BAY AREA’S NEW CENTERPIECE : In Middle, Sampson Will Get Chance to Show He’s a Warrior

Other than in a Jerry Buss fantasy, how close did Ralph Sampson ever come to being a Laker?

There’s a story going around in Houston that two years ago, Laker owner Buss sent Charlie Thomas, the owner of the Houston Rockets, a sheet of paper upon which the Laker roster was listed. Two names had been scratched out: Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Magic Johnson.

Pick any two names remaining on the list, Buss supposedly wrote Thomas, and we’ll take Ralph. The Rockets passed on Buss’ offer, which to the Lakers surely would have meant the loss of James Worthy and either Michael Cooper or Byron Scott.

That story, which appeared in the Houston Post, was attributed to a source within the Rocket ownership structure.

Buss, who enjoys a good story as much as the next guy, said Wednesday that this one was absolutely not true.

“I never did anything like that, nothing at all,” Buss said. “It’s flat-out not true.

“I never have talked to Charlie about it, and there have been many opportunities. We’re pretty good friends--Charlie’s been up to Pickfair many times and has watched Houston games by satellite on my television while I’ve been at the Forum.

“We’re very close, but I’ve never talked about it. I perhaps have said, ‘If you ever do anything with Ralph’ . . . but that’s as far as it went.”

Ray Patterson, the Houston president, said this week he never heard of such an offer being made, either. And maybe he hadn’t.

But Patterson is also the man who said he would “never, never, never, never” trade Sampson, words that will reverberate in their hollowness here tonight, when the 7-foot 4-inch center makes his debut for the Golden State Warriors against the Lakers.

Sampson became an ex-Twin Tower Saturday night when he and reserve guard Steve Harris were sent to Golden State for two All-Stars, center Joe Barry Carroll and point guard Eric (Sleepy) Floyd, in one of the biggest NBA trades in years.

“This is Ralph’s team now,” said Golden State Coach George Karl, who has watched Warrior executive vice president Don Nelson unload Carroll, Floyd, Purvis Short and 1986 top draft pick Chris Washburn since the start of the season.

Told of Karl’s remark, Sampson smiled.

“That’s what they told me in Houston, too,” he said.

To be sure, under the right circumstances, Buss would have loved the Lakers to someday be Sampson’s team.

“He’s a fabulous ballplayer, everyone knows that,” Buss said. “I think both sides have done themselves a lot of good. I think this is one of those rare trades when both sides have come out a winner.”

Sampson leaves Houston, however, with the reputation of an underachiever who never won an NCAA title in college and made it to the NBA finals only once with the Rockets, and there only to be vilified for a fistfight with a smaller man, Boston Celtic guard Jerry Sichting.

He was a man playing out of position--switching to power forward in deference to Akeem Olajuwon--and out of synch--with his coach, Bill Fitch.

“I have to feel Ralph will have a more fruitful career than he has had,” said Buss, whose hopes for a championship in 1986 were crushed by Sampson’s off-balance, buzzer-beating basket that eliminated the Lakers from the Western Conference finals.

“All the reasons for that, I’m not sure,” Buss continued. “Sometimes, a trade is in everybody’s best interests. This is one of those times.”

On the basketball court, Bill Fitch said, he never had any problems with Ralph Sampson.

“If Ralph went out of here knocking me, there was no reason for it,” Fitch told reporters.

When Sampson went to the Houston dressing room Sunday afternoon after the trade to clear out his locker, he encountered Fitch. The coach was unable to look him in the eye, Sampson said.

“It’s always been that way, and it always will,” Sampson told reporters.

Sampson didn’t merely knock Fitch with his parting remarks, he practically buried him.

“You’ve got the talent here to win a championship,” Sampson said, “but you’ll never know, because Fitch won’t let them play.”

The personality conflicts he had with Fitch, Sampson said, all came out of the coach’s office. But Sampson on more than one occasion lamented the Rockets’ structured style of play. He complained that with the Rockets, a guard coming up the floor would stop for Fitch’s instructions. Boston and the Lakers, Sampson said, don’t play that way.

“Anybody on this team, if they weren’t scared, would tell you that’s BS basketball,” Sampson said. “ . . . I kept telling people, let us loose, let us play.”

In October, Sampson had signed a six-year, $14.4-million contract. It did not, however, contain a no-trade clause.

“We wouldn’t put it in for a reason,” Patterson told reporters. “For the $2 million we were paying him, we were expecting production or the right to trade him. What I tried to do by telling him I wouldn’t trade him was to give him security.”

All the money and all the promises, however, couldn’t make Sampson happy.

“A lot of what is expected from Ralph came from his name,” said Roland Lazenby, the author of a book about Sampson’s years at the University of Virginia.

“People expecting him to do so much wouldn’t be so bad if Ralph didn’t have a streak in him. At times, he’s just out of focus,” said Lazenby, who noted that Sampson’s extreme thinness as a child had made him an overachiever.

“I don’t think he’s lazy or lacks a competitive spirit,” Lazenby said, “but at times he’ll just drift. At times, he obviously lacks enthusiasm.”

That enthusiasm waned under the tart tongue of Fitch, according to Robert Rotella, a professor of sports psychology who works closely with Virginia athletes and has know Sampson since he was a college freshman.

“Ralph’s very coachable, but he prefers to be treated in a humane way,” Rotella said. “Give him a coach he trusts and he’ll give him his heart and soul. His heart and soul are in the right place.

” . . . I think Ralph will be thrilled to go to an organization that has Don Nelson and George Karl. It’s obvious Ralph hasn’t loved a guy who is a screamer and yeller. He’s intelligent enough where that approach isn’t going to work.”

To Rotella, Sampson is a very coachable player.

“Ralph always has been what most people would consider the ultimate team player,” Rotella said. “The kind of guy who says, ‘Tell me where you want me to play and I’ll do it.’ I think he showed that when they got Olajuwon and asked Ralph to move to power forward.”

For Sampson, playing power forward was something of a grand experiment, trying to combine the fluid grace and ball-handling ability of a guard with the power moves of a big man. He never wanted the one basic move, like Kareem Abdul-Jabbar’s sky hook. He wanted a full repertoire of shots and spins, fakes and free-lancing.

At times, the results were wondrous: He could score 30 points and grab 15 rebounds, seemingly at will. But too many nights, he seemed uninvolved and uncaring--He failed to make a shot in his last game as a Rocket, and Utah players said he was afraid to mix it physically up with Jazz strongman Karl Malone.

“The NBA has a way of exposing weaknesses,” Lazenby said, “and with Ralph, there’s a question in terms of his intensity. The question for Ralph is what he’s done to confront his intensity problem. Has he acknowledged it personally.”

Even Olajuwon, the other Tower, acknowledged it may have been best for the Rockets to trade Sampson.

“I’m sad for Ralph because we played together three years,” Olajuwon said, “but then I look at the other side, at the guys who are coming. It was a good trade, a good business move.”

For their part, Karl and Nelson--although both have been critical of Sampson in the past--are ecstatic to have him. The Warriors were a dead team, Nelson said, until they got Sampson.

“We now have a light at the end of the tunnel,” Karl said at a press conference. “We have a future. We have a star player who’s going to be on the All-Star team for many years, and once we get him . . . we’re going to create a system that functions around Ralph Sampson.”

Will Sampson respond to that challenge?

“Who knows what potential is, how far you can go?” Rotella said.

“But one thing there isn’t any doubt about: Ralph is dying to win a championship. He’s been on a lot of successful teams, but since high school, he hasn’t gotten it all.”

That chance may come in Oakland.

“Ralph may have a little something to prove there,” Lazenby said. “He doesn’t play well when he’s angry, but he plays with intensity. Fitch may have done him a favor.”

Karl, too, is ready to tread where Fitch obviously faltered.

“I think it’s a challenge not only to me but also to Ralph,” Karl said after the trade was made. “I know you guys (reporters) will write all your stories about he and Bill Fitch didn’t get along, and how Akeem got in his way.

“We know all about those things, too, but we think he’s ready to be the leader of this team and the player to build around.”