He Sees a Clearer Reflection Now : Woolridge, Starting Anew as Laker, Says Drug Problem Is in Past

Orlando Woolridge could run and jump and block shots and slam dunk and, after an especially spectacular move, it sounded as if an entire arena were murmuring his name in one extended electric syllable: “O-O-O-O-O.” He never had trouble playing before a packed house.

It was only in front of an audience of one that Woolridge blew his lines, froze on stage, fell apart.

Alone, this Big O felt like a zero.

“This is probably going to sound real weird, but for about 2 months when I’d go into the bathroom, I wouldn’t look in the mirror because I couldn’t stand to see myself,” he said.

Maybe he was just afraid he’d see double.

There was one Woolridge, the concerned Chicago Bulls basketball star and Notre Dame graduate, who was spending his afternoons going to high schools, talking to kids about the dangers of using drugs.

Then there was the other Woolridge, the one who lived less for the games than the parties that followed, who started using cocaine his rookie season and had no intention of stopping.

“I really felt I was a bad person,” he said. “It was an empty feeling.”

It’s hard to admit that you’re a fraud. It’s at least equally hard to admit you have a problem, but circumstances--as well as an apparent willingness to save himself--led Woolridge to a Van Nuys drug rehabilitation clinic last February.

Now it is 8 months later, his first day of training camp here as a Laker, and Woolridge is standing before another mirror. This time, he does not turn away.

“It was a typical rookie move,” said Woolridge, who is starting his eighth season in the National Basketball Assn., “but I put on my practice gear and I was in the mirror and, man, it was like, ‘Wow, Lakers. ‘ You know what I mean?

“I am like a rookie again, and it feels good to be excited. When you’ve gone through what I’ve been through, it gives you the attitude that you don’t back down to anyone.

“I’ve been through hell, and it’s going to be hard to hold me back.”

The New Jersey Nets had heard the drug rumors, but how do you resist the chance to sign a 6-foot 9-inch forward who could score 22 points a game? The Nets couldn’t.

“Some things in his past were red flags,” Dave Wohl, who was the Nets’ coach at the time but subsequently was fired, has said. “We were very aware (of the rumored drug use) and that was something we made clear to Orlando.

“He said during the interview that he had tried drugs at one time, but was not using them any further and certainly was not addicted to them.

” . . . We were impressed about how honest he was. We felt if Orlando stayed clean, he would make a nice addition. I really thought he wanted to succeed here. We thought maybe he had changed. In retrospect, it didn’t turn out that way.”

The Lakers knew of how Wohl claimed to have found drug paraphernalia in Woolridge’s hotel room during training camp last October, how he missed a team bus and two games one weekend last February, for which he was suspended and fined $22,250. How he checked into a Van Nuys drug-abuse clinic a day later and stayed 51 days.

But how do you resist the chance to sign a 6-9 forward who could score 22 points a game, and not have to lose anyone off your roster to get him?

The Lakers couldn’t.

So last Aug. 10, the Lakers signed free agent Woolridge, 28, to a 4-year contract that will pay him $503,000 this season--the maximum allowed under the Lakers’ salary cap--$650,000 next season, $800,000 the third season, and $950,000 the fourth. That’s just a shade under $3 million for a player who admits he has made a career of fooling those around him.

“I’m not going to lie,” he said. “I was persuasive enough to make (the Nets believe what he’d told them). One thing addicts and alcoholics have in our past is that we’re very persuasive people.”

He said he told the Nets he had used drugs that night during training camp. “But it was no big thing. I made them feel it was something I did that one night. Some friends came by and they were doing it and we just didn’t clean up. I misled them.”

Did the Lakers sign Woolridge with blinders in place?

“I think all of us gave it a lot of thought,” Laker Coach Pat Riley said. “We discussed it in depth, what could happen if, in fact, there was a drug relapse.

“This has been a pretty damn clean team for a long time. . . . I think everybody deserves the right for a second or third chance in this country. When we finally talked about all these things, we looked at our list of needs. The first was to get a point guard, another was backup help for James (Worthy).

” . . . We felt Orlando was one of the best players to fit into our system. At the same time, we thought he had a serious attitude about this opportunity to get back into his profession. We felt he was worth the risk.”

So, what does Woolridge, who said he is being tested for drugs twice weekly by the league, have to prove to the Lakers?

“Orlando doesn’t have to prove anything to the Lakers,” Worthy said. “He has to prove something to Orlando.”

Woolridge and his wife, Patricia, high school sweethearts in Mansfield, La., have a 2-year-old son, Zachary.

“I looked at him when I was loaded one night,” Woolridge said. “I said, ‘You deserve better than this.’ I didn’t want him to have to say, ‘My daddy’s a drug addict.’ I owed him that.

“Now, I look at him and say, ‘You got the daddy you want.’ ”

That was one reason, Woolridge said, that he sought help. But it wasn’t until last February, when he missed the team bus to Philadelphia, drove his own car and had an accident, then didn’t tell anyone of his whereabouts for 28 hours, that league and team officials challenged him to look in the mirror and confront the ugliness that had come into his life.

“I was categorized when I was in the hospital as a binge-er,” Woolridge said. “I was not the type of guy who had cocaine around me every day. I’d go 2, 3 weeks and not do it. Then I’d get with some people or some friends and I’d start and go, 3, 4 days.

“The reason it became a problem, especially that last year, is where it used to be every 2 or 3 weeks it started becoming every week, every couple of days.”

Then on that rainy night, he ran his car off the New Jersey Turnpike into a ditch, struck his head against the steering wheel, and blacked out.

“The reason it happened was I . . . was getting loaded. I tried to rush to the game, but I ran off the road.”

Woolridge disputes allegations by Wohl that the Nets knew of his drug problems but didn’t act on them. “That really ticked me off,” he said. “He made it seem like a cover-up or conspiracy was going on, which was not the case.”

The NBA ultimately fined the Nets $25,000 for failing to inform the league of the training camp incident, but its investigation found no substantiation that Wohl had told management of the drug paraphernalia. Was it possible, Woolridge said, that the team didn’t want to know whether he had a drug problem?

“They were aware I was having problems, but I don’t think they knew the extent of my problems,” he said.

They knew only too sadly in February. Woolridge described a meeting he had with Bob Casciola, the team’s chief operating officer, the day before he came forward and admitted his drug use.

“We sat in his office and he just looked at me and said, ‘O, you got a problem, now let’s do something about it.’ It was that initial conversation that convinced me to do something.”

Woolridge also met with Horace Balmer, the league’s director of security.

“He said, ‘O, if you want to get out of this, if you want to change your life, we can help you.’ I looked at him and told myself I want to change. I don’t like this, I want to make my life manageable.”

The next day, Woolridge flew to Los Angeles and checked into the Adult Substance Abuse Program clinic in Van Nuys.

“I learned more in that hospital about myself than I ever learned in my life,” Woolridge said. “There were days when you cried for 5 hours and days when you laughed for 5 hours. By the end of the day, you were completely drained.”

On the first day, after listening to others describe their problems, Woolridge wasn’t sure he belonged there. He also was shocked to see who else was there.

“There were (Hollywood) stars. My first time, it was like, ‘Not you! Not you!’ It’s like, oh, man.”

There were more than stars, however, in his group therapy sessions. There were doctors, lawyers, judges, homeless people, gang members. And Woolridge also discovered he belonged in their midst.

“There are no degrees to this kind of a problem,” he said. “When you’re an alcoholic or drug addict, you’re no better than any other alcoholic or drug addict.”

And in the mirror held up to him by those other addicts, Woolridge discovered that he had been someone too easy to please, too eager to be liked, someone who put himself in too many situations in which he didn’t belong.

“My priorities were mixed up,” he said. “There was more emphasis put on what was going to happen after the game than the game itself.

“I don’t blame anybody but myself, but I was an easy target. I let people lead me on and I just wasn’t assertive and strong enough . . . to say, ‘These are things I don’t need to do.’

“My ideology about the NBA was the big-time, the partying, and I was attracted to that. I was the type to do anything to fit in.”

Now, he says, he’s clean, and committed on a daily basis to staying that way.

“There’s a trust issue I’ve broken, with my wife, with management, with people in the league, with fans,” he said.

“That’s going to take time. I’m going to have to be patient. (But) it would be a shame to be judged as the person I was then because I’m totally different now.

“I know that I’m going to be under the microscope. I know the majority of people don’t expect me to make it. If I start thinking about that, I’m going to start to worry. It’s going to get me out of the context of what I should be concerned about.”

And in the Forum, what will people see?

Woolridge was watching the playoffs on TV and noticed how Worthy was dragging his injured left knee.

“I said, ‘I bet I could fit in with them,’ ” he said, “ ‘I bet I could be their third forward.’ And wow, it wasn’t 2 months later, here I am.

“I love to run, I love to slam dunk, I think I’m going to give them a dimension at the power forward position they might not have had.

“It’s tough for me to sit here and say what I’m going to do. I just want to go out and show it. My whole thing is it’s not Showtime, it’s O-time.”