Controlled Burn : UCLA’s MacLean Tried Playing It Cool. Now the Fire Is Back.

Don MacLean has been called a lot of things during his extraordinary career at UCLA--boorish, combative, petulant, childish, outlandish--but no one ever accused him of indifference.

So, when a couple of friends pulled him aside last month and did just that, his ears burned.

MacLean had spent the first several weeks of the season trying to clean up his act.

But in his attempt to emulate Mister Rogers, hoping NBA scouts would take notice, MacLean found that the cardigan didn’t fit, the neighborhood was too confining.

His sneer was hidden behind a languid, smiling countenance.

His emotions were bottled.

His fire was gone.

His coach, Jim Harrick, blamed a prolonged bout with flu, but MacLean knew otherwise.

“I was listening to too many people, in terms of how people wanted me to play, how they wanted my attitude to be,” he said. “I was out there trying to think too much and trying to be a player that I’m not. And finally, I just said, ‘To heck with it.’

“I don’t think my head was in the right place. I was trying to be Mr. Goody Two Shoes out there. A little fire is good. Fortunately or unfortunately, I need to be real intense and ‘getting after it’ to play well. I rebound better, I’m more into the game.”

Though his statistics were down only slightly from last season, when he averaged 23 points and 7.3 rebounds while shooting 55.1%, MacLean thought he heard whispers among the fans at Pauley Pavilion.

“Everybody was saying, ‘What’s wrong with Don? He’s lackadaisical out there,’ ” MacLean said. “And it wasn’t because I didn’t care. I thought that was the way I was supposed to be playing. But after a few games of not producing all that much, I figured out, ‘Hey, this isn’t me.’

“After the Oral Roberts game, I’d finally had enough. A couple of my friends said, ‘What’s wrong with you? Get your (rear end) in gear. If you have to, say something to the refs to get yourself going.

“ ‘Do something. ‘ “

And so, the fire returned. But it isn’t burning out of control.

A more mature MacLean has discovered that he can be assertive without being acerbic; competitive without being contentious; a winner without being a whiner.

“I’ve played well in the last three or four games, and I’ve still been able to be unemotional about the refs, or whatever,” he said.

MacLean slapped the ball in his hands as he took down 12 rebounds and scored 24 points in an 87-80 victory over Georgia. He smirked in the face of crude taunters at Arizona State, scoring 21 points in an 83-62 romp.

And MacLean fairly snarled during an 89-87 victory over Arizona last Saturday. He scored a season-high 38 points, made 15 of 23 shots and took nine rebounds as the Bruins ended the Wildcats’ 71-game home-court winning streak.

MacLean called it probably his best game as a Bruin.

“I showed that (Arizona) really couldn’t handle me,” he said.

But for MacLean, that has never really been an issue.

Few have handled him.

A two-time All-Pacific 10 Conference selection, MacLean has led the Bruins in scoring for three consecutive seasons, moving past all of the great Bruin forwards of the past--Sidney Wicks, Curtis Rowe, Jamaal Wilkes, Marques Johnson, Kiki Vandeweghe, Reggie Miller, et al.--on the school’s scoring list.

MacLean is averaging 21.8 points and 8.1 rebounds this season. He needs only 183 points to replace Kareem Abdul-Jabbar as UCLA’s career scoring leader, 413 to replace former Arizona All-American Sean Elliott at the top of the Pac-10 list.

Among former Bruins, including Bill Walton, only Abdul-Jabbar had a higher career scoring average than MacLean’s 20.6.

And yet, MacLean doesn’t seem to have received his due.

“I still feel like there are some Don MacLean doubters out there,” he said. “I don’t feel like I’m respected. I think a lot of people say I’m one of the best players in the country, but I don’t think that everybody says that.

“I still feel like I’m fighting for that, because of my attitude and because of some of the negative press I’ve gotten (as a result). It’s taken away from some of the things I’ve done.”

But the reasons may go beyond that, MacLean recently realized.

“I think breaking Kareem’s record is going to bring a lot of publicity toward me,” he said, “but I don’t think I’ll be considered one of the really good players here until we really do something in the (NCAA) tournament and win the conference.

“I keep telling myself, ‘Great players don’t let their teams get upset,’ and, ‘Great players play great in big games.’ I must have said that about a hundred times last Friday, just to make myself remember that. And I think that’s part of the reason why I played so well (against Arizona).

“I knew that if I could get our team this win, and play well also, a lot of people would take notice.”

Some already had.

“I think regardless of what people say about Don MacLean, one thing they can’t say about him is that he isn’t one of the best players in the country,” USC Coach George Raveling said. “I think that given a different set of circumstances, he would be looked upon as one of the five best players in America. And as far as I’m concerned, he is one of the five best players in America.

“But I think that there are other circumstances that have probably contributed to him not being perceived like that.”

MacLean considered leaving school after last season to make himself available for the NBA draft. But several factors, including the Bruins’ first-round loss to Penn State in the NCAA tournament, persuaded him to stay.

“I never really came all that close (to leaving),” MacLean said. “I was never to the point of, ‘Damn, you should really go out.’ It was more like, ‘I could, but forget it.’ ”

Listing his reasons, he said: “No. 1, I thought I could definitely use another year of playing and maturing and getting stronger--just working on my game. No. 2, I wanted to finish school. That’s something my mom wanted. No. 3, the fact that we lost. I didn’t want to end my career that way.

“And, finally, the one (thought) that stuck with me the most: ‘Why do I need to start my career--actually start my job--a year earlier than I have to when I love college?’ I love going to school. College is easy. It’s going to be hard next year. Everybody thinks (the NBA) is so easy because you’re making so much money, but it’s a tough job.”

As he did last summer, MacLean bought a $1-million insurance policy to protect himself from injury.

To keep himself on track to graduate--he is expected to earn a psychology degree in June--he completed three classes last summer. He lifted weights, played in pickup games, ran to maintain his endurance and, at the urging of a friend, he also took up . . .

Karate?

“I was looking for something new and different that would maybe help my game,” said MacLean, who naturally was dubbed “Karate Kid” by broadcaster Dick Vitale. “I wanted something that would maybe give me a little extra edge.”

Mainly, though, MacLean wanted to polish his pouty image.

“It was such a hassle,” he said. “Everybody was writing about it and talking about it last year and at the beginning of this year. It was almost like it was ingrained in my head from everybody making such a big deal about it.

“It was something I wanted to tone down because, obviously, the (NBA) scouts don’t like it and the coaches don’t like it.”

But MacLean, in an effort to appease his critics, believed that he might have gone too far.

Now, he has loosened the reins that threatened to choke him.

“I’m going to be myself again, but try to curb it,” he said. “I think I’ve found a happy medium.”