BOB THORNTON : Look Who’s Playing in the NBA . . . : Ex-Anteater Muscles In on Knicks’ Lineup

This just in from the when-hell-freezes-over file: Bob Thornton in the NBA. You read it right. Bob Thornton in the NBA.

You remember Thornton. Then again, maybe you don’t.

Tall. Never met a comb he liked. A player of arguable skills during his three-year career at UC Irvine.

Thornton used to caddy for Kevin Magee, a former UCI player who once shared equal billing with Ralph Sampson, Mark Aguirre, Danny Ainge and Isiah Thomas on the 1981 Associated Press All-America team. Now that’s a marquee.

Thornton, a sophomore at the time, would show up for practice and have his ego rearranged. “Guard Magee,” UCI Coach Bill Mulligan would say. And Thornton would trot out onto the court and get the living bejeebers beat out of him. “Here, Bob, how about an elbow sandwich? . . . Nice dunk, wasn’t it, Bob? . . . Ever consider the debate club, Bob?”

Each day Thornton would experience a new misery as Magee perfected his considerable abilities and readied himself for a long NBA career. It was like watching someone defend himself with a Slinky. “He’d just pound me,” Thornton said.

Strange how this worked out, but Magee and his assorted shots reside overseas now, on a pro basketball team in Tel Aviv, Israel, which, at last look, wasn’t on the NBA registry. Not even the now-defunct Kansas City Kings threatened to move to good ol’ Tel Aviv. Magee, the can’t-miss-kid, missed.

Meanwhile, Thornton, who left UCI in 1984 with the coveted 10th-place career school rebounding title to his credit and who later spent an obscure season in Spain, is, ta-da, a sometime starter for the New York Knicks.

Fine. Welcome to the NBA; now how did you get in?

Thornton, 6-feet 10-inches and 225 pounds, isn’t a pretty basketball player. The most fluid thing about him is his sweat. He sets picks with the intent to maim. His favorite sound is thud, not swish. He plays hard and with abandon, so much so, that Mulligan often rested him after the first few minutes of each game. Thornton may have been the first player in collegiate history to hyperventilate himself out of the lineup.

It is not much different in New York. In a recent game against the Chicago Bulls, Thornton pushed and shoved his way to the bench, courtesy of five personal fouls. Bull forwards Orlando Woolridge and Sidney Green and center Dave Corzine took turns leaning on Thornton. Two nights earlier, Thornton had done a respectable defensive job against Milwaukee all-star Terry Cummings--no Pee Wee Herman--and added an unexpected eight points to the Knicks’ total.

On this particular evening, Thornton listens to the gentle, soothing sounds of Knick Coach Hubie Brown. An excerpt following an errant Thornton pass to center Patrick Ewing:

“Baawb!” says Brown, a pained look on his face. “Use ya head. Bad pass.”

Thornton nods his head, seemingly unaffected by the tirade, and runs downcourt.

The Knicks, once owners of an eight-point lead late in the third period, allow the Bulls to regain the lead. The Madison Square Garden crowd grows angry. Emmanuel Lewis, the diminutive television star of Webster , is in attendance and by game’s end the chant begins:

“We want Lewis. We want Lewis.”

Chicago has a 97-94 lead with only seconds to play. Knicks’ ball. Sitting on the bench is Thornton, who crosses his fingers. Has it come to this? The Knicks successfully put the ball in play and then watch as a long-range jump shot from Gerald Wilkins caroms off the backboard and falls harmlessly toward the court. So much for that.

Before they beat the Phoenix Suns Tuesday night, the Knicks had lost 20 consecutive games over two seasons, including eight this season. They were threatening to unseat the 1982 Cleveland Cavaliers, the team that gave America 24 straight losses.

“Hey you’ve got to remember we’ve got (center Bill) Cartwright and he’s got a stress fracture on his foot, (center Marvin) Webster’s got hepatitis and (forward) Pat Cummings has tendinitis,” Brown said. “Then you have (forward James) Bailey with a knee. Louis Orr (a forward) hasn’t signed. You can understand it then if you look at it. They’re the quality frontline people we thought we’d have. We’d probably be 6-1, maybe 7-0; 6-1 probably the worst right now if all those people are here. We weren’t going to be a good basketball team, we were going to be a great basketball team.”

Brown forgot to mention all-star forward Bernard King and his fickle right knee or No. 1 pick Ewing, who spends his practice days with ice packs wrapped around both knees and a cumbersome bandage looped around his left elbow.

Brown would settle for good right now. He’d settle for fair. Instead, he has a starting lineup that includes a hurt Ewing, an exciting but undisciplined Wilkins, two bricklayer guards--Rory Sparrow and Darrell Walker--and Bob Thornton.

“I was really lucky,” says an earnest Thornton. “I was put with the right coaches, the right team. I couldn’t ask for anything else.

“I mean, I never thought I’d go this far, never.”

No one disputes his claim, including Mulligan, who was one of the few people who thought Thornton might win a roster position.

“Yeah, true, but we had our doubts,” Mulligan said.

Asked if he would have guessed Thornton to be the one UCI player who would earn a wage with an NBA team Mulligan said, “Oh no, not at all.”

And with good reason. Back when Thornton played for UCI, there was some question if he deserved an athletic scholarship, much less a chance at a pro career.

“I abused him for three years,” Mulligan said. “I was in his face all the time.”

What he saw was a mediocre 6-4 high school player from Mission Viejo fast becoming a near 7-footer. Problem was that Thornton’s coordination hadn’t caught up with his body.

Before arriving at UCI, Thornton foundered on the bench at Saddleback College. His skills were improving, but no one knew about it. It wasn’t until Mulligan’s son, Brian, a player and later an assistant coach for UCI, convinced him to take a chance. “He kept saying, ‘Hey, take Bobby Thornton.’ ”

So, he did and the two are the better for it. But like most of Thornton’s strange odyssey to the NBA, things did not go easily. There were the daily lessons from Magee, the yelling from Mulligan and a season nearly spent as a redshirt. At the last moment, Mulligan decided to keep Thornton on the active roster. Mulligan refers to Thornton’s sophomore season as “the year he got tough.”

“Magee just beat the bleep out of him every day,” Mulligan said. “I’ll tell you, though, it was really great to have poor Thornton against Magee every day.”

Said Thornton of the ordeal: “Kevin was just unbelievable inside. Unbelievable strength.”

Still, it is Magee, a second-round choice of the Phoenix Suns in 1982, who didn’t make it and Thornton, a fourth-round pick, almost an afterthought, who did.

Despite the selection in the 1984 draft, Thornton chose to sign a contract with Caja, Madrid, in the Spanish National League. Caja fans expect, almost demand, their American players (two Americans to a team) to put on nightly scoring exhibitions. Thornton isn’t a scorer. He is a people mover designed for rebounds and occasional short jump shots.

His teammates responded rationally enough.

“Toward the middle of the season, I got frozen from the ball,” Thornton said.

The experience helped Thornton decide to return to the States. He had played well overseas. You received no quarter when playing against Thornton. A rebound was something treasured. Thornton’s Golden Rule: An elbow for an elbow.

“Bob’s a banger,” Mulligan said. “He’s not as fitted to be a European player as much as an NBA guy.”

The Knicks invited Thornton to rookie camp, unsure of his abilities. He surprised all by establishing the highest shooting percentage (71%) ever by a Knick newcomer and also led the rookies in rebounds. Training camp followed and Thornton remained. The Knicks needed forwards who were healthy and in attendance.

“It was crazy,” he said. “You wanted to do so well. You wanted to impress the coaches.”

One day, shortly before the beginning of the season, Brown asked Thornton to join the rest of the Knicks in a meeting. A blackboard stood in the middle of the room. Brown picked up a piece of chalk and began listing positions and names. Under FORWARDS he added the name, Thornton

“I was going crazy,” Thornton said. “I was loving it. I couldn’t wait to call home.

“When I was at Saddleback, I thought, ‘I’ll be lucky if I can go to a Division I.’ After Irvine I got better and better and I thought, ‘Maybe it would be nice if I get drafted.’ ”

Now this.

Thornton earns the NBA minimum for a rookie--about $70,000, which is less than one-tenth of what Ewing will make this season. The negotiations for Thornton’s one-year contract took about a millisecond.

“There isn’t any, say, negotiations,” said Ray Alvarado, Thornton’s agent.

Said Thornton: “I’m just happy to have what I got.”

Occasionally, Thornton allows the new-found recognition to get the best of him. After a recent visit to Los Angeles for a game against the Clippers, Thornton muttered to Mulligan, “I should have played tonight.”

“Wait a minute,” Mulligan said. “You could be in Spain right now.”

Thornton, duly humiliated, said not another word.

Nowadays, Thornton searches for an apartment in nearby New Jersey. He complains about the high rent and the sparse accommodations. Already he has made the mistake of venturing into the Big City with a car. “Couple of nights ago, I got lost for an hour and a half,” he said.

Thornton is happy and the Knicks are happy for him. For a team that has done little right in recent months, Thornton’s addition is seen as a much-appreciated, blue-collar move. The folks in the Gaw-den love his reckless style. They ignore his questionable resume.

“There are plenty of guys who have made it in the NBA and did not excel at the college level,” Brown said. “The patron saint of all of these guys is Billy Paultz. Billy Paultz didn’t start in high school, was a mediocre-to-fair junior college player and didn’t even start at St. John’s. When Lou Carnesecca went to the Nets and they needed a couple of big guys, they got Paultz. All he did was play, what, 15 years?”

When told of the comparison to Paultz, Thornton brightens. It seems that one day Paultz wandered into the UCI gym and began playing in a pickup game. Thornton, a sophomore at the time, was assigned to guard Paultz, a plodding, 6-11, 255-pounder. Youth vs. Age.

“He just pounded me,” Thornton said. “Oh, he killed me.”

There is pleasure in his voice. “Hey, I don’t care. He was NBA.”

Hey, and now so is Thornton.