Making a Name for Himself : Johnny Rogers Is Peaking at the Right Time

Chick Hearn--veteran sportscaster and undisputed king of the hoops hyperbole--happened to be at the mike for the best game of Johnny Rogers’ basketball life. Like others, Hearn was impressed.

“That big redhead’s pretty darn good,” Hearn told those watching the telecast of UC Irvine’s Feb. 15 game against Nevada Las Vegas from Thomas and Mack Center.

That piece of commentary came early in the first half. But the more Hearn saw, the more he liked. By halftime, Rogers would make 4 of 9 field-goal attempts, 11 of 13 free throws, collect 20 points and 8 rebounds, prompting Hearn to to hand down his on-air review before halftime:

“He is a great player. If he isn’t in the NBA next year, my name isn’t Chick Hearn.”

By the time UC Irvine had left the court with a 99-92 win over the sixth-ranked Rebels, Rogers had made 11 of 21 shots from the field, 18 of 20 from the line and had a career-high 41 points.

A few days later, Rogers and his teammates were practicing in Crawford Hall. Irvine Coach Bill Mulligan abruptly interrupted drills when he saw Rogers do something he didn’t like. He couldn’t resist the opportunity to have a little fun with Hearn’s endorsement, which, by that time, had become common knowledge among the Irvine players and coaches.

“Next year, Chick Hearn will be walking down the street and people will say, ‘There goes Al Smith,’ ” Mulligan said.

There have been fewer lighthearted moments in the relationship between Mulligan and his shooting star. Mulligan has barked at Rogers about his shot selection during timeouts. Rogers has barked back. But both parties agree that their differences are usually dealt with quickly, then cast aside before any grudges develop.

Rogers: “I’ve played for three college coaches, and I’ve enjoyed playing for Mulligan the most. I like his relaxed style, and we’re pretty informal as a team.

“I’m sure, during the course of a game, I do things he doesn’t like. I’ll miss an assignment or I might not block out every time, or I might take a shot that he might not have wanted me to take. Those things will happen. But I think we’re both mature enough not to get personal about it.”

Mulligan: “I’ve tried to be positive with him, even though I get mad at him. But I get mad at everybody.”

Lately, there hasn’t been much for Mulligan to get mad about. Rogers is the biggest reason the Anteaters won four of their last six games--including two upsets over UNLV--to finish second in the Pacific Coast Athletic Assn. In those six games, Rogers averaged 26.2 points and 9.6 rebounds, and shot 59.8% (55 of 92) from the field. In the two wins over Las Vegas, which Mulligan considers two of the biggest in his six seasons at Irvine, Rogers scored 73 points and had 24 rebounds. There is no hotter player in the PCAA entering today’s opening round of the conference’s postseason tournament at the Forum.

Rogers said that it’s no coincidence that the inspiration he has played with since taking the court at Las Vegas came after he had a heart-to-heart talk with his father, Cliff, who has also served as longtime coach, adviser and fan.

“He helped me put a few things in perspective,” Rogers said. “At that time, I was really going nowhere. I was just out there. He got the point across of being more aggressive and taking a few risks . . . of doing a few things I hadn’t done before.”

The elder Rogers was reluctant to take too much of the credit. “We have a lot of talks,” he said. “Sometimes I don’t know which ones work and which ones don’t. I was disappointed with the way he was playing. I thought he had gotten himself into a rut. I just wanted him to take a look at things and see if he couldn’t become more aggressive. I wanted him to take a little more responsibility for what was happening to the team.”

What followed was a big night in Las Vegas, one that left Rogers feeling better about himself and the final season of his collegiate career.

“I wasn’t happy,” he said. “I was having a pretty mediocre year, personally, and our team wasn’t where I would want it to be. But the Las Vegas game turned everything around.”

It is Rogers’ hope that Chick Hearn isn’t the only one he has impressed these last few weeks. If he has his way, his senior season at UCI will earn him a high place in the National Basketball Assn. draft on June 19, and silence--or at least subdue--some of the criticism that has followed him since he left La Quinta High School, where he had become the school’s most celebrated sports hero.

Rogers could do little wrong at La Quinta. He averaged 32.5 points as a senior, and was named the Southern Section 3-A Player of the Year. In 1981, USC Coach Stan Morrison called Rogers “the best shooting big man I’ve ever seen.”

Indeed, Rogers is a rare package of basketball talent--a 6-foot 10-inch forward who shoots from the perimeter as if he were a 6-2 guard. But that doesn’t always work to his advantage. If he were only 6-2, maybe he wouldn’t have to listen to those critics who suggest that it’s not enough for a player his size to shoot a pretty jump shot.

Before this season, the raps on Rogers were that he wasn’t aggressive enough, that he was hesitant to mix it up with the other big men for rebounds and that he was a poor defensive player.

It’s that last knock that Rogers has grown particularly tired of hearing and reading. Rogers in defense of his defense:

“Anytime you have a guy 6-10 on the floor, I think it’s an asset more than a liability. I’ll usually get assigned a guy who’s not an offensive threat, so I’m able to help and create problems for the other guys on the (opposing) team.

“I admit, in the past, I wasn’t much of a defensive player. I admit that. I concentrated on offense more than I should have. But I think in the last year and a half, I’ve worked a lot on my defense, and I feel confident with it.”

Rogers hopes that some of the statistics he has compiled this season will serve to answer his critics. He leads the Anteaters with an average of 8.8 rebounds per game. He has had 10 or more rebounds in a game 10 times this season. He has blocked 24 shots, also a team high.

Said Mulligan: “He really cares, and he’s really dedicated. He doesn’t want to quit playing basketball. He’s made himself a great shooter, he’s a much better rebounder and a much better defender, and he’s become more aggressive.”

He’s also become more secure in the realization that he can play with some of the country’s best players.

It wasn’t always that way. There were two sides to Rogers when he was enjoying such storybook success at La Quinta. One made it all look so easy. The other realized that it was, and grew insecure at the thought of how things might change when the competition got tougher.

Johnny Rogers used to wonder if he was really the player everybody told him he was.

“Maybe it was just playing in Orange County,” he said. “I wasn’t really sure how good I was. I was playing against a lot of people who were shorter than me, and I realized that there were people all over the country who were my size. I had a lot of weaknesses in my game that I could cover up in high school. So, I wasn’t really sure of my ability.”

Said Cliff Rogers: “That’s where I think a lot of coaches have been wrong with him. I’ve always felt they needed to encourage him more than they have. Even though he has all the press clippings and had the great high school career, he’s never really had an overabundance of confidence in himself.”

A successful freshman season at Stanford helped. He started 26 games, averaged 12.5 points and was named the Pac-10’s Freshman of the Year in 1981-82. The following season, Tom Davis became the Stanford coach, and Rogers became disenchanted. He shot 58.8% from the field as a sophomore to lead the Pac-10, but he started only eight games.

“I wasn’t happy at Stanford,” Rogers said. “I felt like I was a role player in a program that wasn’t that successful. But it didn’t seem like the team was going to go anywhere, and it didn’t seem like I was going to develop into the kind of player that I wanted to be.”

Rogers’ ambition is to play in the NBA. Whether he has developed into a player of that caliber since leaving Stanford and transferring to UCI remains to be seen. But there is at least one longtime observer of the NBA who thinks Johnny Rogers has a good chance.

And his name’s not Al Smith.