A Career Takes Off : Former Cleveland High Standout Harris Swoops Closer to Cal State Long Beach Scoring Record

When he first became known as the “Birdman,” Lucious Harris spent more time raising canaries and pigeons than he did playing pickup basketball games on the playgrounds of South-Central Los Angeles.

On those rare days when the skinny, introverted junior high school kid came out of his house near Avalon Boulevard and 105th Street, he could dunk a basketball like few others.

Harris, a junior at Cal State Long Beach who did not begin to play organized basketball until six years ago, is being touted as an All-American candidate. The former standout forward at Cleveland High is well on his way to becoming the first 49er to score 2,000 career points.

The record of 1,962, set by Michael Wiley, has stood for 12 years.

At Harris’ current pace of about 19 points a game, he is expected to break Wiley’s mark early in 1993. Entering Saturday night’s game against Cal State Fullerton, Harris ranked fifth on the school’s all-time scoring list with 1,312 points and he is expected to be No. 3 by season’s end.

No one is more surprised by his exploits than Harris.

“Playing is everybody’s dream,” he said. “I never thought anything like this would come to me when I finally started playing basketball.”

It was birds--not basketball--that Harris thought would keep him out of trouble while living in a tough neighborhood. At one time, he had more than 200.

The garage and back yard of the house where he lived with his mother and seven older brothers and sisters were full of cages with canaries and pigeons. Basketball was not in the picture.

“I liked baseball,” Harris said. “I thought that if I was going to be successful it would be in baseball.”

But a beaning when he was 11 years old kept the frightened center fielder off the diamond for good. As a way to stay clear of street life that enveloped his neighborhood, Harris became almost a recluse, only occasionally leaving his pets to play with other children.

Said Derrick Cooper, a youth coach who encouraged Harris at 12 to join his park basketball team: “In our neighborhood, you do what you have to to survive. You either get into sports or you just don’t come outside. (Harris) just didn’t show any interest in basketball, but I knew he had (the potential to be a good player).”

Nancy Johnson did not want her children attending South-Central schools. So she had all eight bused to the San Fernando Valley. Lucious, her youngest son, rode an hour each way every day.

Harris attended Northridge Junior High and at 6-foot-3 was a basketball star in eighth-grade gym classes during the 1984-85 school year.

His name was brought to the attention of Cleveland Coach Bobby Braswell, now an assistant at Cal State Long Beach. Braswell approached Harris about playing basketball at Cleveland, but Harris told Braswell that he was not interested.

Braswell let it drop. Then, more than a year later as a sophomore, Harris decided to try out for Cleveland’s team. Braswell assigned him to the junior varsity.

“He missed a lot of practices and still wasn’t real committed to playing,” Braswell said. “He had his pet birds in the garage. He would buy them and sell them. He was more interested in them than he was in playing basketball.”

Braswell confronted Harris as the school year ended.

“I told him I didn’t want him to come out for basketball unless he was ready to make a commitment to play all the time,” he said.

Harris joined a summer league with other Cleveland players. When the 1987-88 season began, Braswell was shocked. “He clearly stood out among the rest of the guys,” Braswell said. “He just didn’t know how good he was.”

Harris, now 21 and 6-5, was recruited heavily by several schools.

He narrowed his choices to Cal State Long Beach and Kansas, where his friend and fellow Cleveland teammate Adonis Jordan had signed. Long Beach Coach Seth Greenberg, then an assistant and the chief recruiter for 49er Coach Joe Harrington, called Harris daily.

“In Lucious I saw a guy with prospect, not who was suspect,” Greenberg said. “He had an upside, a live body, a great first step. I could see he was just going to get better.”

Harrington, who left after Harris’ freshman season to become coach at Colorado, was not so sure. When Greenberg brought the news that he had signed a future franchise-type player, Harrington told him: “This one’s on you (if he doesn’t work out). I don’t think he can play.”

But Harris started 29 of 32 games under Harrington and was named the 1989-90 Big West Conference freshman of the year. Long Beach was 23-9. As a sophomore, when he often was asked to play in the unfamiliar role of point guard, Harris raised his scoring average by more than five points to 19.7, but he was slowed because of a groin injury late in the season. Long Beach finished 11-17.

This season, he has been asked to be a swingman and concentrate more on defense. He is averaging 18.9 points for the 49ers (11-6, 5-3 in the Big West) and scored a career-high 35 against Azusa Pacific.

“This season he has been more effective by way of scoring, but he is also making other players better,” Greenberg said. “He penetrates more and creates opportunities for others to do things. He creates situations (that he may not have done in the past).”

According to Greenberg, Harris’ biggest improvement has been his defense.

At the start of the season, he was more apt to let an opponent slide around him rather than confront him. But lately he has been more comfortable in the 49ers’ man-to-man defense.

His best effort was Jan. 16 when he held Fresno State’s Tod Bernard, one of the top scorers in the Big West, to a season-low six points. Bernard made only two of nine field-goal attempts.

“Even today, I don’t know if Lucious realizes how good he is,” Braswell said. “He’s a real humble kid. He doesn’t like attention. He shies away from it.”

Harris still lives in South-Central Los Angeles with his sisters Pamela and Rhonda. Their mother moved out of the state.

His pets are there too, although he said he has sold many of them since three-point baskets and thunderous dunks became the focal point of his life.