He Has Help Following Tough Act

All right, what do George Selkirk, Hunk Anderson, Gene Tunney, Gene Bartow, Phil Bengston, Babe Dahlgren, Garry Maddox, Mychal Thompson and the guy who shot Wild Bill Hickok have in common?

Easy. They all replaced legends. In most cases, the public never forgave them.

Selkirk replaced Babe Ruth; Anderson replaced Knute Rockne. Bartow took over for John Wooden. Tunney, of course, took Dempsey’s title. Bengston was the Green Bay Packers’ coach after Lombardi. Maddox played center field for San Francisco after Willie Mays left. Dahlgren took over first base from Lou Gehrig, and Hickok was murdered by a one-eyed scoundrel named Jack McCall.

This leaves Mychal Thompson as the resident legend-replacer of our times and a member in good standing of the L.E.P.E.R. Society (Legends Primary Emergency Replacements).

Mychal had the bad luck to be standing next in line when Kareem Abdul-Jabbar retired. It’s not exactly the world’s greatest place to be. Abdul-Jabbar, it so happened, had 38,387 points in his career. When he retired, they gave him everything but Rhode Island. He dominated the game of basketball in the way--well, say, a Ruth, Rockne, Dempsey, Gehrig, Mays, Lombardi or Wild Bill Hickok dominated their games.

It’s not likely Mychal Thompson will get any farewell tours when he leaves the game. The chances are he will fall somewhat short of Kareem’s 38,387--he’s 26,147 behind as this is written. The probability is not good he will ever catch up to Abdul-Jabbar’s 17,440 rebounds. It takes a really special kind of person to replace a legend. Not everyone can handle it. It crushes some people. Others take the position it’s hard, dirty work but somebody has to do it. Don’t expect to find Mychal Thompson perched on a ledge above city traffic or down and out onSkid Row, clutching a wine bottle and moaning, “Why couldn’t it have been Ralph Sampson I took over for?!”

Mychal is very good at taking things in stride. There are those who think he has made an art form of it.

Mychal is not one to sit and brood. Mychal rolls with the punches. Some men, performing in the shadow of a departed legend, would develop all manner of tics, begin to lose weight, spend sleepless nights, start to talk to themselves, become recluses. Roger Maris, when he was breaking Ruth’s homer record, found his hair falling out overnight.

Mychal’s hair is just fine. He sleeps like a baby. His appetite is as good as ever, which is pretty good.

For one thing, Mychal has found a sure-fire way to escape the obloquy that comes with the role. He shares the billing. Mychal does not take the rap alone.

You see, Mychal’s team, the Lakers, went out over the off-season and signed the best center in Serbia to share the pivot with Mychal.

Now, the nice thing about Vlade Divac is that, while he knows very well who Kareem Abdul-Jabbar is, he doesn’t have a firm enough grasp on English to know when someone is yelling at him, “Call yourself a center, Divac?! Jabbar would have sky-hooked that thing and drawn a foul.” Vlade is perfect as a legend replacement. Vlade’s hair is not going to fall out, either.

Which suits Mychal. When someone asks him, as a reporter did in the Laker dressing room the other night, whether he thinks his progress as a legend replacement is going smoothly, he answers sweetly, “I feel we’re doing a good job.”

We ?!

Now, there are lots of We’s in the world. Lindbergh always cut his airplane in on the glory, and “We” was the title of his autobiography. Queen Victoria always referred to herself in the plural: “We are not amused.” Fight managers always say, “ We knocked out the champ.” But of course, when things go wrong, Tonto says to the Lone Ranger, “Where do you get that we stuff, Kemo Sabe!?”

So, Mychal lets Vlade get cards in this deal. Basketball is a team game, right? Mychal is a guy who can delegate.

Mychal is a guy who has his own outlook on life, anyway. Mychal goes through life as if he’s riding an elephant.

For instance, most people who live in the snow belt or rust belt work all their lives so they can move to the Bahamas or anywhere the beaches are white and coconuts grow in the backyard.

Mychal was born there--in Nassau--and he chose to move to Minnesota as soon as he graduated from high school--in Miami, would you believe?

Mychal passed up Florida State and other orange blossom schools and went north to Minneapolis. The fact he was bucking a trend apparently eluded him, even though his friends wondered, “What did you have against Hudson Bay?”

Usually, when a green rookie opts for a region of the country where he needs a ski cap to go down for the mail, the next scene sees him pulling every string he can think of to get back to the sun and sand. Not Mychal. He loved Minnesota. Mychal was so happy, he made All-American twice, set school records in scoring, rebounding and scoring average--and this on a team that had Kevin McHale on it. “I loved it up there, it had a great purity about it,” he insists.

When Mychal got drafted in the pros by Portland, he was delighted. Mychal likes carrying an umbrella. He still keeps a house in the Northwest.

So, Mychal is not deterred by the role into which history has cast him. Particularly since he comes as part of an entry, Mychal Thompson and Vlade Divac, Nos. 1 and 1A.

“We match up pretty well,” Mychal insists. To date, Thompson-Divac have almost evenly split 894 points and 606 rebounds. Which compares to the 748 points Abdul-Jabbar had his last season or even the 1,165 he had in his next-to-last season, and to the rebound total Abdul-Jabbar had of 523 1in his next-to-last season or 334 his last season.

As usual, Kareem is being double-teamed. So, Mychal makes no apology. It strikes him as the proper way to tackle a legend on or off the court--get help.

He is even hoping to make Divac a better player. “He doesn’t need any help on his offense, but I can teach him a few things on defense,” Mychal says.

So, what does Mychal Thompson have in common with George Selkirk, Hunk Anderson and the other legend-replacers of our times? Absolutely nothing. Mychal knows better than to go it alone. Mychal knows something those other replacers didn’t: You can’t go man-to-man with a legend. You have to zone him.