THUGS OF THE NBA : Just Who Are These Guys, and Why Do They Blossom in the Spring?

Here they are, the National Basketball Assn. playoffs, better known as lay-it-up-and-die time. Tempers are getting warm, someone is about to prevent an easy hoop the, uh, decisive way, and you know what comes next don’t you, fight fans?

O-o-o-o-h, that nasty ultra-violence.

How come?

Well, for the best possible reason. As much as the league would like us to believe that this is strange, deviant, outlaw action, it is, in reality, only an extension of behavior that is widely condoned.

A few ritual targets, such as the five perennially battling all-stars named below, may be habitually pointed out, but the real problem is that everyone cheats-holds-grabs-bumps-pushes a little bit. In a nation of people who fudge on their expense accounts, are we to be surprised that we came up with Ivan Boesky?

Thus, meet the We’re No Angels All-Stars: Bill Laimbeer and Rick Mahorn of Detroit, Maurice Lucas of Portland, Xavier McDaniel of Seattle and Danny Ainge, from you know where. When trouble starts, will you have to look far to find one of them?

But they’re just the tip of the missile, a group of guys whose enthusiasm runs amok every now and then. All are heroes in their communities--no mean trick for Lucas, who has played in eight. The problem is not a band of baddies you can love to hate, but a system that has produced what is sometimes referred to as “the unwritten rule.”

Nobody talks about it much.

Everybody knows about it.

It says: Thou Shalt Allow No Layups in the Playoffs.

It is especially enforced in the later games of series, when the consequences become clear and players soaring for the basket start suddenly dropping off the radar screens.

Remember Kevin McHale pulling down Kurt Rambis in 1984 and turning the Laker-Celtic finals around?

How about Ainge’s airborne wipeout of Sidney Moncrief last spring in Milwaukee?

And Laimbeer’s blind-side of Larry Bird a week later?

But if the flying tackle at the hoop is the most dramatic way of announcing the onset of basketball by other means, there is also the less celebrated but constant war on the floor. You don’t have to be a famous thug to take part.

For example, here’s San Antonio’s Alvin Robertson, sleek as a greyhound and a rising star among all-defense candidates, asked about the league’s grabbers:

“You can probably put me at the top of that list.”

And if you can’t, it may be because the Lakers’ Michael Cooper, Mr. All-Defense himself, has retired the competition. You think he got this far just by blocking shots? Hardly. In between, he played tenaciously or, in other words, held on like an octopus in a heavy sea.

“Yes, I do,” Cooper says. “With players like (Larry Bird), where the officials are going to give him that little edge, you have to.

“I’m going to instigate all the action. I’m going to use my hips, I’m going to use my legs, I’m going to use my butt, my elbows, my knees. . . .

“Every now and then, you have to cross the line. We cross the line--sometimes one foot, sometimes both feet.”

And sometimes they march the entire neighborhood over it for a barbecue.

Meet some noted picnickers.

THE THROWBACK:

BILL LAIMBEER

Is he the current embodiment of evil, or a joke, albeit one with a weak punch line.

“He’s be captain of the all-dirty team,” says the Lakers’ Mychal Thompson, laughing. “Captain, coach, owner and commissioner.”

Says Houston’s Cedric Maxwell: “I wouldn’t put Bill Laimbeer on the ‘physical’ or the ‘dirty’ team. I think he just gets in the way. (Laughing) He’s taken too many beatings to be considered dirty.”

It hasn’t made Laimbeer the more popular with his peers that he is a rich kid from Palos Verdes. What he represents, however, is an updated version of the prototype, Jungle Jim Loscutoff of the Celtics. Laimbeer holds, pushes, hacks, flops, talks trash and never, ever backs down.

“I don’t have the physical capabilities to play any other way,” he says. “ . . . So I have to do what I have to do.”

Of course, his idea of duty can go a long way. When he wrestled Bird to the floor in mid-layup in last spring’s semifinals, the Celtics and Pistons started in on each other in earnest, with Robert Parish getting away with a sneak punch that floored Laimbeer and bloodied his nose two games later.

And after that, Sidney Green, who had left the Pistons for the Knicks in the off-season, said that Laimbeer had talked of putting Bird out of action even before the incident, suggesting premeditation.

If the worst were true, however, it would only make Laimbeer the latest in a long line, or one of a dying breed.

“There’s more respect for players now,” Laker Coach Pat Riley says. “I think they respect that, that this is a very important career and all of us can make a lot of money.

“I think a long time ago, they didn’t give a damn. I really believe that. There was a lot more hatred developed because there were less teams, and rivalries developed and guys played each other 12-14 times. They were laying for each other.”

The difference between Laimbeer and the enforcers of Loscutoff’s day is that Laimbeer can actually play. Despite considerable athletic shortcomings, he’s been a top-10 rebounder throughout his career and is a fine outside shooter.

Should it then be surprising that he retains real respect among his peers, grudging or otherwise?

“That was a serious play, that’s all I can say,” says Alvin Robertson of the Bird pull-down. “That was serious. That’s part of the playoffs.

“Detroit, I think they like having those two guys (Laimbeer and Mahorn) down there--supposedly the Raiders of the East. Myself, I look at Laimbeer as a hard-working type of guy. Sometimes you need those players on your team, who won’t back down from anybody, who’ll do whatever and try to get it done.”

HELLO MR. SCOWL:

MAURICE LUCAS

Although the art of physical intimidation was well entrenched by the time he arrived, few have traded on it as has Lucas, who starts frowning during the national anthem and then proceeds to get really angry.

Interview him during the playoffs? Forget it. He rarely talks during April, May and June, unless it’s to tell the chef to let the blood run on his steak.

Since he’s a loose, wise-cracking, fun-loving person the rest of the time, the effect is almost comic. Unless, of course, you’re on the floor with him.

What if you just tell him to lighten up? Chill out?

“He’s beyond that,” says Mychal Thompson. “He doesn’t pay any attention when you talk to him. He’ll tell you to shut up and go some place hot.”

Lucas made his reputation in the American Basketball Assn., with a knockout of the enormous Artis Gilmore. Lucas is then said to have stood over his fallen adversary and taunted him.

He never quite had a moment like that in the NBA, though. His famous fight with the 76ers’ bigger-than-life Darryl Dawkins in the 1977 final series was a joke.

Lucas landed no blows. Dawkins smote teammate Doug Collins, who stood 6 feet 6 inches but weighed in at only 180 and was trying to break it up. Julius Erving expressed his disdain for the whole mess by sitting on the floor at mid-court and watching the melee from a distance.

Dawkins was so distraught that his teammates hadn’t helped turn it into a full-scale riot that he retired to the dressing room and tore down the partitions in the bathroom. ABC’s Dick Schaap did a remote from the bathroom.

But over the years, Lucas has gotten in a few hundred shots. At the end of a distinguished career--he is a 4-time NBA All-Star, has been on two all-defensive teams and two NBA championship teams--he’ll be remembered for more than his glower.

“Darryl Dawkins didn’t know his own strength,” Michael Cooper says. “He’d set a pick and he thought he was giving you a love tap. Hell, he was lowering the boom on you.

“Maurice, I think he knew his own strength, and he tried to test it on everyone out there.”

A writer recently told Cedric Maxwell that he was doing a story on physical basketball.

“Maurice Lucas,” said Maxwell, promptly. “Now ask your question.”

McNASTY:

RICK MAHORN

Mahorn got that name from Johnny Most, the Celtic broadcaster, who also named his Bullet teammate, Jeff Ruland, McFilthy. Ruland didn’t shave. He and Mahorn played quite physically, indeed. Neither were Celtics. There you go.

One key point in this: Your thug is my competitor. The Celtics have been as physical as anyone in the game, to put it delicately, or have been pioneers, to take their opponents’ view.

Dave Cowens, beloved in Boston for his “hustle,” was once called for what he considered a cheap offensive foul on the Rockets’ Mike Newlin, a celebrated flopper. In those days, the Celtics despised flopping. Now Bird does it adroitly and they like it.

Anyway, on the next play, the 6-9, 230-pound Cowens proceeded to take a running start and knock Newlin silly. Then Cowens is said to have turned to referee Richie Powers and declared, “Now that’s a foul.”

Mahorn’s great gift to modern warfare is the pick that stuns. He once disabled three 76er guards on the same night, although he later lamented the fact that one got off easy.

“I didn’t get Clint Richardson too good,” Mahorn said. “He got back in the game.”

Says Cooper: “I don’t know about dirty, but he’s overly aggressive. I think in the picks he sets, his intentions are putting you on the ground, not picking you to clear his man. You say it’s dirty, I say it’s over-aggressive.”

Mahorn off-court is a personable man, if on the macho side. He and Ruland were best friends, and both bought German shepherd puppies. Mahorn once complained that there weren’t enough black super-villains.

“How about Mr. T?” he was asked.

“Mr. T is a sissy,” Mahorn said.

Scorned as a no-talent thug when he broke in, Mahorn has become a high-priced and valued Piston, a double-figure scorer, a 55% shooter and a tough defender and rebounder. As the level of play has risen in the NBA, so have the relative abilities of its menaces.

OH DANNY BOY: DANNY AINGE

Now, if you want to talk about a Celtic who’s really hated around the league--at least by fans--how are you going to do better than Ainge?

During games, he’s bristly, whiny and a fight waiting to happen. But, here comes a disappointment, Laker fans. Off the floor, he couldn’t be nicer.

Like Mahorn, he broke in under difficult circumstances. He was ballyhooed for trying baseball first with the Toronto Blue Jays. He was resented by some Celtics, who thought he was being shown favoritism.

When he started playing, his game was ragged, and he became known mostly for his carrying-on, not to mention his finger-biting, roll-on-the-floor fight with Atlanta’s 7-foot Tree Rollins in 1983.

In recent seasons, however, the flak around Ainge has died down, as his game has progressed. Once considered the Celtic weakness and allowed to shoot at will, he has become the league’s top three-point scorer. He made 148 last season, 41 more than second-place Dale Ellis, and ranked sixth in percentage at 41.5, too. His scoring average has gone up in each of his seven seasons.

“I think, what it is--you know, Danny Ainge’s not a dirty player at all,” Cooper says. “I think he’ll play any way that’ll help his team win. I think he’s a very, very aggressive player--such as I am.”

Just when he was about to fade into the crowd, Ainge showed what kind of a competitor-menace to aviation he could be with a flying tackle of Moncrief at the hoop last spring. The placid Moncrief came up swinging.

Everyone from Boston looked at the TV replays and decided it looked clean enough to them. So it goes.

X: XAVIER McDANIEL

This is actually an honorary appointment, since Seattle’s Xavier McDaniel hasn’t been at the center of any huge controversies--yet.

So this place could as well be taken by a dozen other candidates, known for being rough ‘n’ tumble but generally considered “tenacious” and admired for it: Karl Malone, Buck Williams, Charles Oakley, Charles Barkley, Moses Malone, Michael Cage, James Donaldson, Frank Brickowski, Roy Tarpley, and others.

We’re giving the nod to X, just because he manages to look as if he might go off so often, and so far.

“He’s more tenacious than physical,” Mychal Thompson says. “We’ve seen his intense, tenacious side--but not his Charles Manson side.”

Just which side was that the night the Lakers’ Wes Matthews got him angry, whereupon McDaniel grabbed him by the throat and shook him like a rag doll? It didn’t look like his Gandhi imitation.

“He was just defending himself,” says Thompson, grinning.

Lesson: In the NBA, as in geopolitics, much is done in the name of defense and not all of it is defensive. So it goes.