For Lewis, Basketball Was Always a Festival : He’s Playing Publicly for First Time in Year, and He’ll Soon Be in Pepperdine Uniform

Tom Lewis has always liked basketball.

Make that loved, craved and gloried in basketball.

He is so fond of it, he says, because it is a sport in which you need no one but yourself. That is how he feels about what he calls a private game.

“All you need for basketball is a ball, a hoop and yourself,” said Lewis, who is here at the U.S. Olympic Festival playing in real games for the first time since last year’s Festival. “I always just went out and shot by myself.”

Despite his professed love for solitary hoops, Lewis is no stranger to controversy. The former star at Santa Ana’s Mater Dei High School led USC in scoring his freshman year, played a role in a bit of a player uprising, then transferred in the wake of a coaching change, announcing first that he would attend UC Irvine but later enrolling at Pepperdine, where he has completed the required redshirt season.

No controversy surrounds him here, though. If he’s not a lonely figure, Lewis is certainly a lone figure. He tends to refrain from high fives, to sit near the end of the bench and to clap only rarely.

“I never got into that stuff,” he said.

He goes to the end of the bench, he says, to think about how he has played, and what he will do when he goes back in. “Down there, nobody bothers you,” he said.

Some other athletes make friendly gestures to Lewis, but invitations to watch other Festival events or to go out on the town are frequently met with a polite thank you and, “I think I’ll go take a nap.”

Some players make no such gestures, asking him only “Pepper-what?” when he tells them where he goes to school, and telling the kid from the West to get out from under the boards with the East Coast basketball hotshots. Here in the heart of Atlantic Coast Conference basketball country, neither Lewis’ past nor future is of much concern or interest.

“I don’t make a lot of friends wherever I play,” Lewis said. “I don’t know why.”

What Lewis has never liked about basketball is the attention that comes with doing well in the game.

In high school he sometimes refused interviews, he remembers, and dreaded going before the cameras. But he was told that these things were necessary, and so he did them.

He visited such big-time basketball schools as Kentucky, but decided against them because he wanted no part of the adulation that would have come with the uniform.

“I couldn’t see myself being bigger than the mayor or the governor,” Lewis said.

His aloofness seems in part to be a reflection of his concentration on the game.

After Dennis Scott of the East team had dunked on a fast break in a game here Sunday, the East team celebrated raucously at half court, and Lewis’ West teammates--who so far have won one of three games, gathered nearby. Lewis, who has led the West in scoring in each game, stood at the foul line, his back to everyone, waiting for the officials to call a technical foul for hanging on the rim.

“I’ve just always been this way,” said Lewis. “I just want to play basketball, and when I’m through, know I worked my butt off.”

Lewis was not preceded by a sparkling reputation here. While at USC, he spoke to the press of “problems and turmoil” in the program, saying he was concerned that former coach Stan Morrison might be giving other players preferential treatment. He later recanted. He transferred, he says, because he “just couldn’t get along” with George Raveling, Morrison’s replacement.

Andy Russo, University of Washington coach and coach of the West team here, said he had heard things about Lewis but that he finds Lewis “a nice young man, and a good player.”

Last year at Pepperdine was a time for Lewis to get a bit of a break after five years of serious basketball, the pressure of being a freshman star at USC and the transfer turmoil. “I was basketballed out,” Lewis said.

Because he was not playing on the team, Pepperdine allowed him to take on apartment off-campus, in Santa Monica. Lewis said he knew only about eight or nine people at Pepperdine, went to the beach only once, and spent his spare time as he likes to--watching basketball on television or going to multiplex theaters for movie marathons.

“I’m Mr. Movie,” he said. “It gives me a break from basketball.”

His closest friend remains Pat Barrett, his longtime coach and adviser who took Lewis into the home of his parents while he was at Mater Dei, and who some college coaches have said was part of any deal for Lewis’ basketball abilities.

Barrett is here this week, watching Lewis play. But he says that he will not attend Pepperdine practices, saying that Pepperdine is “kind of far,” and adding that he will be working at a Mission Viejo athletic club.

Some have said it was at Barrett’s urging that Lewis enrolled at Pepperdine, rather than UCI. Lewis, saying that he likes Pepperdine, maintains, as he did earlier, that he thinks Pepperdine has a better chance to make the National Collegiate Athletic Assn. tournament.

Although Lewis still lives at the Barrett home in Garden Grove during the summer, he spends much of his time away from the house. He has a 1 1/2-hour weightlifting session in the morning, then works as an instructor at the Des Flood Shooting Camp until noon. That’s followed by an afternoon job as a pool attendant at the Anaheim Hilton, followed by pick-up basketball, sometimes followed by a game in a summer league at Morningside High School in Inglewood.

Whether the relationship between Lewis and Barrett has changed is uncertain.

“(Pat) has his thing to do and I have mine to do,” Lewis said.

Barrett, who first coached Lewis at Mission Viejo’s Capistrano Valley High when Lewis was a freshman, was an assistant under coach Gary McKnight at Mater Dei, then attended almost every USC practice in Lewis’ year there. Lewis said he is happy at the Barrett home, and sees no reason to leave now.

“After college, I think it will be time for me to move on and go out and find my own place to stay,” he said.

In the meantime, he remains a quiet but articulate and friendly young man who apparently is satisfied with few friends and few interests other than basketball. He said he looks forward to playing at Pepperdine this year on a team with four starters returning and the fifth spot apparently waiting for a 6-foot 7-inch forward named Lewis.

But he has not entirely forgotten USC.

“They say once a Trojan, always a Trojan,” Lewis said. “I’ve still got a little Trojan in me. I guess I always will.”