HE’S NOT KAREEM AND HE’S NOT AKEEM. HE MAY NOT EVEN BE SOMEWHERE BETWEEN. : He’s Ralph

After a tasty lunch of veal picatta, washed down by small pot of steaming hot tea, Ralph Sampson pushed his chair away from the restaurant table, walked to his mini-van and drove off into the lingering fog, once again heading straight toward the familiar terrain of maxi-expectations.

Just like a dribbled basketball, the life of a basketball player has its ups and downs. But it is rare for a player such as Sampson--whose ups and downs sometimes occur simultaneously--to come along. Wilt Chamberlain, perhaps?

It has been only 5 1/2 years since Ralph Sampson, the 3-time college player of the year at the University of Virginia, became the first player chosen in the National Basketball Assn. draft. But measure the length of time in something else, like . . .

. . . two knee operations, three coaches, two teams, one trade , one trade rumor, several tons of criticism and numerous basketball courts littered with unfulfilled expectations.

Players who are 7-feet 4-inches tall get little compassion. At such a height, they must never come up short. But things finally may be looking up for Sampson. For the first time in his life, he won’t be the tallest player on the team. Sampson is still 3 inches shorter than Manute Bol, so at least no one is going expect him to be taller.

Here on the east side of the Bay, they are getting a new look at Ralph Sampson, who, at 28 and after two knee operations, may no longer be the player he once was, which wasn’t good enough to suit some people anyway.

In his first pro season, with the Houston Rockets, he was NBA rookie of the year, but the Rockets still lost 53 games. The next year, Sampson was the most valuable player in the All-Star game, but the Rockets lost in the first round of the playoffs. The year after that, Sampson’s last-second shot eliminated the Lakers and the Rockets made it to the NBA finals. But they lost in 6 games and Sampson took enough heat to warm the whole state of Texas during a norther.

Now, a year after the shocking trade that brought him to the Golden State Warriors, Sampson is again hearing rumors that he will be traded, and he’s not very comfortable with it. Ask him if he thinks he has found a good situation here and he answers in a voice that indicates he is resigned to whatever awaits him.

“I have no idea,” he said. “When I got here, I was the center of attention, the man on the court, the center they would build the team around. I said I heard that before. Now, here, today, I was right. Now I got trade rumors about.

“So what’s the big deal? They’re going to build the team around who? Around me? They can’t tell me straight up I’m going to be here for another 5 years, whatever my contract is. I want to be able to go out and get a house and be comfortable and live.”

Warrior Coach Don Nelson does not respond to trade rumors, according to his policy, so that’s where that one stands. In the meantime, Nelson is busily engaged in the rehabilitation of Sampson, he of damaged knees and ravaged reputation.

“He is not the next Kareem (Abdul-Jabbar), which everyone expected him to be,” Nelson said. “Everyone expected him to be the next dominant player in basketball. Well, he hasn’t been that dominant player. Right now, we’re trying to piece together what his game really is ourselves.”

Sampson was not spectacularly sound when the Warriors traded for him, but he has already had surgery on his right knee since he got here and fluid has twice been drained from the other knee, supposedly the strong one, in training camp. Before, he could always run. Now there seems to be some doubt about that.

And Sampson still seems to be trying to adjust to his new situation.

“I’m just getting over quite a lot of things,” he said.

“My trail in the past has set down the tone. In college, I was NCAA player of the year. You don’t get NCAA player of the year for nothing. Coming into the NBA, I get rookie of the year. Can’t ask for too much else--we don’t have a team that can dominate. The next year, I change positions and adjust and we lose to Utah in the playoffs. The next year, we go to the finals.

“Something must be right. I don’t know what it is.”

Apparently, others don’t, either, because Sampson critics abound. Some say they’re just telling it like it is, such as Bill Fitch, Sampson’s former coach at Houston.

Fitch, who was fired after last season and replaced by Don Chaney, said Sampson may only need to be in the right place at the right time. And maybe, Fitch said, the time and the place are gone.

“If Ralph Sampson had gone to Boston and played where he was the fifth-best player, he’d have been a hell of a player,” Fitch said. “He might have lived up to some expectations. He’ll never reach the quality of player that (Abdul-Jabbar) is.”

Sampson also has been hearing such talk. He listens to the not-so-soothing criticism. Harry Edwards thinks Sampson should not avoid listening.

Edwards, a sports sociologist who works with the Warriors as a counselor, described Sampson as a “big-ticket item” and said there is something to remember about such items.

“Anytime you have a guy who’s making that much money, he has to do it on the floor or else he’d better get used to hearing some things he doesn’t like,” Edwards said. “The rap on him is that he was a J. B. Carroll who could dribble. But I think Ralph can handle it.”

Terry Holland, who coached Sampson at Virginia, has followed the negative feedback for a long while and has formed an opinion about how much it affects Sampson.

“The criticism obviously hurts him tremendously,” Holland said. “What we are seeing is, in trying to fight through that, he seems to get mired deeper and deeper in it. It’s almost like he’s caught in quicksand there. And I don’t know the answer.”

Sampson, his wife Aleize, and their 10-month-old daughter, Rachel Lee, live in a 2-bedroom condo in Alameda. In Houston, Sampson’s 8,500-square-foot house is on the market.

It’s not as if Sampson is hurting for money, though. He is in the second year of a 5-year, $12-million contract that he signed only 60 days before he was traded. This season, Sampson will earn $1.75 million, and in the last year of his agreement, he will earn close to $2.5 million. After that?

“Five years from now, it’ll depend on how healthy he is,” said Gene Perry, Sampson’s agent.

Right now, however, is what Nelson is concerned about. Sampson weighs 242, after ending last season at 218. He has added the weight, and presumably strength, with a rigorous weightlifting program. But Nelson has also tried to take another kind of weight off Sampson.

Whereas former Coach George Karl pronounced the Warriors “Ralph’s team” after the trade, Nelson has moved away from that label.

“It’s not fair to him,” Nelson said. “We’ve made it quite clear it’s nobody’s team. It’s the Bay Area’s team.

“If and when we ever get a championship-caliber team, he is going to be a terrific ballplayer. If people like what Robert Parish is with the Celtics, you put Ralph on that kind of team and he will be sensational. If we can ever get good enough, he will be fantastic.”

Sampson a complementary player? Maybe he was never the dominant player that so many believed he was.

“I’ve heard that people are down on me,” Sampson said. “I don’t know what it is. Wilt went out and scored 50 points and people were still down on him. They must have thought he was supposed to do everything.

“I’m not the type person that’s going to go around every day and be 150% hyper and jump up and down. I try to keep the same continuous standard and go about my business. I guess people say I should smile more or show more emotion in the game, so that makes me a negative person. I’m still hard on myself. I’m harder on myself than they are on me.

“The happiest day probably will be when and if I win the championship. Well, I say when , because I plan on winning one soon.

“Then everything can be erased.”

Fitch, though, said that Sampson isn’t nasty enough to ever be truly successful. If so, it was just Ralph’s personality. And if it is indeed a flaw, it showed up early.

Sampson began playing basketball in his hometown of Harrisonburg, Va., when he was in the third grade. He had grown to 6-7 by the ninth grade and decided he would concentrate on basketball, which was kind of a surprise to his mother.

“We thought he was going to be a baseball player,” Sarah Sampson said. “He played first base, center field and pitcher, but I let him know I didn’t want him to be a pitcher. I thought he was going to kill somebody.”

If the young Sampson had little control on the mound, his height was a great advantage in the outfield. Sarah Sampson said that many times, Ralph would retreat to the outfield fence, then reach up and catch a fly ball that had seemed destined to clear that fence.

“You would think it was going out and he would grab it,” Sarah Sampson said. “It was just unreal.”

Sampson spent most of his free time on the playgrounds of Harrisonburg, working on his blossoming basketball skills. Dinner was at 6 p.m. and curfew was at 8, but if Sampson wasn’t home on time, his parents had no problem finding him.

“They could come right around the corner to the playgrounds and that’s where I’d be,” he said.

On the asphalt, a different personality began to emerge. He was open, free--totally different from the shy, almost withdrawn youngster he was in school.

Holland traced Sampson’s shyness to his early experiences in school. Many times Ralph was the only black child in his classroom, Holland said.

“There were not too many black students in the whole school system, particularly in the elementary ages, when you are most vulnerable to those types of feelings,” Holland said. “And here you are, obviously much taller than all the other kids and you’re also black, you’ve got to feel like you stick out a great deal.”

Sarah Sampson said her son has always been on the quiet side, but at times he was close to mute, even at home.

“He’s good now,” she said. “If you met him when he was a kid, he wouldn’t talk to you. He just didn’t talk around here. He’d come in, do his homework and don’t say anything. It was basketball that brought him out.”

When he was a high school senior at Harrisonburg, Sampson was 7-3 3/4. He averaged nearly 30 points a game, 19 rebounds and 7 blocked shots, and his team won the state title in its classification for the second consecutive year. Widely recruited, Sampson narrowed his list of colleges to four, North Carolina, Kentucky, Virginia Tech and Virginia. He chose Virginia and changed Holland’s life forever.

In 4 years with Holland at Virginia, Sampson was named college player of the year three times, but both he and Holland are often reminded that they never won a National Collegiate Athletic Assn. title. At Virginia, the criticism of Sampson began in earnest, largely because of that unreached team goal. But even before that began, Sampson had begun remodeling his personality.

In Harrisonburg, he had picked up the nickname “Wahoo,” which was also his high school’s nickname. When he got to Virginia, Sampson quickly earned a new one, Mr. Grouch.

He began his college years just as he would later begin his professional career--misunderstood by many as sullen and rude, as though there were some kind of secret rage bubbling just beneath his skin.

Holland, however, attributed Sampson’s personality problems to shyness, which he knew Sampson would have to overcome.

“It was an area of weakness for someone who was going to go into the profession that he was going into,” Holland said.

Holland encouraged Sampson to take a speech class. In the second semester of his freshman year, Sampson registered for Carol Jablonski’s class in public speaking. Eventually, his fellow students, and possibly even Sampson, himself, began seeing him in a different light. “The class she taught helped me a tremendous amount,” Sampson said.

Jablonski, now at the University of South Florida, said that Sampson was withdrawn when he began her class.

“The students in his class didn’t know how to relate to him,” she said. “I had students . . . come to me and ask, how do they talk with Ralph Sampson? I asked them how did they talk to anybody else?

“His first speech was ‘What Makes You Unique?’ and I remember Ralph said, ‘What makes me unique is that I’m not.’ People were treating him like he wasn’t. I thought that showed a sense of humor about his situation.”

Soon there were signs of a new Ralph Sampson. At first, those signs came from others:

--A local restaurant named an 8-ounce turkey and roast beef sandwich after him.

--The University of Virginia became “the University of Ralph.”

--The 9,000-seat University Hall became “Ralph’s House.”

And the man in question was nearly big enough that he might have used it as a closet. There, he could hang up his pants with the 42-inch inseam and his shirts with the 39-inch sleeve or put away his size-17 shoes.

Sampson changed, too, becoming more outgoing. He showed up for a game once with a fake cast on his arm, which nearly caused Holland to faint. He grew more popular with his teammates and other students. On the night of his last game, a $100,000 check was presented to University President Frank Hereford for a scholarship to be endowed in Sampson’s name. Sampson cracked: “Do I get a cut?”

According to Jablonski, Sampson is an intelligent person who has the ability to size up people quickly. “He is aware of the motives around him,” she said. “He doesn’t like to be pushed or manipulated.”

Or traded?

When Sampson was a senior, television analyst Al McGuire, former Marquette basketball coach, said of Sampson: “Six years from now, Ralph will be the best to have played this game.”

Six years later, here is what Fitch has to say about Sampson: “He’s probably never going to be as good as people expected him to be. It’s not like he had it and lost it. He never had it.”

The year before the Rockets drafted Sampson, they were a dreadful team. The Rockets hired Fitch as coach. After having Sampson for a year, the Rockets were still a dreadful team. But that certainly wasn’t Sampson’s fault.

He was the unanimous selection as rookie of the year in 1983-84, averaging 21.0 points and 11.1 rebounds. Even though the Rockets finished 29-53, Sampson played in all 82 games and was an unqualified success.

Akeem Olajuwon joined the team the next season and Sampson moved over to forward to allow Olajuwon to play center.

Sampson again played in 82 games, boosted his scoring average to 22.1 and still averaged 10.4 rebounds, even though Olajuwon was getting some that used to be his. Houston made the playoffs, but lost to Utah in the first round.

A year later, the Rockets were in the NBA finals. They eliminated the Lakers in the Western Conference finals, Sampson delivering the knockout blow--a 12-foot turnaround shot just before the buzzer in the last game.

Then the Rockets lost to the Boston Celtics in a 6-game series most noted for the brilliance of Larry Bird and an incident in which Sampson punched Celtic guard Jerry Sichting, a foot shorter than he, and was ejected from the game.

Sampson also had two poor games in that series.

In Game 1 in Boston, he scored only 2 points. The Boston Globe called it the day “Ralph Sampson earned the right to endorse Milk-Bone dog biscuits.”

Then in the final game, Sampson scored only 8 points, had 10 rebounds and 5 fouls and once again received stinging criticism, although not from his coach.

“He was so high before that game,” Fitch said. “He was really ready to play. I think that’s one of his problems. He gets himself too high. He never gets in gear and he tries too hard.”

There has long been talk about the relationship between Sampson, the brooding potential superstar, and Fitch, the hard-nosed former Marine coach. The stories began in 1983, the first year they were together, and got to be kind of a joke, said former Rocket Robert Reid.

“Every year, at about the same time, you just knew it was going to be the Ralph Sampson-Bill Fitch show again,” Reid said.

The curtain first went up when Sampson grew unhappy with Fitch’s strict practice regimen and aired his complaints in the Houston newspapers. Fitch was not amused and had Sampson read one of the stories aloud to his teammates.

In turn, Sampson was not happy about being singled out and perceived the coach’s action as unnecessary ridicule. The matter blew over, but left strained feelings.

The next summer, Sampson spent some of his time in Europe, instead of working out, as Fitch would have preferred, and was nursing an injury when training camp opened. Fitch criticized Sampson’s performance in a session with the media. Sampson blasted Fitch back, saying he was playing hurt, and suggested that if the coach didn’t like the way he performed, Fitch should just trade him.

Ultimately, Fitch did just that.

“We should have traded Ralph 2 years before we did,” he said.

But it wasn’t until Dec. 12, 1987, that the Rockets sent Sampson and guard Steve Harris to Golden State for center Joe Barry Carroll and guard Eric (Sleepy) Floyd.

Sampson said the deal came as no surprise.

“I felt something would be coming to a head,” he said. “Obviously, (Fitch) was fired and they dissolved the whole team, basically. I guess he had to take somebody with him, so he got me out of there first. Then two friends, Rodney McCray and (Jim) Petersen, end up going this year.

” . . . I don’t think my problems with Fitch were about discipline. I think it was more not knowing the situation. I still have problems looking at the team we had and the team we went to the championship (series) with. The next year we come back and we get rid of five players on the team. You just don’t change the program up that much.

“I thought we had one of the best teams on the rise, but drugs and a lot of different things came to play in that. (Guards Lewis Lloyd, Mitchell Wiggins and John Lucas were lost to the team because of drug problems.) I don’t think they knew how to do it. As far as me and Fitch, I think he had to have something to pick on, somebody to work on, so he come after me, I guess.”

Fitch said there was nothing personal between Sampson and himself, although he is aware of Sampson’s lack of regard for him.

“There was never any ultimatum,” Fitch said. “I swear on my father’s grave, there was never a trade-Ralph-or-else. I never had any problem with Ralph. I liked him. I know he doesn’t like me, but I don’t care if he does or doesn’t.

“As far as the ultimatum goes, that’s all a bunch of baloney. That’s one thing I don’t mind kicking around, because it’s a reflection on him. He’s taken enough heat that he’s not a shooter, like Kareem, or a rebounder, like Akeem.”

Playing with Ralph this season, and presumably for the remaining 5 years on his contract, are the Warriors. Last season, they went 20-62, their worst record in 23 years.

Sampson arrived in Oakland the day after the trade, lasted 29 games and then hurt his right knee. He underwent arthroscopic surgery March 10 and missed 35 games. The Warriors were 7-28 without him.

After finishing second-to-last in their division, ahead of only the woebegone Clippers, they won only 2 of 8 exhibition games this season and Sampson missed two of them, one because fluid was drained from his left knee, the other because of muscle spasms in his back.

The Warriors are 1-0 going into tonight’s game against the Lakers, having beaten Phoenix in their opener Saturday, but Sampson had little to do with that victory, scoring only 4 points.

Jerome Whitehead, Sampson’s backup at center, said he hopes there won’t be any pressure on Sampson.

“He doesn’t have to be anything he’s not,” Whitehead said. “He needs to just go out and play.”

Said forward Larry Smith: “Being an All-Star, a guy like Ralph has got so many expectations around him. Everybody is looking at him to carry us. I’m quite sure he’s going to be able to handle himself.”

The Warriors certainly need some carrying. The question may be whether Sampson is strong enough to do it.

Doctors have operated on both of Sampson’s knees in the last 2 years. He missed 27 games after cartilage was removed from his left knee during the 1986-87 season and that knee still gives him trouble.

He wears a large, bulky brace that has flexible metal bars in one side to hold the knee in place.

“It gives stability,” Sampson said. “The knee, the left one, I have some fluid in it. Other than that, I feel good.”

Although the arthroscopic surgery on his right knee was more recent, that knee has given him little trouble and Sampson wears only a rubber sleeve to protect it.

Robert Albo, the Warrior team physician, said the brace on the left knee is nothing more than a protective device that they asked Sampson to wear, even though Sampson did not want to. Albo said Sampson’s knees are doing fine.

“Once we get his quadriceps (thigh muscles) built back up to 100%, we’re pretty optimistic,” Albo said. “I don’t think we’ll have any problems with him. The fluid we drained is normal for someone who has had arthroscopic surgery.”

Albo said, though, that even when the quadriceps in each leg come around, Sampson’s knees will not be normal.

“I wouldn’t say normal--once you’ve had the arthroscopic surgery and problems he’s had,” Albo said. “But I don’t think it’ll interfere with his career. By that I mean his knees won’t be a limiting factor.”

Nelson said he is aware that Sampson’s running is labored during practice, but he repeated what Sampson told him.

“He said they are fine,” Nelson said. “He’s running kind of stiff-legged, I’ve noticed that. I looked at films from last year and he wasn’t doing that last year. But I guess that’s what happens when you have surgery.”

What happens next? Even with rookie Mitch Richmond on his way to becoming a star, it figures to be a long season for the Warriors.

Will Sampson be here for it?

Rumors, especially those about trades, usually have just enough truth in them to make them believable. But rumors that the Warriors are not only willing to trade Sampson, but actually have been shopping him around the league, caught many of those in the pro basketball business off guard.

The rumor began when the New York Post, acting on a quote from Nelson’s top aide, Garry St. Jean, that the Warriors “wouldn’t pass up a deal that made sense,” reported that Sampson was being shopped around.

The rumor quickly took on a life of its own. Sampson was going to Indiana for Wayman Tisdale. Sampson was going to New Jersey for Buck Williams. Sampson was going to Washington for John Williams.

Of course, Nelson could have stopped the whole thing if had spoken up, but he has not done that and he doesn’t plan to, because it’s team policy not to comment on trade rumors.

Said Jim Fitzgerald, chairman of the Warriors: “Well, 99 out of 100 potential trades don’t go through. If I was to tell you this was a bunch of baloney and it was, then the next time you asked me about a trade rumor and I don’t say anything, you could draw conclusions.”

Sampson, though, has drawn his own conclusions. He doesn’t believe he and the Warriors are in for a long relationship.

“Going through one (trade) has hardened me,” Sampson said. “It’s upset my wife more than anything. Right now we have a bed and TV, and our clothes are literally on the floor. We were having some furniture delivered and the trade rumor came up, so we sent the furniture back.

“If it gets any more upsetting to the family, I just don’t know. My mom heard about it and asked me and I said, ‘Mom, I don’t know.’ She says, ‘Well, forget it. They don’t want you there, you’re not situated and happy there anyway, so wherever they move you, I hope they do move you somewhere you’ll be happy.’ ”

Interesting as the rumor may be, there may be nothing to it. Bob Ferry of the Bullets said he hasn’t talked with the Warriors about Sampson. Donnie Walsh of the Pacers said he hadn’t heard the rumor, and Harry Weltman of the Nets said it was wrong. Stan Kasten of the Atlanta Hawks also heard the rumor and didn’t stand still.

“Right away I checked it out,” Kasten said. “There’s nothing to it.”

Whether there is or not, it has removed a little bit more of Sampson’s naivete about pro basketball.

“It’s a business and they are in the business to do what they have to do to make money,” he said. “And whatever they think behind these doors or whatever is under the table is what goes on.

“The last 2 years I’ve had knee problems, I’ve been traded, I’ve been talked about in a bad way. Never really on the top, close to it, scratching the surface as individual statistics. I guess these can get you somewhere. But it’s the team things, the championships, that get you the longest place.

“There’s a lot of potential here. I know it and I can feel it, but I’m the type person I have to play within myself to get everybody else involved. I can’t just go out there and say I’m going to get 30 and we still lose. If I’m in a situation where my assets are used . . .”

Holland indicated that Sampson might not have received the right coaching in the NBA.

“Here, he did a very good job of being a team player and at the same time, a player who obviously had a lot of pressure on him every night to go out and score 40,” Holland said. “He never tried to do that. He didn’t take bad shots. He was very coachable. Now, does that work against him at his level? I can’t answer that.

“Does that become a fault, a game where individual skills and maybe egos become a factor? I don’t know. But here’s a player who does have a tremendous amount of skill. I don’t think there’s any question about his ability to play the game. Sometimes, that’s a tremendous burden.

“I’m sure everyone has worked very hard with him. But the real question is, ‘Has it been effective?’ I think you can legitimately say it has not. That doesn’t mean those guys aren’t great coaches. But for some reason, the link has not yet been established to lead him to success. It could certainly be Ralph’s fault as much as it could be the coaches’ fault. It’s hard to say who to put the burden on.”

There is a relatively new school in psychology that deals with “attribution theory.” If there is criticism, what causes it?

Richard Barthol, a sports psychologist at UCLA, said criticism of an athlete may often detract from the performance of that athlete, but that a realistic appraisal is necessary to meet the problem head-on. If there are expections, how should they be dealt with? Attribution theory could help, Barthol said.

“It puts things into focus,” Barthol said. “It can tell a perceptive person to decide if there is to be a change made. And if so, where.”

And is there a change in Sampson’s future?

“I don’t know,” Holland said. “The criticism seems to have mounted to a point where it almost becomes impossible to deal with it. It’s not like he’s had a terrible career. He was the MVP of the All-Star game a couple of years ago. And he has been playing hurt the last couple of years, to a certain extent.

“I think he’ll bounce back, I really do. But will people give him the opportunity?”