He’s Shooting for Berth on Olympic Basketball Team : ‘Easy’ Campbell Out to Show Coaches That He’s No Loafer

Despite the nickname--they called him “Easy” for the seemingly effortless style he displayed at Morningside High School in Inglewood--Elden Campbell is not using a never-let-them-see-you-sweat approach in his attempt to make the U. S. Olympic basketball team. He can’t. He’s competing for a big man’s spot on a squad coached by John “Play Intense Defense or Perish” Thompson, the man behind the perennially powerful Georgetown Hoyas.

After two weeks of drilling at the Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs last month, Campbell was one of 15 players chosen to play for the U.S. Select Team that left last week for a six-game trip to Europe in preparation for the Games in Seoul on Sept. 17-Oct. 7.

The Select Team is the second-string, or taxi-squad. Before choosing that team Thompson had invited 16 players to the official Olympic practice sessions that begin July 17 at Georgetown. The Select Team’s games were scheduled so Thompson and his assistants could discover who else should be invited to Georgetown.

Four players invited to official practice also will play in Europe. One, 7-foot Navy ensign David Robinson, is tagging along to get in shape. Campbell, at 6-10 and 220 pounds, could spell Robinson at center in Seoul.

But it’s more likely Campbell will compete against a slew of talent--including Danny Ferry from Duke, North Carolina’s J. R. Reid and Oklahoma’s Stacy King--for the power forward spot.

He’ll see those players if he makes it to practice in July. In Europe, he gets to battle Alonzo Mourning, a 6-11 graduate of Indian River High School in Virginia who will attend Georgetown in the fall.

“I think Alonzo is my main threat,” Campbell said in a telephone interview from Clemson, S. C. “He can really jump, he has good timing and he’s a good shooter.”

Campbell, a junior at Clemson, said competing against a high school player doesn’t bother him because Mourning is so talented.

Nothing, it seems, really bothers him.

“The Olympics is a one-time thing. Clemson is four years,” he said. “The Olympics would help me develop and give me some experience, and people will remember me if I play in the Olympics, but I really haven’t thought about it too much.”

Campbell wasn’t surprised by the invitation to the trials. His Atlantic Coast Conference-leading field goal percentage (62.9) and blocked-shot totals (88 in 28 games)--almost guaranteed it.

What surprised him was the number of blue-chip players in Colorado Springs.

“I was thinking some of them wouldn’t be as good as I, but the truth is that I couldn’t see that many differences,” he said. “I guess the coaches could. They were putting us on film and checking us out.”

Sitting in the stands, observing future Olympians, Thompson saw something in Campbell but still isn’t sure what.

“He can block shots, he has the inside game and soft touch. When you know he can do those things, you want to see more,” Thompson said. “I don’t know if Elden can play the kind of defense that we’ll have to play, and that’s what I want to find out.

“Can he sustain that intensity that we need to stop these teams from scoring? We want the best defensive players we can possibly have because if we can’t shoot on a particular day--and sometimes you just can’t put the ball in the basket--we have got to stop the other team, and you need defensive intensity for that.

“With Elden, I’m concerned with his perimeter defense and how well he plays when he’s facing the basket. And I don’t know yet what Elden’s attitude is. It’s a question of how quick he wants to mature.”

Clemson Coach Cliff Ellis told Thompson that Campbell plays as hard as anyone for 20 minutes but that he needs more stamina and concentration.

Campbell thinks it’s his nonchalant game that fools watchers into believing he’s loafing.

“That’s just my style,” he said. “I guess it doesn’t always look like I’m working.”

But he is and always has, insists Ron Randle, co-coach at Morningside where Campbell averaged double figures in points, rebounds and blocked shots as a senior.

“He proved that Easy was not lazy,” Randle said. “He is just as conditioned as anyone and he has some great stats.”

Randle, who helped get Campbell on Morningside’s varsity during his sophomore season and watched as Campbell blocked more than 10 shots in Morningside’s CIF 3-A championship game victory the following year, said Campbell is excited about playing for the Olympic team “but you have to know him to know how he gets excited. He doesn’t exude fire.”

While recruiting Campbell in 1986, former USC Coach Stan Morrison heard less-flattering comments from high school coaches who claimed they had never seen Campbell break a sweat. Morrison wasn’t deterred, however. He was in continual contact with Campbell until mid-March, when Morrison accepted the position of athletic director at UC Santa Barbara.

Campbell wanted to play for Morrison but decided to play for Ellis at Clemson. Iowa Coach George Raveling took the USC coaching job and concentrated on recruiting Chris Munk, a 6-9, 230-pound Parade All-American from Riordan High in San Francisco.

Campbell never spoke with Raveling at that time, but the two will be working together in Europe. Raveling, Thompson’s assistant, will coach the Select Team.

Morrison, meanwhile, said discussing Campbell with a reporter was the most enjoyable phone call he’s had in months.

Morrison’s compliments for Campbell ranged from “he’s so quick he could play tennis by himself” to “you better get out the wheelbarrow and open the bank because he is gonna’ make a ton of dough.”

“Elden is a little like a chameleon,” Morrison continued. “He is just sitting there almost invisible and then zap! he blocks your shot. You can teach a lot of things in basketball but you can’t teach a guy 6-11 to be that quick.”

Campbell’s mother, Betty, believes people who attempt to teach Campbell, a graphics communication major, too much may contribute to the notion that he doesn’t play hard.

“He is himself, plain and simple,” she said. “If a person lets Elden be himself and not what someone else wants him to be, you’ll see a lot of improvement from him.”

There was no confusion about what people wanted Elden to be when he started playing basketball in sixth grade. “I was always the first choice when we chose up sides because I was always the tallest,” he said.

Now he’s a literal and figurative big man on Clemson’s campus--and the “go-to” guy on the Tiger team. “He’s the guy we go to when we need something,” said assistant coach Don Hogan.

Clemson finished 14-15 overall (4-10 in ACC) last season but rejuvenated itself with late season victories over Duke and Georgia Tech, top 20 teams, before losing to N.C. State in the first round of the ACC tournament.

Campbell averaged 18.8 points, 7.4 rebounds and 3.2 blocked shots on the season and was named third-team all-ACC.

His most telling statistic, according to Hogan, was that he led the conference in points per minute.

“When you look at Elden’s stats and see that he wouldn’t get 25 minutes a game, you realize that he could be an absolutely dominating player if he played more,” Hogan said. “We have to get him playing 30 minutes or more.”

The emergence of 6-9 freshman Dale Davis, Hogan said, allowed Campbell to sit on the bench, thereby motivating him to play harder. But Davis’ play hasn’t convinced the Clemson brain trust that Campbell can’t be as dominating and as durable as Clemson’s previous pivot standout, Horace Grant, now with the Chicago Bulls.

“Elden has all the shots. He can hook with either arm and post-up and he has a real soft touch,” Hogan said. “What we’ve had to do with Elden is not teach him but just make him more active as a rebounder and defender. He tends to let the ball come inside and then try to stop people. He picks up fouls that way and doesn’t get as much playing time as he needs.”

Despite his statistics, Campbell is sometimes too nice on the court. Hogan said: “His drawback is a lack of intensity.”

Hogan, however, agreed that Campbell could return from Seoul a dramatically different player. After all, his perspiration habits changed as soon as he left Los Angeles.

Joked Hogan: “We just needed to get him to higher humidity climate in South Carolina to get him to sweat.”