CHANGING TIMES IN NBA WEST : When Olajuwon Joined Sampson, Something Had to Give: Lakers?

A day after the Lakers were carried out on their shields, dawn came up like a starlet’s smile. The cloud bank that seemed as if it were anchored over the Gulf Coast for about a decade was sucked out to sea by the passing tornadoes. The sun shone. If you cared to see it that way, an era was busy being born.

The Rockets cared. Five hours after taking a 3-1 stranglehold on the Western Conference final, no less than five of them, including starters Ralph Sampson, Robert Reid and Rodney McCray, showed up at the studios of a Houston TV station, just so they could be interviewed again.

There’s no denying it, this is the emerging power of the 1980s, all right. What’s left for non-believers to cling to?

Sampson and Akeem Olajuwon can’t play together? Fat chance. Actually, they’re highly complementary. Sampson is as good a young defensive center as there is in the game. Olajuwon, at 6-11, 6-10 or 6-9, depending on whom you believe, is better suited to becoming the long-awaited power forward of the ‘80s, and ‘90s, or however long he wants to stay.

Look at the way they line up against the Lakers. Sampson guards Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. Kareem put Olajuwon to the torch often enough that they know it’s better that way. McCray guards the opposition’s best forward, in this case James Worthy. Olajuwon guards the middle of the free-throw lane.

The Lakers have averaged 102 points against the Rockets since the series opener, 17 down from their regular-season average. Either the Lakers are in a big slump or they’re in big trouble.

And of course, Sampson, Olajuwon, McCray, Reid, Lewis Lloyd and Jim Petersen are veritable children, averaging 25 years of age. So what can stand in this prodigy’s way?

It’s Saturday, a few minutes before the Rockets’ practice. Sampson is being interviewed, something he undertakes more dutifully than he used to, although you still couldn’t say it brings out the comedian in him.

Question: Where do you want to be after your contract expires?

Answer: “You never know what to expect of professional basketball, as far as ups and downs, until you get in it. I’m happy winning. Where I can win championships--as in plural--that’s where I’ll be happiest.

“Right now, we’ve got an opportunity to do that here. I have another year on my contract. After that’s over, we’ll talk about where Ralph Sampson plays.”

And his relationship with Coach Bill Fitch, stormy enough to hit the newspapers on one occasion, though not recently?

Sampson grins for a moment.

“It’s a coach-player relationship,” he says, somber again. “I come to play. He comes to coach. We communicate about basketball. That’s it.”

You’d like to have your next dynasty built on more good feeling than that, especially in view of some intriguing coincidences, not to mention the long history of intrigue.

Sampson’s contract is up after next season.

So is Abdul-Jabbar’s.

So is the NBA’s collective bargaining agreement with its salary cap machinery.

And the Lakers have long coveted Sampson. Remember the mock coin flip at Pickfair between poker buddies Jerry Buss and Don Sterling, who were getting ready to flip for real for the 1-2 choices in the NBA draft? The Lakers had the Cleveland Cavaliers’ pick. The Clippers, for a change, had their own.

Sampson was a junior at Virginia and, speculation went, ready to come out if the Lakers could make a deal guaranteeing they could get him. The Lakers couldn’t. Sampson stayed in school.

The rest is history, but of the ongoing type. This book isn’t necessarily closed.

Maybe it would be different had things proved easier for Ralph and the Rockets, but they haven’t. As a rookie, he seemed to deliver most of what had been promised, but the Rockets still went 29-53, bad enough to earn themselves another coin flip and Akeem.

How much was Sampson’s fault?

Ah, there’s the rub. There is no doubt that superstar centers have a disproportionate impact, but how much should that be?

In practice, it generally turns out to be everything. A high-salaried center will wind up taking the rap for the entire franchise, whether or not the forwards are shaky, the guards ham-fisted and the coach can’t tell you anything more about the game than Tommy Heinsohn.

So it was with Abdul-Jabbar, whose star was in serious decline in the late ‘70s until Magic Johnson arrived to help put the Lakers back over the top.

So it has been with Sampson, starting at the beginning.

Fitch, whose postgame comedy stand-ups bely a hard driver from the old school, was never easy on him. Once Fitch was asked after Sampson’s rookie year if Ralph had been a disappointment in any sense, Fitch answered:

“Only in the sense that his team lost 53 games.”

Sampson was criticized for wandering too far from the basket, which he certainly did, whether by inclination or coach’s orders, or both. It was recalled along NBA press tables that none of his Virginia teams ever made an NCAA championship game, and even his high school team didn’t win the state championship.

Of course, there were happier moments, such as the ’85 All-Star game at Indianapolis, in which Sampson was the MVP.

Magic Johnson (a Laker) was asked later how he and Sampson would do together.

“Baby, order those championship rings right now,” Johnson said, laughing. “For the next 10 years.”

The quote has since run once or twice in Houston papers.

Then, with the subtlety of a nova, Olajuwon arrived. As a rookie, Akeem got gentler treatment, though that might have been because he was more raw, or because his exuberance was such a delight. Fitch said it was because of the language problem, though it has been suggested that Akeem speaks better English than most of his teammates.

Now, they’ve had two seasons together and there is no longer a question of which of the Twin Towers they hang the Christmas lights on.

“This is no knock at Ralph, but he’s always going to be overshadowed by Akeem,” Magic Johnson said last weekend. “That’s just the way it is. Akeem can do too much.”

Anyway, Fitch and Sampson tangled again early this exhibition season. Sampson played two games lackadaisically. Fitch criticized him to the press within Sampson’s earshot. Sampson blasted back in the Houston papers.

Rival GMs lit up the Rocket switchboard. Sampson started the season playing badly and was booed loudly at home. GM Ray Patterson finally called him in and asked if he was unhappy and wanted to be traded.

If so, Patterson later told reporters, he had said to Sampson that he go to any one of 21 teams, but, “that he’ll never, ever, ever, ever play for the L.A. bleeping Lakers. Ever.”

The air having been decisively cleared, things did improve. Late in the season, Olajuwon went out with a sprained knee, forcing Sampson to go back to the low post. Sampson’s scoring average went from 18.2 to 23.1 and his rebound average from 11.2 to 12.4.

The theory had been that of the two towers, Sampson was the logical forward, since he was more versatile, and Olajuwon the natural center, since he was the power player. What they learned with Akeem out was that it was the other way around. If you want to know the moment the Lakers first got in trouble, it was the one when Olajuwon stepped on Reid’s foot.

Everything since has been great.

“Our relationship is good,” Fitch says. “It’s excellent.”

And the things in the papers?

“Well, if you believe everything that runs in the papers. . . . I’ll give you an example. Yesterday there was something in one of the papers here about an incident the second week of training camp. You guys do those notes columns and you talk to each other and run the same things over.”

Was there a period of adjustment for coach and player?

“Not for me,” Fitch says. “It was an adjustment for him. If there’s one thing I learned from (Red) Auerbach--and even from a guy like Pete Newell, the most lovable guy in the world--it’s a hell of a lot easier for them to adjust to any idiosyncrasies I might have than it is for me to adjust to 12 of them.

“If we’re going to have a winning team, certain things have to be the same for Ralph and the 12th man. And Ralph knows that.

“He’s never been a prima donna. I’ll swear on my father’s grave and my mother’s living heart, if I’ve ever told Ralph, I want you to do something, he’s never denied me. Never once.

“Hey, I’ve had players mad at me before. They’re going to get mad at you. I have a lot of decisions to make and they’re not always 90-10.”

And that’s the way it is in the young Rocket dynasty. Tune in a year from now to see how it turned out, and bring a program.