Summer Pro League Features NBA Stars, High Draft Choices on Their Way Up and Unknowns Taking a Last Shot at Fame and Cash : A Midsummer Cage Dream

The Southern California Summer Pro Basketball League isn’t for everybody.

There are no Soviet or Yugoslavian draft choices. There are no women players. There are no playground hotshots who sneaked in or 40-year-olds trying to make a comeback. There are no high school referees trying to earn summer spending money.

What the league has is real players--draft choices, young pros sharpening their games, hungry free agents hoping to be discovered--real coaches and real referees.

The league, which finishes its season at Loyola Marymount University this weekend, has National Basketball Assn. affiliation, with eight NBA teams represented. There are several high NBA draft choices playing this summer, along with some established pros.

You’d Better Be Good

The caliber of play, league officials and players said, is the next-best thing to the NBA.

“You can’t walk off the street and play in this league,” said league President Larry Creger. “You can’t walk off the street and coach in this league. It’s the closest thing to the NBA except the NBA itself.

“More than 100 players from last year are playing professional basketball somewhere. We feel most good about those who make it into the NBA itself--guys like Larry Spriggs, Mark Iavaroni, Jeff Lamp.

“This year is the best talent ever in the league.”

The summer league began in Los Angeles in 1970 and expanded steadily after Creger--a former assistant coach with Bill Sharman in the American Basketball Assn. and a longtime scout for several NBA teams--bought the operation in 1980.

Why They Compete

The league provides a threefold opportunity to players:

- It gives veterans a chance to stay sharp and be seen in the off-season.

- It gives draft choices their first exposure in an NBA atmosphere, usually under the tutelage of one of the team’s coaches. Lakers Coach Pat Riley got his first head coaching experience in the summer league.

- And it gives free agents a chance to land a job. The league is scouted extensively, not only by nearly every NBA team but by dozens of international scouts and representatives of the Continental Basketball Assn., which has evolved into a minor league for the NBA.

The league’s most valuable player last season was Lakers guard Byron Scott, who is playing again this summer. Past MVPs have included Herb Williams, Lafayette Lever, Roy Hinson and Bernard King, all starters in the NBA.

Laker Top Pick Playing

This year’s players include Lakers No. 1 draft choice Billy Thompson and second-year man A. C. Green, Charles Oakley and Sidney Green of the Chicago Bulls, Leon Wood of the Washington Bullets and No. 1 draft choices Walter Berry, the college player of the year out of St. John’s, and Scott Skiles, the Michigan State All-American. Lakers guard Michael Cooper has also played and Clippers forward Marques Johnson may appear in this weekend’s playoffs.

The represented NBA teams include some of the league’s elite: Lakers, Bulls, Boston Celtics, Milwaukee Bucks, Phoenix Suns, Portland Trail Blazers. There are also two teams of loosely bunched NBA veterans.

Creger said it is no accident that the most successful NBA teams take the summer league seriously. “That’s why they win--they work,” he said. “I can’t understand why the other teams aren’t here. The teams who are here are the successful teams in the league.”

The league is filled out by 10 teams of free agents.

Chance for Free Agents

The number of players seeking to get into the league has grown so large that Creger now runs a pre-league tryout camp. The best free agents are chosen to fill out the rosters. They come from everywhere--large and small colleges, European and other international leagues, the CBA.

Their games, usually played earlier in the day in the league’s four-games-a-day format, often draw more scouts than fans. Creger said more than 50 non-NBA scouts had shown up by last week.

He said the free agents “see this as the mecca of professional basketball in the summertime. We get most of the better free agents from all over the country. They know it’s the only (summer) league where the scouts come in any large number.”

Free agents range from three players under 5-10 to 7-3 Rogue Harris out of the University of Hawaii. There are unknown players from places unknown--when was the last time you saw Lincoln Memorial University of Harrogate, Tenn., on TV?--and American players who have put in time overseas, including former St. Bernard High star Butch Hays.

Former Gardena Star

One of the free agents trying out is Gardena High graduate Deon Richard, who was a star on the small-college NAIA level at Point Loma Nazarene in San Diego. The 6-6 forward, known for his jumping ability and defensive prowess, was dominant on the small-college level and is showing he can play with the big boys.

Richard has been among the scoring leaders in several games while usually covering the opponents’ best forward. After playing poorly in an NBA pre-draft camp and failing to get drafted in June, Richard is savoring the chance to prove his mettle. “I’m really enjoying playing. It really gives me a chance to show how well I can play.

“I didn’t have any doubts. I was confident of my abilities.”

Still, Richard admits, this is a proving ground for him and others who got little notice in college.

“People don’t think NAIA players are as good as Division I (major college), but there’s a lot of talent in NAIA,” he said. “If you go to Division I you get noticed more. You have an advantage.”

So this is Richard’s big chance. And like the other free agents, he is aware of the pressure. “Everybody’s playing pretty hard. All the guys are going for the same goal--to get picked up,” he said.

“Sometimes it’s a scary feeling. I try to get out there and be as loose as I possibly can. When you start thinking about it, that’s when you start making mistakes. I try to go out there like it’s street ball.”

The major difference: There are scouts from the NBA and CBA as well as Italy, Spain, France, West Germany, Switzerland, Austria, England, the Philippines, Australia, New Zealand, Mexico and several South American countries.

Richard will consider any offer, “whatever comes along.” His team, Southern California, has qualified for Saturday’s free-agent semifinals, so he’ll get at least one extra showcase. The semifinals are at 1:30 and 3:45 p.m. The free-agent teams that win Saturday play for the free-agent championship at 5 p.m. Sunday.

No Job Pressure

Leon Wood has no real job pressure. An All-American at Cal State Fullerton and a member of the 1984 gold medal Olympic team, Wood was a high NBA draft choice in 1984 and blossomed last winter after being traded from the Philadelphia 76ers to the Bullets. Local fans are accustomed to his long-range shooting skills, which have been on display since the late 1970s when he emerged as one of the CIF’s all-time scoring leaders at St. Monica High School.

Wood, a self-described gym rat who would be playing somewhere anyway, said the summer league affords him the chance to see--and be seen by--old friends, while getting in some good competition.

“I’m at home, I work on a few things, you get your confidence going into training camp, you play against old friends. I’m basically having a good time, smiling, talking to people. I love to play so much.”

Without the pressure of having to win a job, Wood said the appeal of the league is the NBA atmosphere. “It’s as close as you’re gonna get” to the NBA, he said. “It helps to have teams bring some of their top young players. Here you’ve got top caliber level (players), coaches and scouts can come out and see for themselves. It’s come a long way.”

Intensity in Close Games

Wood said he and other established pros play for fun, but when a close game comes down to the wire or they’re in the playoffs, the intensity level becomes noticeable. “You’re out there to perform. If the game is close, there’s definitely a lot of intensity (that) comes out,” he said.

“I love this league.”

NBA team semifinals are at 6 and 8:15 p.m. Saturday. Winners play at 7:15 p.m. Sunday for the championship.

Making the calls in all the action are a group of officials under the guidance of NBA veteran Darrel Garretson. They include some young NBA and CBA referees as well as those under consideration for pro jobs.

“Most new (NBA) officials have come through this league,” Creger said.

Creger said the 1984 Olympics cast the summer league into the background for a while, but it has come back stronger than ever. Adminstration is taking up so much of his time, he said, that he may have to give up his scouting job with the Detroit Pistons.

“This thing is getting so big,” he said.