayton couldn’t understand why he drew a foul because he said he didn’t touch Rasmussen. We watched the film later and all the players were falling on the floor laughing. He sent Rasmussen flying down the court, and I’m sure Clayton didn’t even know he was there.

“When Clayton sets a pick, other players literally bounce off him and onto the floor.”

It’s too early to determine whether USC is a legitimate title contender, although some Pac-10 coaches think so. But the Trojans will have to be reckoned with if they beat Cal Saturday afternoon and Stanford Monday night at the Sports Arena, then get past UCLA Feb. 1.

“We’re more of a team than we were last year,” Olivier said. “The guys are talking to each other more and not going off on their own, or looking at individual stats.”

Olivier said the team became demoralized early last season in the Great Alaskan Shootout tournament when they didn’t beat Oklahoma after leading late in the game.

“We were doing everything right and, all of sudden, we had lost the game,” he said. “After that, the attitude was like we can’t win a game if our life depended on it.”

The Trojans didn’t win many thereafter in an 11-20 season.

“Now I think we can compete against anyone if we play as a team,” Olivier said.

And he will be trying to do his part--with or without pain.