He Rules the Boards With a Mean Streak

Mister Mean means business. He has one mission in life. He tracks down rebounds. Mr. Mean goes after a basketball the way a Patriot missile goes after a Scud. He senses it. He sights it. He nails it. Nothing deters Mr. Mean. He is one mean Houston Rocket.

His real name is Larry Smith, but there’s a lot of that going around. While the nickname sounds like something that belongs in Wrestlemania, it works. This way, this Larry Smith won’t be mistaken for any other Larry Smith out there. Which is proper, because Mr. Mean is somebody the public should know.

“The only thing mean about Larry Smith is the way he plays,” his coach, Don Chaney, said after Smith’s 22 rebounds muscled aside the Lakers, 104-95, Sunday at the Forum.

“No, I’m not mean,” agreed Mr. Mean.

To which teammate Adrian Caldwell called out: “Is, too.”

Smith smiled.

“Man should have his own rebounding cam,” Caldwell said.

Rebound-Cam? Like a camera?

“Camp,” Caldwell corrected. “Rebounding camp. Ought to be teachin’ people how to do what he does.”

At 33, Larry Smith has been around. Yet his popularity is virtually restricted to home games. Mr. Mean is no Magic, no Air, no Sir Charles. On the road, he is as anonymous as a man registering at a motel under a bogus name.

Back when he played in Oakland, though, Mr. Mean had his own Golden State fan club, a bunch of characters who wore his number, 13, and danced in the stands to the old Champs song, “Tequila.” And now being organized in Houston is a cheering section dressed in construction hard-hats, calling itself “Larry’s Local 13,” dedicated solely to the work ethic of a Look-for-the-Union-Label kind of basketball player.

Cards are overturned every time Larry Smith claims a rebound, which keeps the “R” card-turners as busy as New Yorkers charting Doc Gooden’s “Ks.” Five nights in the short month of February, Mr. Mean got 20 or more. And the more boards he got, the less everybody missed Akeem Olajuwon.

“I guess they see me as just a hard-workin’ workingman,” Smith says, gratefully.

For now he is the starting Rocket center, even though at 6-foot-8 he is shorter than a Laker guard. Mr. Mean had more rebounds Sunday than the Laker starting front line--Vlade Divac (eight), James Worthy (10) and Mychal Thompson (three)--had combined.

“When he doesn’t get 20 rebounds, Larry Smith considers it a bad night,” Chaney said.

For the time being, Chaney opens the game with Olajuwon on the bench. Some people in Houston prefer it this way. Others can’t wait for Akeem’s damaged eye to be 20-20 again. He is the superhero whose fame is such that a Manchester Avenue memorabilia shop billed Sunday’s anticipated battle at center on its marquee as “Akeem the Dream vs. the Serbo-Croatian Sensation!”

Divac did score 23 points, but the important boards belonged to Smith. Wherever the ball was, he was. The five inches he spotted the Serbo-Croatian Sensation meant very little to Mr. Mean, who could open a camp and give rebounding lessons to Moses Malone, Ralph Sampson, Olajuwon and other taller men who played for the Rockets before him.

Said Chaney: “I’m sure you’re familiar with the old cliche ‘nose for the ball.’ Well, Smith’s nose knows where the ball is going to be.”

His nose knows?

“When there’s a shot from the left side, Smith knows the percentages of where the ball will bounce if it misses the basket. It’s a science with him. He studies the trajectory. I played with Paul Silas, who wasn’t a leaper, and that was his specialty. Knowing where to be and when.”

This has been the particular knack of Mr. Mean ever since he was the mighty oak of Alcorn State, the Mississippi college where somebody--he forgets who or why--first hung that nickname on him. Rebounding wasn’t necessarily instinctive with Smith, though. He wasn’t born mean. He was turned mean.

“I’ll tell you what really got me going,” Smith said after Sunday’s game. “My coach up there with Golden State (Al Attles) came up to me after I got drafted (1980, second round) and gave me the word. He said: ‘The absolute only way you are going to play is if you rebound.’ It was that simple. I started rebounding so I could play.”

In an 11-year career, Larry Smith is averaging 7.9 points. On offense, he is Mr. Lean.

He played more minutes Sunday than any other Rocket, but took only seven shots. He tried no free throws. He had no assists. Yet when anybody shot and missed, the basketball was Smith’s. Nothing could have a better angle on the basketball than he did.

Except maybe Rebound-Cam.