Lucas Leaves His Trademark : With Lakers, This 33-Year-Old Has Reputation to Protect

Georgi Glouchkov is from Bulgaria. Maurice Lucas is not.

So exactly 12 seconds after their first meeting on the basketball court in a Laker exhibition game with the Phoenix Suns, Lucas decided it would be a good idea if they got acquainted.

Glouchkov got Lucas’ trademark greeting, an elbow to the ribs.

Hey there, Georgi boy. A lot of people were surprised, since Lucas had waited 12 whole seconds before unloading.

“That’s only because he wasn’t around me for the first 12 seconds,” Lucas explained.

At 6 feet 9 inches and 231 pounds, Maurice Lucas is the kind of person who doesn’t stop wars, he starts them.

Traditionally, the Lakers do not have players like Lucas, who plays the heavy. But they do now. They have an 11-year veteran, 33-year-old bona fide enforcer whose basketball history is about equal parts conflict and conquest.

That isn’t all. Lucas may possess the most chilling glare since Sonny Liston’s, one so cold it makes your fillings ache.

“It’s a concentration level more than a stare,” Lucas said. “When I’m playing, I kind of put myself into a trance. I hype myself up to a degree of non-consciousness. Once I reach that level, then you’ll always see my eyes just bead out.”

A terrifying sight, indeed. Yet it must be remembered that although Lucas has always been a quality player, he has also shown a remarkable ability to get into trouble on the court. That trait was in evidence early. He got into a fight in his very first game as a freshman at Marquette.

Lucas was soon able to expand his horizons, like the time he slugged a Northwestern player. Why? “He looked like he was going to spit at me,” Lucas said at the time. Just cause in anybody’s book.

And in the pros, the “Maurice Lucas Against the World Show” continued wherever he went, from the old ABA to Portland, to New Jersey, to New York to Phoenix.

“I always come in as a hired gun,” he said.

Lucas may be the only man living to have punched out Artis Gilmore, Darryl Dawkins and Lonnie Shelton. Lucas and Dawkins were both fined $2,500 for fighting in Philadelphia during Portland’s 1977 title series with the 76ers. The Shelton bout was in Seattle in 1982, and it cost Lucas, then with the Knicks, $1,000 in fine money.

It was also the end of an era. It was the last of Lucas’ big-time bouts. Sure, he might throw an elbow at a rookie, but the fact is that in recent years, Maurice Lucas hasn’t really been that combative.

Mike Dunleavy, formerly of the Milwaukee Bucks, calls Lucas Bogie, as in Humphrey Bogart. “Maurice treats all of us like Bogart treated his women--with the back of his hand,” he said.

It used to be that the mere presence of Lucas would be enough to inspire fear. That’s what made Micheal Ray Richardson so happy when Lucas joined the Knicks in 1981.

“He told me, ‘If there’s a guy giving you a hard time, just let me know, and I’ll set a pick on him and take his head off,’ ” Richardson recalled.

Since the advent of the NBA’s $10,000 fine for fighting, Lucas has refined his act. He may push and shove and elbow, but he doesn’t fight. He also talks, stares and glares, and that’s enough at this stage.

But is it all really some kind of shtick? Ask Lucas where the reality ends and the act begins, and you won’t get a straight answer.

“I couldn’t expose that right now,” he said. “I’ll tell you a few years from now, when it’s all over.”

Lucas’ talent has sometimes been obscured by the extracurriculars, but never really to those who appreciate his style of game. The Lakers, principally General Manager Jerry West, have long admired Lucas for his rebounding ability and for his big-game performances.

Lucas said there is a certain territory on the court that is his own. He knows how to protect it.

“I’m from the old school of setting picks,” Lucas said. “A lot of guys now try to brush pick or set a half a pick and then try to roll out. I clean the whole side out and set a pick that’s a meaningful pick that guys will remember. I want them to remember.”

These days, though, mental warfare often seems to replace the physical in Lucas’ game.

In the Laker-Phoenix exhibition, Sun rookie Ed Pinckney was getting ready to shoot a free throw. Lucas walked into the lane, gave Pinckney a funny look and asked: “Are you feeling OK?”

Pinckney made one of eight free throws in the half.

Lucas also has a flair for the dramatic. He talked for publication before the Suns’ 1983-84 playoff series with Portland, calling the Trail Blazers arrogant.

Portland’s Kenny Carr was particularly irked. “Luke is old now,” Carr said. “The only thing that works is his mouth.”

Carr had a miserable series, though, and the Suns won.

He may have mellowed some, but Lucas protects and projects his reputation.

“It’s kept me in the business a long time,” he said. “Have I retired from fights? No, not really. A lot of it has to do with the way they are levying fines now. The guys are a little reluctant to get into fisticuffs with people.

“The game has changed, too,” he said. “It’s not as physical as it used to be. It’s designed more for television now, and it’s a finesse game. It’s more running, so you don’t have the same number of physical guys and you don’t have a lot of conflicts.

“The only problem is playing guys who like to play physical but don’t like guys to play physical on them,” he said.

Guys like?

“Like Lonnie Shelton,” he said.

Now, that’s more like it, Luke. Can we expect elbows shortly?