The Philadelphia Story Was Bleak, but Now That He’s in Washington, Leon Wood Is Rewriting the Script : LEE-OHN : Allowed Freedom to Play, He’s Firing Up the Bullets

From the time he was knee-high to a Converse high top, Osie Leon Wood III decided that all he really wanted from this world was a life of hooping it up.

All he needed to be happy was a basketball and a clear view of the rim. Teammates and opponents were optional. The search for the perfect jump shot could be carried on quite well in solitude.

Best of all, he figured, get good enough at this and they pay you for it. Pay you well, too--in big numbers that even a little kid could appreciate.

What a gig: Money for nothing, your kicks for free.

Yes, Osie concluded, it was definitely the way to go. But if he was going to pursue a career in creative caging, he was going to do it right, starting with his name. Anyone planning to dribble and shoot for a living had better have a proper calling card.

So early on, he decided that Osie Leon Wood III wasn’t going to cut it.

“Maybe if I played football,” he says today. “Osie’s a great football name--’Osie Wood carries the ball for 10 yards.’ ”

But Osie isn’t basketball .

“Basketball is Leon,” he explains with a full-court smile.

Or, as he has come to be known at courtside: LEE-ohn.

Listen to the public address announcer at the Capital Centre, supplying the footnotes to the Washington Bullets’ offensive exploits against the Phoenix Suns.

Wood yo-yos to the top of the key, stutter-steps to juke his opponent just inches off balance, leaps and sends a rainbow crackling through the cords.

“ Basket by . . . LEE-ohn!”

Wood leads the fast break, pulls up in a hurry and spins the ball between two Suns, directing it to Bullet Darren Daye for an easy layup.

“Assist from . . . LEE-ohn!”

The scene and the sound fit together perfectly. The name is right for the game. And vice versa.

Wood, in his third week as a Washington Bullet, is happy it is that way again.

It was that way through high school, when he broke the California prep scoring record at St. Monica High in Santa Monica, and averaged more than 42 points a game his senior year.

It was that way through college, when he was named Cal State Fullerton’s first Division I All-American by the Sporting News.

It was that way on the 1984 United States Olympic team, when he played point guard to the rank-and-file gold medalists of Gen. Robert Knight.

But it wasn’t that way during 1 1/2 lost seasons in Philadelphia.

With the 76ers, Leon, the 10th player chosen in the 1984 NBA draft, became closely acquainted with his last name. Wood. As in pine. As in the bench.

During his rookie season, the 76ers played 82 games. Wood appeared in fewer than half of them--just 38--and when he played, he rarely needed to shower afterward. He averaged just 7.1 minutes an appearance, averaging 3.2 points a game.

That was a shock to Wood’s system.

“I’d never been on the bench before,” he said. “I got my first taste of it during the Olympics. I didn’t start, but that wasn’t so bad because that team was one of the best of all time.

“But in Philly, I went through one stretch where I had 15, 16 DNPs (did not play) in a row. Boy, it hit me then. After one or two games, I was goin’ nuts.”

Wood tried to keep telling himself: “You’re only a rookie . . . This team is loaded with guards . . . Wait till next year . . .”

Well, next year came for Wood, and the 76ers did have some attrition in the backcourt. Andrew Toney got hurt. Clint Richardson was traded to Indiana. Wood’s eyes widened in anticipation.

“I thought they traded Clint for me to get more playing time,” he said. “I thought I’d move up to third, or at least fourth guard.”

Instead, Philadelphia kept Wood in his place and looked elsewhere for help.

“Toney goes down and they bring in Paul Thompson from Milwaukee. And he starts right away,” Wood said. “Then, Washington cuts Perry Moss, Philly picks him up and he’s getting 20 minutes immediately.”

The 76ers even moved Mr. Forward, Julius Erving, to guard, where he still starts.

Philadelphia was sending Wood a message, loud and clear. Yet Wood had trouble interpreting it.

“I was the 10th player taken in the draft, I’m getting paid all this money and I’m still sitting,” Wood said. “Coach (Matt) Guokas is telling me, ‘We don’t have 20 minutes a game to give you.’

“I didn’t know what it was. I’m one of the hardest workers anywhere. I’m at the gym all day. I’d go to St. Joe’s and shoot from 9 a.m. to 1 before going to practice. I’d practice with the St. Joe’s basketball team.”

The 76ers say they had no problem with Wood’s attitude or work ethic. “If you had a team full of Leons, you couldn’t go wrong,” Philadelphia General Manager Pat Williams said.

So what was wrong?

Two words on Wood’s scouting report: defensive liability.

“Defense will always be an area of question in his game,” Williams said. “He’ll never be known as a great defensive player. Someday, he could be adequate.”

On Jan. 10, Williams and the 76ers decided to scrap the Wood project. On that day, the 76ers and the Bullets exchanged surplus, Philadelphia sending the little-used Wood to Washington for the little-used Kenny Green, a rookie forward from Wake Forest.

Immediately, strange things began happening to Wood.

The Bullets gave him a uniform and the basketball and, without as much as a single practice session, put Wood into the lineup. Coach Gene Shue sketched out four or five basic plays for Wood and gave him simple instructions: Shoot, shoot, shoot.

“Wow!” was Wood’s reaction. “They’re telling me to shoot it?

“With the 76ers, you could shoot the open shot, but you’d better knock it down or you’re going to get yanked.

“This was something new to me.”

In his first game with Washington, Wood scored 17 points, a career high. Then, he scored nine against the Clippers.

Then, he really got rolling.

Wood went into his third game as a Bullet with Washington trailing the Chicago Bulls in the third quarter, 98-87. Wood scored Washington’s next 16 points and finished the night with 22 as the Bullets won by 4.

Two days later, another career high--25 against Milwaukee. The next game--30 points and 8 assists against New Jersey.

After shooting 0 for 8 against Chicago--”I was still on Cloud 9,” he said--Wood came back with 21 points in a 114-112 victory over Phoenix, sinking a critical three-point shot in the final minutes.

“Surprised?” said Wood, echoing the league’s first reaction to his sudden impact with the Bullets. “No, I’m not surprised. I know what I’m capable of. The people from Fullerton know what I’m capable of.

“I’m just now getting the opportunity to show it.”

The LEE-ohn is once again back in Leon Wood.

“I think we’ve unleashed a monster,” the 76ers’ Williams said.

There are those who still wonder why Philadelphia even bothered to make Wood its No. 1 selection in the 1984 draft. Wood is one of them. His agent, Fred Slaughter, is another.

When Wood was selected, the 76ers led the world in backcourt talent. They had all-league point guard Maurice Cheeks, long-range specialist Toney, Richardson, and the promising Sedale Threatt. The 76ers needed more guards the way Chicago needed more points in the Super Bowl.

When Wood was told that Philadelphia was his next destination, he knew right away that it was not the best possible news.

“When it was announced, I thought, ‘Geez, the 76ers have Andrew and Sedale and Cheeks and Clint.’ I was the fifth guard walking in the door,” Wood said. And Wood remained the fifth guard until the day he was traded.

When the 76ers finally gave up on Wood, Slaughter told a Philadelphia newspaper: “It’s almost as if they’re saying they made a mistake drafting him. What a waste of a young man’s time.”

Wood never fit into Philadelphia’s system--as both he and team officials now admit--but Williams stopped short of chalking up his selection in the draft as a mistake.

“It was the right pick at the time,” Williams said. “He was the best player at the time. Our guard line then had reason to cause us some concern.

“Clint Richardson had a kidney problem. Sedale Threatt was still an unknown. Mo Cheeks had a knee that bothered him.

“Billy Cunningham (then the 76ers’ coach) felt we needed a guard.”

None of Cunningham’s darkest worries ever materialized. Cheeks stayed healthy. Threatt developed. Richardson remained a valuable role player coming off the bench.

As Wood puts it, he got lost in the shuffle.

“It was a mistake,” he said. “Somebody made a bad move and took me. Somebody goes into the draft needing something and fell asleep.

“We wound up with five really good guards. It’s like a hand in poker. You have four aces and a 2. A 2 is darn good but when you have four aces, you don’t need it.

“The deck had to be reshuffled.”

It got done only when Shue got interested in becoming the dealer. Shue had watched Wood play against his team during a summer league at Princeton University last year and remembered how Wood’s name always seemed to surface during strategy sessions.

“He got a chance to play, finally, at Princeton and was getting better and better,” Shue said. “Fred Carter (Bullet assistant coach) and I talked about Leon Wood a lot--how to stop him.

“We thought he had a chance to be a decent player.”

Shue entered the 1985-86 season with a backcourt that included two veterans in their option years--Gus Williams and Frank Johnson. When Johnson went out with a foot injury, Wood came quickly to mind.

To Wood, the trade was 1 1/2 seasons late. For him, it was never going to happen in Philadelphia.

When he played, Wood felt cramped. A man born to run the fast break, complete with behind-the-back passes and jump shots from beyond the three-point circle, never was comfortable in an offense designed to feed Moses Malone and Charles Barkley as close to the basket as possible.

And when he didn’t play, he felt miserable.

“Before you reach the NBA it’s easy to say, ‘I just want to be there,’ ” Wood said. “Even if you don’t play, it’s still the NBA and you’re still getting paid.

“But I don’t like the bench at all. I don’t care if you pay me $1 million, I got to be out there. I get antsy on the bench. The worst thing in the world is make me sit and watch everybody else play.

“Coach McQuarn (Cal State Fullerton’s George McQuarn) knew this. When he wanted to make a point with me, he’d never kick me out of practice, because he’d know I’d just go out and find some pickup game somewhere else. He’d just tell me to get off the court and sit and watch. He knows how that eats at me. He knows how much that hurts.”

Wood’s addiction to the sport of basketball is legend at Fullerton, where he became almost as much a fixture in Titan Gym as the rickety pull-out bleachers. When Wood wasn’t playing or practicing for McQuarn, he was playing H-O-R-S-E or one-on-one, or watching the women’s team play, or taking in an intramural free-throw contest.

He hasn’t changed. The great thing about the NBA, Wood says, is “the road trips, where all the hotel rooms have ESPN.” He says he can still pick up pointers from the college games televised on the cable.

And, yes, Wood still carries two basketballs--”One indoor and one outdoor”--around in his car as he searches the streets of Washington for a vacant court or a pick-up game that looks interesting.

“My idea of a perfect day is to be back in L.A., on the outdoor courts at Laguna Beach with a couple six packs and my (music) box, playing ball all day,” Wood said.

Wood looks at his trade to Washington as his ultimate liberation. Not only is he playing more, but he’s playing in an offense that lives on the play of its guards.

“One of my first games here, I threw a between-the-legs pass to (Jeff) Malone, who turned it into a three-point play,” Wood recalled. “The people were kind of shocked here. But, hey, that’s me.

“I could never do something like that in Philly. You got to make legitimate passes, you got to play it safe.

“Here, it’s a lot freer. I’m averaging three turnovers a game, but they’re not afraid to make mistakes. With the Sixers, you make a turnover and you look over at the bench and see so-and-so’s taking off his sweats.”

Williams said: “He’s in a situation now where he doesn’t have to look over his shoulder. They tell him, ‘If you miss a few, just keep gunning.’ They’re telling him to crank up the three-pointers--let ‘er rip. Any kid longs to hear that.

“Washington’s a guard-oriented club,” Williams added. “It’s perfect for Leon.”

Defense remains a concern for Wood. The 76er coaches could appreciate the points Wood produced but could not accept the points he allowed.

“Our coaches are so defensive-minded,” Williams said. “They have a tolerance for a lot of things, but they are defensive sticklers. They are relentless there.”

At Washington, Wood is extended a larger margin for defensive error.

“A lot of players in the NBA are not good defensive players,” Shue said. “If Leon sees that he has a chance to play, defense is something he’ll work on. He has the basic quickness. He can be a better defensive player.”

Still, for the time being, Shue is attempting to minimize his risk. In the late stages of a close game, he platoons Wood with defensive specialist Dudley Bradley.

The smile has returned. A reporter asked Wood when was the last time he was this happy.

“This happy?” Wood said. “Well, it’s a different kind of happiness here. I was happy at Philly when we swept Milwaukee (in last year’s playoffs). But this is the first time I’ve been really involved since . . . well, the Olympics, the summer of ’84. Here, I’m a real strong contributor to the team.”

Once again, Leon is running the show. Once again, Leon is uncorking 25-footers and slicing up defenses with passes that start the crowd to chanting.

Once again, Leon is being allowed to be LEE-ohn.

“Tell everybody that Wood is back,” he said, looking up.