The Much Ado Wherever He Went Was Obviously About Nothing

Not too many years ago, he was considered the most devastating force to come into the National Basketball Assn. in his decade. Teams jockeyed to get draft rights to him. When Buffalo got him, the Braves figured it was a clear path to the title.

No one could contain him. Only Wilt Chamberlain ever threw in more points in a season. Only 16 players in history, only two of them active, threw in as many total points. He pulled down a thousand rebounds a year. One year, he scored 40 or more points in a game 19 times. He was Rookie of the Year one season, Most Valuable Player another.

He was averaging more than 30 points a game. And, then, all of a sudden, Bob McAdoo was being shopped around the league like a hot watch or a haunted house. He went to the New York Knicks for Tom McMillen and John Gianelli, who together didn’t have half as many points and never would.

He continued to storm the basket, he averaged 26 points and 12 rebounds a game for the Knicks. He put in 2,097 points and was third-best in the league when suddenly he found himself on the way to Boston for two pieces of paper and somebody named Tom Barker.

He went from being an NBA legend to a vagabond. Instead of giving him a basketball, they kept giving him a bus ticket and a box lunch. He went to Detroit and then to New Jersey and finally to Los Angeles.

No one could understand it. The touch was still there, the points were still there. He didn’t slug baby seals over the head with baseball bats in the off-season. He wasn’t a Communist, a safecracker, or even a subway vigilante. He was a basketball player, one of the game’s best ever. And he couldn’t keep a job.

The Lakers got him for a draft selection and a kind word in 1981 when Mitch Kupchak went down. They kept wondering when they’d find out what the catch was. Maybe McAdoo turned into a bat at midnight, or liked to set fire to orphanages.

They’re still waiting to find out--two conference titles and one league championship later. Whatever was wrong with Bob McAdoo should have been catching.

But, with the Lakers, Bob McAdoo went from being the franchise to being a face in the crowd. It was like the star being asked to play the butler.

He joined a team that was full of franchises and he soon learned that his new role was, like a good butler, to be there, unobtrusive, impeccable, steady, dependable, summonable at a moment’s notice.

Not everyone can play the butler, and the betting around the league was that McAdoo was not one of them. McAdoo was no character actor. McAdoo had to have the basketball and the spotlight. McAdoo played leads. McAdoo played the guys who got the girl, not the horses. McAdoo was the Lone Ranger, not Tonto. The whisper was that the Lakers would find they had got Bob McEgo.

As usual, McAdoo fooled the league. He reveled in the role. He proceeded to give an Academy Award performance as best supporting player. When they speak of the Lakers’ depth, they mean McAdoo. When they talk of bench, they mean Bob.

No one else in the league comes off the pines at crucial moments and fires in 22 points in 23 minutes or 18 points in 20 minutes the way McAdoo do. No one protects a lead as jealously. Like Jeeves, the admirable McAdoo does his job.

Basketball has a tradition of a sixth man, a game tactic popularized by the old Celtics’ John Havlicek. It is a strategy in which a superior player is held out for key spurts in a game, when he can go in fresh and enthusiastic and trash the basket in unstoppable bursts of full-speed basketball.

Bob McAdoo is not sure he’s the sixth man. “I may be the seventh or eighth. This team is full of sixth men,” he said.

Whatever number they designate, McAdoo fills it. He loves the part. For one thing, it prolonged his career. “There is no doubt about that,” he said. “I can go in there and run as fast, play as hard, jump as high (and score as much) as I ever could in bursts.” The rim glows when McAdoo begins to attack it.

A Phoenix reporter, Bob Hurt, elicited the response from a crowded locker room the other night that the Lakers’ second team was not only the best second team in the league but probably better than half the first teams.

Laker Coach Pat Riley agrees. But he disapproves of the designation. “Actually, we think of Mac as a starter,” he said. “In our frame of thinking, we play a nine-man game. Bob has his specific role. It’s in the game plan. We just start our starters at different times.”

Said McAdoo: “It’s a perfect blend of roles for me. It allows me to play at full energy and to take advantage of my experience without its being blunted by fatigue.”

McAdoo’s idea of service extends beyond the offensive boards and spills over into real life, where he comes off the bench for Tuum Est, an alcohol and drug rehabilitation program--the Latin freely translates to “It’s up to you”--to which McAdoo and his wife, Charlena, along with other Laker wives and players, have chosen to devote their time. That’s a playoff that will require lots of bench strength, too, the McAdoos realize.