Little-Known Nugget Has Turned Into a Real Gem

The nice thing about Alex English is, there’s no pressure on him. How could there be? Nobody knows him. He’s classified. Like a bombsight or a new nuclear tank. Spies are better known.

Stop 10 people on the street outside of Denver and ask them who or what an Alexander English is or what he does for a living and you can bet all 10 of them will have no idea.

Just for ducks, who do you think Alex English is--one of the following?

(1) That British actor, star of “Bridge on the River Kwai”?

(2) America’s first secretary of the treasury?

(3) A famous Greek general?

(4) The famous old-time pitcher who struck out Tony Lazzeri with the bases loaded?

(5) A foreign racing bike or a new Japanese import car?

Well, of course, an Alex English is none of the above. He’s one of the best basketball players ever to play in the NBA is what he is. Only a hard core of dedicated fans know it. The rest of the world wouldn’t be able to pick him out of a lineup of ribbon clerks.

Yet, for 11 years he’s been one of the most devastating scorers ever to grace a hardwood floor. Only a few superstars have scored more points. Even fewer have a higher average. Yet, he’s not Magic English. Or the Pearl, or Dr. A, or Air English, or even Hondo or Slick or the Big A, or the Iceman.

He’s Alex the Great, surely, to anybody who has ever had to guard him. But he might as well be playing in a mask so far as the fan on the street is concerned. He has managed to throw in an incredible 19,248 points in his career--only 14 players in the history of the game have more--without drawing any more attention to himself than a pickpocket in rush hour.

They are the quietest, most-efficient points in the annals of the game.

Alex English does not soar around the basket like incoming mortar fire, he does not ram home the splashy slam dunks, he does not hog the free-throw line and he does not send line drives through the backboard from the backcourt at the buzzer. He just simply gets in position, fakes his man out and then throws up this soft little jumper from the baseline or the top of the key.

His nickname should be Swish. He is like a ballplayer who keeps ripping graceful doubles down the foul line with men on base.

He is a scoring machine. But his life story is that someone watches him play all night and then, when the tally sheets come up, he is startled to learn that the small forward, No. 2, had that kind of a night.

“Good Lord, did you notice that guy had 50 points, that what’s-his-name, Englander?”

“I’m not a flashy player,” he admits. “I’m not one that the people can relate to. I look on myself as a player who gets the job done but you don’t see me jump over two or three people to slam dunk. I just put the ball in the basket.”

He needs an act. He’s like DiMaggio under a fly ball. He makes it look too easy.

It has cost him.

“Most guys of my capabilities would have sneaker contracts, outside income,” he notes. “Me, they don’t notice.”

It’s been pretty much that way since Alex English came in the league--and even before. He was not even drafted from the University of South Carolina until the 23rd pick. The Milwaukee Bucks used him as the sixth man--super sub--in their game plans. And they let him go with a shrug when he signed on with the Indiana Pacers as a free agent.

Denver got him and a first-round draft choice from Indiana for George McGinnis two years later.

It wasn’t as if Alex English was a garbage player. He was a deft shooter, a sure passer and one of the most graceful players who ever stepped onto the court.

At Denver, they took the cellophane off him, pushed him on court and gave him the ball--and Alex English became one of the premier players in the league. Like John Havlicek, he did what he did without appearing even to sweat. He had the touch of a watchmaker and the knack for getting open of a cutpurse. The points piled up dizzyingly.

He’s on the dog team of the NBA playoffs now. The Denver Nuggets without Calvin Natt are not a team, they’re a sieve--the basketball equivalent of a dam leak.

Like a good baseball team, a basketball team needs two threats in the middle of the lineup. The Nuggets have one. They need someone to keep a crowd from collecting every time Alex English gets the ball.

In the current playoffs, the Lakers know that if they can keep the ball from Alex English there’s no gold in the rest of the Nuggets.

So, Alex English, like caviar or escargots, is not for everyone, just the basketball gourmet, the fan who likes the game for its own sake in the purest state, played on the floor and under the basket, not an air show.

Part time actor (“Amazing Grace and Chuck”) and full-time humanitarian (he got the All-Star game players to donate their winnings to African famine relief two years ago) and a minor American poet (“Maybe I’ll Know You One Day”), Denver’s Alex English is springtime in the Rockies, a player’s player, a fan’s man and if he’s just plain English, well, so was Shakespeare, now, wasn’t he?