Basketball Star Is Caged by Questions, Doubts : Tom Lewis’ Controversial Friendship With Pat Barrett Takes Another Turn

For years, Tom Lewis and Pat Barrett have held center stage in Orange County basketball’s rendition of “Me and My Shadow.”

Lewis is a local basketball protege, recently of USC. Barrett is a local protege’s friend, adviser, coach and confidant.

Together, they have shared success and fueled controversy.

Tom and Pat are as much a team as Tom and Jerry.

But when does close become too close?

Last year, when Lewis, of Santa Ana Mater Dei High School, was being recruited by every basketball school in the country that mattered, there was talk that you could only get Lewis if you took Barrett along for the ride.

Some coaches, desperately seeking Lewis even if he came with strings attached, looked for a place to hide a 31-year-old aspiring coach without a college degree.

“We were going to make him our team manager just so he could go to our practices,” University of Nevada Las Vegas Coach Jerry Tarkanian said of Barrett.

No question, Barrett is the man behind Lewis, the one in front and the one flanking either side.

The joke is, when Lewis speaks, you can almost see the wires running from his jaw back to Barrett’s control booth.

Some say that Barrett calls too many of the shots for a player who is approaching his 20th birthday. Some question Barrett’s motives.

“I don’t think he’s riding Tom’s coattails, but sometimes it appears that way,” said Jack Hirsch, UCLA assistant and one of several coaches who heavily recruited Lewis. “It’s almost like a joke in the college community, the way they hang together.”

They’ve been hanging for six years, since the day Lewis met Barrett while playing for a traveling youth basketball team in South Orange County. Barrett was the coach of the opposing team.

Lewis and Barrett, a former college player at San Jose State, hit it off immediately. Both were basketball junkies. Lewis, the product of a broken home, had just moved to California from Boston. He didn’t have many friends but soon found one in Barrett.

Lewis, troubled with his home life, moved in with Barrett’s family in Garden Grove. Barrett worked daily with Lewis, honing his many basketball skills. Lewis became a star, one of the nation’s top high school players, while at Mater Dei.

Standing by his side, basking in reflected glory, was Pat Barrett.

Whether his is a story of care and concern, or one of greed and control, certainly is open for debate.

Of course, only Barrett knows if he has Lewis’ best interests in mind.

They are questions that Barrett has heard over and over.

“People always think that there has to be a motive,” he said. “And that’s what’s wrong with the world today. People think you do things for selfish reasons. But you don’t have to have selfish motives for helping kids.”

Barrett wonders how he could have known that Lewis would turn out to be a star.

Barrett supporters wonder where Lewis might be had Barrett not come along to offer shelter and guidance.

“There’s little doubt that I’ve never seen two people quite as close,” former USC Coach Stan Morrison said. “But knowing what I know about Tom’s childhood, I can understand that closeness.

“Pat got involved with the kid before he became any kind of student or athlete. He motivated him and helped him with his study skills. I know there was a very genuine source of love from that family. Pat’s parents became (Lewis’) surrogate grandparents.”

There isn’t much doubt as to the power of Barrett’s influence, which has made some wonder whether he didn’t have a hand in some of Lewis’ decisions at USC.

Lewis and two other USC freshmen recently were released from their scholarships for not responding to an April 25 deadline set by new coach George Raveling, who wanted to know if the players were planning to play for the Trojans next season.

The freshmen had publicly voiced their displeasure over Morrison’s firing March 27, saying they wanted to be consulted on the hiring of Morrison’s successor before deciding whether they would return.

Lewis, though, said he makes his own decisions.

“He doesn’t tell me what to do,” he said of Barrett. “He tells me all the facts of the situation, everything I need to know about a decision, and then he lets me decide.”

Some college recruiters who spent long hours trying to lure Lewis to their campuses say Barrett only complicated what is already a competitive and often ruthless business.

And not all are thrilled that Barrett and Lewis are back in circulation.

Lewis, the Trojans’ leading scorer as a freshman, has already been contacted by Kentucky, UC Irvine and Texas El Paso.

But some notables aren’t making a move for Lewis this time around.

Las Vegas’ Tarkanian, who was crushed when he lost Lewis to USC last season, said he’s no longer interested, partly because of Lewis’ relationship with Barrett.

“You had to deal with him, and that’s the biggest problem,” Tarkanian said of Barrett. “The kid’s got to break himself loose.”

Syracuse University spent a small fortune recruiting Lewis. Assistant coach Bernie Fine said he pursued Lewis more diligently than any player in the last 10 years.

When contacted Monday, however, Fine hadn’t heard of Lewis’ release. He said the school would be interested in Lewis again but added that Syracuse usually doesn’t admit transfers.

So where does this leave Pat Barrett, a fast-talking, 32-year-old part-time student and forklift driver from Garden Grove?

To better understand his possible motives, it helps to know the story of Tom Lewis.

Lewis hasn’t seen his father since he was 7. His parents were divorced in Boston when Lewis was a child and his mother remarried, then moved to San Juan Capistrano.

Lewis was a basketball fanatic, but his stepfather, a computer programmer, wasn’t a big sports fan.

“My husband was a Yale graduate and couldn’t understand why the kids weren’t always in studying,” said Judy Yanover, Lewis’ mother.

In junior high, Lewis was playing for a South Orange County traveling team when his squad played one coached by Barrett, who was also the sophomore coach at Capistrano Valley High School.

Lewis, for obvious reasons, caught Barrett’s eye. Barrett opened the gym at Capo Valley on weekends, and Lewis started dropping by. Barrett and Lewis had some great one-on-one games.

“When I first met him, he was in great shape,” Lewis said. “He was at the height of his game. It was perfect timing. I had just moved here and didn’t have many friends. He was willing to put in the time.”

Lewis and Barrett grew close. They played together, worked out together and attended clinics and games together.

As a freshman at Capo Valley, Lewis played for Barrett’s sophomore team. He averaged 35 points a game.

But things weren’t going as well at home.

“We had problems, that was no secret,” said his mother, who now lives in Phoenix.

Early in his sophomore season, Lewis left home and moved in with Barrett and his parents in Garden Grove.

But controversy raged when Lewis transferred to Mater Dei and Barrett later joined the Mater Dei coaching staff.

In 1983, coaches in the South Coast League filed a complaint with the Southern Section of the California Interscholastic Federation, contending in part that Barrett and Mater Dei Coach Gary McKnight used “undue influence” to lure Lewis to Mater Dei, which was on the verge of becoming a national high school power.

The complaint also contended that Mater Dei was using these youth traveling teams as a farm system for basketball talent.

Nothing ever came of the complaint, but the controversy lingered.

Lewis grew from 6-3 into a 6-7 superstar, and Mater Dei won two Southern Section championships and lost just five games in his three years.

During that time, Barrett and Lewis were almost inseparable.

People began wondering what was in it for Barrett, who longed to be a head coach but never found the time to earn a necessary college degree.

Was he just waiting for Tom to take care of him?

Barrett, 32, still lives at home and is about a year away from a degree in physical education at Cal State Fullerton.

But without a degree, most school’s can’t hire Barrett even though he’s a respected basketball coach. He was able to coach at Mater Dei only because it is a private school.

Barrett said that his relationship with Lewis only became an issue because Lewis became a star.

“When I met Tom, he was 6-3, not 7-2,” said Barrett, emphasizing his point. “There are a lot of kids like Tom in Orange County. The only difference is that Tom made something of himself. If Tom was a tuba player in the band, this would be no big deal. But he was a high school All-American, so some people see it as a problem.”

While living in Garden Grove, Lewis visited his mother often in Irvine until she and his stepfather moved to Phoenix after Lewis’ junior year at Mater Dei.

Lewis remained with Barrett, although his mother remained his legal guardian.

Judy Yanover said that she and her son get along fine now, but she, too, sometimes wonders about the motives of Pat Barrett.

“I respect Pat, but we’ve had our differences,” she said. “I have mixed feelings about the sports world. It’s like sometimes they don’t want me to have information. Pat always said he was a good Christian. But I’ve decided that even good Christians can be greedy.”

Barrett maintains that he was never part of any package deal that would include a job for himself during the recruitment of Lewis.

But the coaches who recruited Lewis said that such a deal was a foregone conclusion.

“He was going wherever the kid was going,” Tarkanian said.

Hirsch of UCLA said that the topic was discussed.

“I tried to get Pat to go back to college to get his degree,” Hirsch said. “He loved coaching so much. We said what UCLA would do was to get him into school and get him a degree.”

But Lewis decided on USC instead. And Barrett asks why, if he had to be part of a deal, is he not working for USC?

Morrison said that he had heard all the stories about Barrett’s having to be part of any deal with Lewis.

“That’s why I went to find out for myself,” Morrison said. “I understood that there were strings attached. They had an unbelieveble bond. It was almost a Pygmalion situation. Tom had nothing going for himself as an athlete or a person. For Pat, it was like adopting a younger brother.

“The only request he made was to come to practice,” he said. “And all of our practices are open. Contrary to rumors, Pat just sat there with his notebook, drawing diagrams because he loves the game. But he never once communicated with the kid on the floor. There was never a problem.”

Barrett’s presence was felt, though. He was a constant spectator at practice and made two trips during the season, trips he said were paid for out of his own pocket.

“A lot of people say that Pat wants something out of it,” said Mike Fielder, a former teammate of Lewis at Mater Dei. “But Pat’s been with him since the eighth grade. Pat started with Tom when he was just a little kid. He was in bad shape.”

Some people will not be convinced, though, and Barrett said he’s through worrying about it.

“Our situation is unique,” he said. “My family and I love Tom. It’s not a deal or a house or a car or thousands of dollars. It’s hard to understand when so much of it is the other way around. People can say what they want about me, but it’s not fair to Tom. If people want to have a negative impression, let them have it of me.”

Said Lewis: “I’ve heard all those things before about him. But it really doesn’t matter what people say. Everyone has an opinion of him. But most players who have played for him really like him.”

Tom Lewis included.