THE FALL GUY : Other Indicted Suns, Davis Still in Phoenix; Not Gondrezick

He was a fourth-round draft choice from Pepperdine University--where he wasn’t even a starter in his senior year--when he showed up last fall in the training camp of the Phoenix Suns. Grant Gondrezick figured they didn’t even know his name.

But it worked out better than he could have imagined. Not only did he make the team, but Gondrezick was going to be roommates on the road with the great Walter Davis, the six-time NBA all-star, one of the highest-scoring guards in the league, the leader of the Suns. Gondrezick called his college coach, Jim Harrick, with the news.

“He was spittin’ in the phone,” Harrick said, recalling the conversation a year later. “He was just gushing. ‘Coach, he’s the greatest player in the world, he dresses like a million bucks, he speaks so well.’ ”

They became very good friends, the white rookie and the black star, at least in the eyes of Gondrezick. But then on a March afternoon in Phoenix, before the Suns were to play the Lakers that night in Veterans Coliseum, Davis appeared before a grand jury in Maricopa County and related a story of his own cocaine habit, and drug use by some of his teammates.

Among the players he mentioned was his roommate, Grant Gondrezick.

On April 16, Gondrezick was one of three Suns indicted on drug charges. The next day, Davis, his celebrity roommate, checked into a drug rehabilitation clinic for the second time in the last 16 months.

“There were nights I went to bed and just stared at the ceiling,” Gondrezick said. “I watched the sun come up and go down many, many days, wondering what the heck was going to happen to me. There were days I didn’t want to see tomorrow.”

On Sept. 2, Gondrezick--accompanied by his youngest brother and best friend, Gale--stood before a judge in a Phoenix courtroom and, in a plea bargain, pleaded guilty to a charge of witness-tampering.

The penalty?

A $100 fine and three years’ probation. All drug charges were dismissed.

On Oct. 8, Gondrezick reported to his second training camp with the Suns. The 24-year-old guard came three weeks early, knowing he would “have to play phenomenal” in order to make the team. Within a week, he was cut. Still on the team were Walter Davis--who faced no criminal charges--Jay Humphries and James Edwards, both of whom admitted to marijuana use in a pretrial diversion of charges.

Tuesday, Gondrezick boarded a plane for France. The day before, he arrived for an interview in a Westwood restaurant wearing a “Property of the Phoenix Suns” T-shirt, but now he was preparing to play for a team in Caen, France.

“I didn’t have a guaranteed contract for big money, like Edwards and Humphries did,” Gondrezick said. “And if a player was easy to get rid of, it was me.

” . . . The most guilty player in all of this is Walter Davis, and he’s sitting. His life is beautiful. Nothing ever happened to the guy. But because of what he said in testimony, we went through hell.”

So, Gondrezick left for overseas, wondering if he’ll ever get another shot at the NBA.

“Let’s be realistic,” he said. “No other NBA team was going to touch me, I don’t think, because of what happened, even though I wasn’t convicted (of drug use). I had to go somewhere else and prove myself for a year.

“Grant Gondrezick always seemed to be around, and attracted by, an adverse situation,” Harrick said. “If there’s a problem, Grant’s going to be around it.”

For five years--Gondrezick red-shirted after his junior year--Harrick was Gondrezick’s coach at Pepperdine. Jim Harrick Jr., was Grant’s teammate and one of his closest friends.

“I’ve coached for 27 years, and Pepperdine did as much to be patient, and wait for Grant Gondrezick to grow, as any kid we’ve ever had,” Harrick said.

The wait was worthwhile, he added, even if Gondrezick was “a mosquito--always coming to you with this problem or that problem.” By the end of his senior year, Harrick said, he was a model player.

“I’ve never had a guy work harder on the floor or in the weight room,” Harrick said. “He’d be in the weight room at 6 in the morning, then he’d go shoot 300 times, run (laps), do slides, handle the ball. What a self-disciplined workout guy he was, and it finally carried over to the classroom. He got a self-image he’d never had.”

But before he reached that point?

“He was a handful,” Harrick said. “They kicked him out of the dorm, and they wanted to kick him out of school, too. For ticky-tack stuff, like jumping out of a girl’s window.”

Harrick knew he was inviting a challenge when he recruited Gondrezick at Boulder High School in Colorado.

Boulder won a state championship in Grant’s sophomore year, but later there were run-ins between the player and his high school coach, Kent Smith, who at one point caused Gondrezick to be suspended from school. And Harrick heard stories that Gondrezick liked to party.

“I told him, ‘If I ever catch you with that stuff . . . ‘ “ Harrick said. “We knew we were taking a gamble, but our hope was that if we got him away from (Boulder), he’d grow up a little bit.”

What really swayed him, Harrick said, were Grant’s parents, George and Eunice Gondrezick. “Two of the greatest human beings you could ever meet,” he said.

When Harrick heard of Gondrezick’s indictment, he said his first reaction was to try to help. He urged Gondrezick to come back to Malibu this summer and work toward completing his degree. Gondrezick did just that, until the attempted suicide of his older brother, Glen.

“I really question the idea of the Phoenix Suns (permitting) a wide-eyed, very gullible, very much a follower, young rookie like Grant (to room) with a guy of the magnitude of Walter Davis,” Harrick said.

“He’s a classy, great quality player . . . but he’s a closet guy. He had a situation (his cocaine use) in the closet. Why in the world (the Suns) would ever do that is beyond my imagination.”

While Gondrezick was here last summer, Harrick asked him to speak to the youngsters at his basketball camp about the dangers of drugs.

“He really opened up and laid it on the table,” Harrick said. “He was quite mature.

“I’m the kind of guy, you really have to convince me, and he did a little bit. I want to see, after a couple of years with no incidents. He’s in a situation where you’ve got to convince people you’re a man.

” . . . Grant knows in his heart that you can fool some of the people some of the time but not all of the people all of the time. Going to France is the best thing that could have happened, give him a chance to collect his thoughts. He’s got to grow up and be straight with people, not lie and sneak around.”

On a July night last summer, Grant got a phone call from his brother, Gale, that prompted him to set aside his own troubles.

Glen, another brother in the family of 13 children--7 boys, 6 girls--a former pro basketball player for the New York Knicks, Denver Nuggets and in Italy, was in a Boulder hospital. He had shot himself with a .22-caliber rifle.

“When Gale called and said Glen had shot himself . . . I couldn’t say anything,” Grant said. “My throat was numb. I got on a plane for the longest two-hour flight of my life.”

Boulder police say Glen Gondrezick, 31, was lucky. The bullet that punctured his lung and passed through his body could very well have cost him his life. And there’s no telling what would have happened if his 8-year-old daughter, Britt, hadn’t called her grandparents to tell them that Glen and his wife, Merry, were fighting.

George and Eunice Gondrezick went to their son’s house, about 10 minutes away from their own flower-filled home in Boulder. When they arrived, Glen walked out of the garage, then slumped to the ground, blood flowing from the bullet hole in his shirt pocket. An ambulance was called.

Within a week, Glen was out of the hospital but facing criminal charges--third-degree assault--stemming from the altercation with his wife, who fled from the house with the couple’s two children.

There were cuts and bruises on Merry Gondrezick’s arms, and in cases of possible domestic violence in Boulder County, law enforcement officials are required to bring charges, whether or not the alleged victim wants to press them.

A trial is pending, although Glen--a real estate agent in Boulder--may exercise his option of entering a guilty plea, being put on probation and undergoing counseling, after which the conviction would be stricken from the record.

Merry Gondrezick has filed for divorce, and judging from conversations with family members and attorneys involved in the case, it could get very ugly. It was his despondency over the prospect of a divorce--and the fact that Merry allegedly threatened him with it in front of the children--that caused Glen to make the attempt on his life, family members say.

In 1984, Glen was arrested for investigation of third-degree sexual assault on a 26-year-old Boulder woman, a charge that was later dismissed. In that case, he might have been the victim of his then-celebrity status, according to Boulder law enforcement officials.

Lois Tarkanian, wife of Coach Jerry Tarkanian of the University of Nevada Las Vegas, remembers far different circumstances for Glen and Merry Gondrezick when they were both students at UNLV, more than 10 years ago.

That was when Glen was starring for the Rebels, with such players as Reggie Theus and Jackie Robinson, and kids were wearing their gym socks “Gondo-style,” just like Glen.

“I was shocked,” Lois Tarkanian said of Glen’s suicide attempt. “It just didn’t seem to me the way Glen would handle that. He told me it was a stupid thing to do, and he regretted it.

” . . . I think back on them, and they were such an attractive couple. They had that aura--it was nice to be with them. You could feel that love.

“It’s sad that it’s reached this point. Sad for Glen, sad for Merry and sad for the children.”

Lois Tarkanian has arranged for Glen Gondrezick to return to school at UNLV in January. Recently, she held a gathering at her home, attended by such former players as Robinson and Theus and other UNLV boosters, to organize fund-raising benefits for Gondrezick.

“Nobody here is taking sides,” she said. “But he’s part of our team, our community.”

Grant Gondrezick was supposed to have been married last July, to his girlfriend of six years, Dara Stevens, whom he met as a freshman at Pepperdine. The wedding was postponed when he was indicted, and Gondrezick was concerned about the relationship before he left for France.

“Dara and her mother, Carole, have stuck by me from Day 1, but her friends and family are wondering what’s going on,” Gondrezick said. “This has been embarrassing for her, but she’s been very strong.”

What concerns him most is being painted as a drug user, an image fostered by Davis’ grand jury testimony that Gondrezick furnished him with cocaine on several occasions. According to Gondrezick’s attorney, Kenneth Fields, as part of his plea bargain, Gondrezick had to admit to using cocaine with Phoenix teammate William Bedford on one occasion.

Fields said that he would never have agreed to a plea bargain if Gondrezick--even though he’d never been arrested before in his life--had not faced a mandatory prison sentence if convicted.

“I don’t know how it ever got started, I really don’t,” Grant Gondrezick said. “I was indicted on drug charges that made me sound like I was one of those guys from Bolivia who make millions and millions of dollars off it. The media made it so big. They had me signed, sealed and going to prison.

“I don’t understand how the whole thing got . . . Just because it was the Phoenix Suns, that’s why it happened.”

The charge that Gondrezick pleaded guilty to, Fields said, was not one he was originally charged with but one devised in the plea-bargain process. Gondrezick was found guilty of interfering with the testimony of a grand jury witness, Bedford, who has since been traded to Detroit.

“Bedford approached me and told me he wanted to testify before the grand jury, and I think I told him I didn’t want anything to do with it,” Gondrezick said. “I told him, ‘Don’t mention my name. I don’t know anything to testify about.’ And that’s what they convicted me for.

“I don’t use drugs, I don’t plan on using drugs and I’ll tell you what--I don’t want anything to do with anyone associated with drugs.”

Asked whether he had been aware of Davis’ drug use, he said: “I knew he’d had a problem in the past, but I didn’t realize he had a problem again.”

But what of Davis’ testimony that Gondrezick supplied him with cocaine on occasion?

“I can’t comment on what was said in court because there’s still some stuff pending legally,” he said.

In the NBA, if a player takes a single hotel room on the road, he has to pay the difference between that and a double room. As a rookie making minimum salary, Gondrezick was looking to save some money when he approached Davis and asked him if they could room together.

“Walter likes to have people around,” Gondrezick said. “He’s an easygoing person, and it didn’t seem to bother him at all. I think he was doing it more as a favor to help me.”

That help blew up in his face. And what of the Suns now, with Davis back and playing with Humphries and Edwards, players he identified as drug users?

“There won’t be any problem whatsoever,” Gondrezick contended. “The damage is over and done with. Sure, there might not be a high level of trust between Jay Humphries and James Edwards, and Walter Davis, but I think every day their relationship will be stronger. Hopefully, they’ll be forgiving.”

Could Gondrezick be forgiving? He says he already has been.

“When I came into camp this year, I was getting along with Walter fine,” he said. “If I kept a grudge or kept bringing it up, it would only be adding fuel to the fire, and I want that fire to die. In the future, if I come into contact with Walter, I’d still get along with him.”

But would he ever be his roommate?

“Probably not,” Gondrezick said. “At this point in my life, I’ve got to take care of myself and worry about myself.”

Harrick hopes it isn’t too late, at least from a basketball standpoint.

“I think he may have cost himself an NBA career,” the Pepperdine coach said. “I think he’s getting blackballed.”

There will be more jobs next season in the NBA, which will expand by two teams, with two more teams being added for the 1989-90 season.

“It’s better for me to get away and show everyone I was a victim of circumstances,” he said. “And I was a victim of circumstances--I believe that to this day. Those circumstances cost me a job in the NBA. As far as forever, I hope not. I pray not.

“I think a lot of general managers and coaches around the league will say, ‘Yeah, this guy’s a great kid, and that cloud over his head is not a part of his life. Never was and never will be.’ ”