Payton’s Place Is on the Basketball Court

There is a fire in Gary Payton’s game that any basketball coach would love.

The trick is to keep the blaze burning, but not out of control.

“You just want to bring him back to reality,” Payton’s crusty old coach, Ralph Miller, said. “He’ll take on anything. But this is what makes him a player. This is what makes him a competitor.

“With someone like Gary, you don’t want to put your foot on his neck and take away the basic instincts that make him a player. But you’re working all the time to keep it under control.”

The Oregon State coach turns 70 next month. He’s about to end a 38-year career as a major-college coach.

And when he sees Payton on the court, he sees someone with the passion and skill for the game that the coach hasn’t seen often in his four decades of basketball.

“He loves to win,” Miller said. “Now I don’t think that develops. I think he had that from the very start. It’s the same with his hand-eye coordination and passing. No coach did that for him.”

But the 6-foot-3 junior gives Miller much of the credit.

“He’s given me my whole game, defense and offense. He’s molded me into a player I don’t think I ever could have been if I had gone to St. John’s or wherever,” Payton said.

“I’ve gotten along with him since day one,” he said of his coach. “I don’t know what it was. Maybe it was because I worked hard. He saw that I was going to work and he probably saw something in me.”

In his third season, Payton is tearing up the Pacific 10 Conference. When only conference games are considered, he’s the league leader in scoring at 22 points per game, assists at eight per game, and steals at 3.2 per game.

He’s led a team that has virtually no inside game to a 19-5 record and a probable berth in the NCAA tournament. He’s already broken the school record for assists and steals and is on course to easily surpass the NCAA assist mark if he plays next season.

He was Pac-10 freshman of the year in 1987 and was the conference defensive player of the year in each of his first two seasons.

Although he admits he’s thinking about leaving college a year early to enter the NBA, Payton says he’ll probably be back with the Beavers next season.

“In my mind, I want to come back. There are a lot of guards coming out in my spot. They’ve got national recognition. People are saying if I come back next year, I could be first-team this or first-team that, that I could go higher in the draft and things like that,” he said.

He also wants to get his degree, something he’s wanted to do since his older brother, Greg, went to the University of San Francisco and dropped out after 1 1/2 seasons.

Miller said his staff recruited Payton when others backed off because of his reputation as a hot head.

“When you’ve been kicked out of seven (high school) ball games, what else are you’re going to think?” Miller said.

“I knew he was a very good leader but he was an ornery little dickens,” the coach said. “There were a lot of reasons not to want him, except his ability. The problem was could you control him?”

Payton knew all about his reputation. He said his whole team at Skyline High School in Oakland, Calif., had a hot temper.

“I played with Greg Foster. He was the kind of person who was hot-tempered, too. All our team was hyper,” Payton said.

While others backed off, Oregon State remained interested.

“I think the coach and them saw that I was a competitor and the only reason (the temper tantrums) happened is because I wanted to win,” he said.

Still, Payton was ready to say no to the Beavers and go to St. John’s, but the Redmen backed off at the last minute.

“Everybody makes mistakes,” Miller said.

Angry at the rejection and worried about moving so far from home, Payton decided to go to Oregon State.

Since then, he’s started all 82 games. From the beginning, he was the team’s leader who thrived in the face of unfriendly crowds.

In high school, his cocky on-court attitude drew jeers from the opposing student sections, a trait that has been amplified in the Pac-10.

The catcalls are music to Miller’s ears.

“I’m very happy if they go pick on Gary,” he said, “because it does bring him to attention, let us say, and he responds well.”

Payton agrees.

“I think since my freshman year I’ve calmed down extremely, but you know you can’t take all that away from me because I’m a competitor. That’s one of my strengths. I get mad when things aren’t going right. I just have that glare. It movitates the team like that. When they see me get upset and start to play hard, they start to play hard, too.”

In his first two seasons, Payton’s big weakness was his outside shooting.

Last summer, he said, he took 500 jump shots a day, using drills developed by Freddy Boyd, a former NBA guard and one of Miller’s assistants. As a result, he’s one of the leaders Pac-10 leaders in 3-pointers.

But above everything else, he’s still a defender.

“Defense is the best thing about me, I think,” he said. “I can make more happen on defense than I can on offense.”

His strategy, he said, is to look as if he’s not paying attention.

“Act like you’re not doing anything and people get lackadaisical and forget about you,” Payton said,”then there you are with a steal and, boom, you’re gone.”