COMMENTARY : Lucas and the Separation of Life, Basketball

John Lucas had one eye on the rim, lofting those soft signature set shots, and the other eye peeled for Richard Dumas. It is a weird feeling for Lucas. His San Antonio Spurs lost Game 1 of the NBA Western Conference semifinals to Phoenix largely because Dumas, the Suns’ rookie forward, decided to show off what the pupil had learned from the teacher, in this case Lucas.

Eventually, as the Spurs were wrapping up practice, Dumas walked into America West Arena and Lucas gave him one of the warmest greetings you’ll ever see a coach give an opposing player. But there’s life and there’s basketball, which is what Lucas, at this time last year, was trying to get Dumas to understand.

One year removed from the obscurity of the U.S. Basketball League, Lucas is having the time of his real life and his basketball life. His Spurs, 9-11 when he took over from Jerry Tarkanian, are hanging tough with the top-seeded Phoenix Suns, trailing 3-2 entering today’s game in San Antonio.

Not half-bad for a coach with no previous NBA coaching experience, no previous college coaching experience, no previous high school coaching experience. He is a recovering addict, emphasis on the word “recovering.” He has the renewed respect of an entire league of peers. And he can look around and see the result of determined work. There’s George Gervin, a recovering addict, working as one of Lucas’ assistants with the Spurs. There’s Dumas, a recovering addict, finding hope and rejuvenating a career. There’s even talk that Roy Tarpley, the struggling recovering addict, could soon join the Spurs and Lucas via trade.

It’s not difficult to imagine how that trade rumor--Tarpley and Derek Harper of Dallas to the Spurs for Sean Elliott and J.R. Reid--got started. Lucas doesn’t just help people rehabilitate at his center in Houston, he energizes them, lifts them, pushes them back into the mainstream, grows attached to them. Lucas tells a story about an ongoing conversation between himself and Sun Coach Paul Westphal concerning Dumas. The Suns have turned down a lot of potential deals for Dumas, which doesn’t keep Lucas from pestering. “Paul wrote me and said, ‘Oh by the way, you can’t trade for Richard.’ He thought I was joking. I said, ‘Does it sound like I’m joking?’ ”

Not to anybody who knows better. You think Lucas wouldn’t like to play Tarpley alongside David Robinson? You think he wouldn’t like to see Tarpley’s basketball life and real life become as fulfilling as Dumas’?

Much has been made about how unorthodox a coach Lucas is, how he’s turned over the team to the players. Lucas knows, especially in the playoffs, a coach can help but players have to win. Robinson’s contributions, Elliott’s contributions are more important than any coach’s, he says. Lucas, he says, is there to give structure, to create and foster an atmosphere conducive to success at the highest level, to bring things out of players they didn’t know was inside them. You don’t have to be recovering from anything to be touched by Lucas. Robinson, for example, says flat out Lucas tapped into leadership qualities the pride of the Naval Academy admitted had gone dormant. This is their team, he says, not his, so they should share in its management.

“Instead of having the coach as central focus, Luke has the players being that,” Robinson said. Lucas has looked at the core of too many people, often too many addicts, and found they didn’t know how to take control of something, even things that they should have seen belonged to them.

These are some of the lessons that Dumas had to learn before he could play basketball in the NBA. “The first day I saw him,” Lucas reminisced, “I liked his personality, his demeanor. All the things I threw at him, he did with ease. He became like a younger brother. In terms of basketball, he knows a lot of our plays. He hasn’t had a bad game against me yet. I think he likes beating up on me.

“The best Richard Dumas hasn’t shown up yet. He’s got Dr. J-type ability. He’s special, he’s a Dream Team player by ’96.”

Lucas, you should know, gets carried away when talking about players and their abilities. But Dumas, who credits Lucas with helping him turn around his life, is a prodigious talent whom the Suns drafted in the second round two years ago but had to sit out last season because of the league’s drug policy. Dumas, as Tarpley and others before him, sought out Lucas.

“You know what I see now, a year later?” Lucas said. “I see hope rather than hopelessness, and I see a man like myself learning to handle situations that used to baffle us. I no longer see a player drinking or on drugs.”

Westphal smiles at the irony of the opposing coach in this series being largely responsible for the necessary U-turn one of his own players has taken. “I give Luke a lot of credit,” Westphal said. “First, Richard deserves the credit for turning his life around as he has. But Luke has put in a lot of sweat. He deserves a big tip of the hat from us, from all basketball fans really. Richard is one of the great stories this year in sports.”

Lucas is another. The Spurs won 18 of 19 games in one stretch for a remarkable turnaround from what Tark had wrought. San Antonio came back to earth somewhat, finishing behind Houston in the Central Division. But it was clear that regardless the record, this particular team responded to a coach’s very different approach.

Lucas knows what one slip-up can be a disaster, how being a recovering addict means every moment is like leading by one, the other team with the ball. He jumps up and down like a kangaroo on the sideline, encouraging not ranting. He says that considering the lack of a training camp and the team’s moderate playoff experience, being right here right now isn’t half-bad.