Michael Cooper May Jump Right Into ’88 Olympics

When the NBA season finally ends, when the Lakers have either blown the doors off the Boston Celtics in the finals, or been eliminated by the Utah Jazz in the sub-prelims, Michael Cooper will launch a new career.

Cooper will go into the high-jumping business. A year later--who knows?--Cooper might wind up in the Olympic Games, Coop-a-looping himself over the bar down in Seoul, South Korea.

It’s an experiment. A lot of great high jumpers really can’t jump high. Dwight Stones, for instance, is the American record-holder in the event and can’t dunk a basketball. Many top current international high jumpers aren’t leapers.

So what would happen if you put a guy who jumps real high into the high jump?

That’s what Chuck DeBus wonders. DeBus is the coach of the Los Angeles Track Club, which does real well. LATC athletes have set 27 American and 2 world records. But DeBus is always looking for talent, and when the barriers against pro athletes competing in the Olympic games began to fall, DeBus began to look around.

He saw Cooper, who is the Lakers’ sixth man and has high jump written all over him.

Coop is 6 feet 7 inches, a super-lean 176 pounds, with long legs, excellent speed and quickness, and great springs. What if Cooper took up high jumping?

DeBus approached Cooper with the proposal: I’ll train you in the off-season, and we’ll see what happens. If nothing else, we’ll improve your power and even increase your jumping ability.

Cooper said he’d like to give it a try.

“It’s just a matter of diversifying myself, seeing what I can do,” Cooper says. “In your lifetime, there’s always a lot of things you want to do. Actors who do serious stuff might want to try comedy roles.”

Not that Cooper is approaching this as a comedy role.

“It’s going to take mental and physical preparation,” he says. “But life is about learning, and this is a good learning experience.”

DeBus thinks it could develop into even more than a learning experience. He plans to work with Cooper three days a week, two or three hours per session, teaching technique and developing Cooper’s “innate power.”

“It’s not unrealistic that he could be jumping 230 (2.3 meters, or 7-6 1/2) within a year,” DeBus says. “It shouldn’t be any problem for him to go a foot over his height. By the jumping season of ‘88, he might be good enough to make the Olympic team. There are two American kids around 7-8 right now, but a lot of guys in the world are going 7-9 and 7-10. Our kids are physically limited at the top end.”

Even Cooper’s age doesn’t bother DeBus. Cooper will be 31 when this basketball season ends. “When I hear about 30-year-old athletes losing a step, I laugh,” DeBus says. “Except for a serious injury, or long inactivity, there’s no reason to lose a step until your late 30s. Physiologists say there’s no real deterioration in the fast-twitch (muscle fiber) ability to fire until your late 30s. I started coaching (triple jumper) Willie Banks at 29, and he set a world record at 30.”

Besides bringing notoriety to his L.A. Track Club and its new “Team Training Program”--fitness enthusiasts and recreational athletes can sign up to train alongside the club members--Cooper’s noble athletic experiment might open the doors for others.

“America doesn’t dominate international track and field like it used to,” DeBus says. “We’ve slipped a lot. One reason is a lot of our best athletes are in pro sports. Daley Thompson (of Great Britain) is the dominant decathlete in the world, but if he were an American, he would be a halfback, or a linebacker. We’ve got lots of Daley Thompsons in America, lots of them.

“Basketball is loaded with athletes who would be outstanding in track and field, in events like the hurdles, long jump, triple jump, 400 meters, the 800, all the throwing events. I’d like to see Charles Barkley throwing a javelin.

“I’ll tell you who could be the first 8-foot high jumper, and could go on up to 8-6. Ralph Sampson. He’s already 7-4, with lots of spring, lean, flexible, coordinated. He could put the record away, like Beamon.”

If Laker owner Jerry Buss can realize his dream of bringing Sampson to the Lakers, Ralph would be in DeBus’ back yard, and the track world would hold its breath.

And that might inspire Wilt Chamberlain, who at 50 is thinking of trying out for the Olympic volleyball team in ‘88, to switch events and go for the high jump.

The snowball would be rolling. The Soviets and East Germans would abandon track and field to concentrate on cross-country skiing and chess. Americans would sweep Seoul. And all because of Michael Cooper.