Testing Positive : John Lucas Is Making the Most of His Latest Chance, Turning the San Antonio Spurs Into Unusual Winners

One still flies over the cuckoo’s nest. Appropriately enough, it’s John Lucas, coach of a wacky crew called the San Antonio Spurs and a man whose whole life was a warm-up for the assignment, even if he didn’t realize it.

Today, Lucas finds himself in charge of 12 young men, some of them with almost as many problems as he had, no two of them alike.

Check out this roster:

C--David Robinson, a born-again Christian who participated, with A.C. Green, in an athletes’ campaign for sexual abstinence. Robinson once asked then-coach Larry Brown after a timeout in a close game if it had really been necessary for him to curse.

F--Dennis Rodman, a born-again outlaw who has dyed his hair blond, burgundy, red, blue and blond this season. Rodman doesn’t talk to teammates, comes late to practices and games and often skips shootarounds on the theory he isn’t going to shoot, anyway. He proved it by taking 38 shots in January.

F/G--Lloyd Daniels, a New York prep legend who became addicted to cocaine, tried to detox but lost his chance to play college ball when he was arrested at a crack house in Las Vegas.

G--Dale Ellis, who left Seattle under a cloud that included several arrests for drunk driving.

Then there are the merely disappointing, J.R. Reid and Negele Knight; the aging, Terry Cummings, and the road warriors, Antoine Carr and Vinny Del Negro. The question was whether they belonged in the NBA or in group therapy, but it has been answered. After a 2-4 start, this experiment in group dynamics went 37-11.

“A little unusual?” Robinson asks, laughing. “It’s a lot unusual.

“We’ve got a collection of guys who really have to figure out how to play together, how to live together as a team. . . .

“Surprisingly, we’re pretty close. Dennis is a hard guy to get to know, he doesn’t hang with anybody, but he’s become a part of this team. When we’re on the floor, I think everybody roots for each other.

“‘It’s just a team of guys that like to do their own thing. Dale’s kind of a loner a little bit. Negele is a little bit of a loner. Lloyd is . . . he just is different.”

Robinson laughs again, adding: “I try to hang out with everybody, but nobody wants to hang out with me.”

EVERYBODY KNOWS THE TROUBLE HE’S SEEN

I believe in miracles. I am one. --John Lucas Walk a mile in their shoes?

Lucas wore those same shoes his whole, star-crossed, highest-highs and lowest-lows life.

What did any of them ever know about the joy and seduction of stardom, the feeling of power and invulnerability, the fear that came in the night, the fall, the helplessness, the surrender, the shame--where had they been that he hadn’t been first and stayed longer?

His whole life was a setup.

His childhood looked like it had come out of a Golden Book. His father was a high school principal in Durham, N.C. His mother was a junior high assistant principal.

Young Luke lived to perform. He broke Pete Maravich’s state scoring record and made the Junior Davis Cup team in tennis. He was an All-American at both sports at Maryland and the No. 1 choice in the NBA draft.

For six years after entering the NBA, he dabbled in pro tennis, while also earning his master’s degree in secondary education.

“Everything in my life was winner, runner-up and consolation,” he once told Sports Illustrated’s Jill Lieber. “I didn’t know how to have fun. I never had a childhood. I still can’t swim and I didn’t ride a bike. The skills I was sharpest on were competition, drive and sportsmanship.”

He was effervescent, hard-driving, fast-talking, always the guy in charge. He partied hard, too; he drank and snorted. After a while, it wasn’t something he did anymore, it was him.

By the mid-1980s, he had been with five teams and four detox programs. The cities whirled by: Houston, Oakland, Washington, San Antonio, back to Houston.

He was out of control. He suffered from paranoid delusions. He was scared to shower and doused himself with cologne to hide the fact. He sweated so much at night, he slept on the cool tile floor in the bathroom. One morning, he awoke to find his 2-year-old son standing on him, trying to use the toilet. His 6-year-old daughter caught him taking cocaine.

Lucas’ wife used to lock him in, but one night in the spring of 1986, she forgot, and he ran away to get high. He awoke the next morning in downtown Houston wearing a suit, sunglasses and no shoes. The Rockets were practicing, but he couldn’t make it. Instead, he got high again.

The Rockets had him tested. When he came up positive, they released him. He was averaging 16 points and nine assists a game at the time.

That was March 13, 1986, when he hit bottom.

“I was too afraid to turn myself in, too afraid to ask for help, too afraid to stop,” he said.

“I was really blessed. I didn’t wake up saying my ambition is to become an alcoholic and a drug addict. My ambition in life was to become President of the United States. The greatest gift I’ve got is being an addict and an alcoholic. I found out who I am.”

His life changed. He wasn’t trying to become President anymore, or the best point guard in history, or the first NBA player to win Wimbledon. He was trying to get straight enough to hold a job.

Detox became his life. Speaking appearances led to active involvement in programs. Then he set up his own John Lucas Center with the help of a Houston therapist.

His NBA career ended in 1990 after a third tour of duty as a Rocket. Troubled or not, Lucas had that glow; even after he messed up, people would take him back if they had some assurance he could stay straight.

He missed the game, bought a team in the United States Basketball League, the Miami Tropics, and staffed it with players from his program like Roy Tarpley and Pearl Washington, so they could show they were back on their feet.

While helping former San Antonio star George Gervin get sober, Lucas met Red McCombs, then owner of the Spurs and a recovering alcoholic himself. Years later, with the Jerry Tarkanian experiment foundering and Tark ripping the organization in the papers and acting in general as if he didn’t need the job, McCombs thought of Lucas.

Lucas says McCombs told him he would have to say yes or no right away. Lucas, happy with what he was doing, says he almost turned it down.

He couldn’t resist, though. He took the job, pulled his rascals together and went 39-22 with a team that had started 10-11.

Problems remained. Lucas was the archetypal players’ coach, but the Spurs were short of actual players.

So they traded Sean Elliott, one of the few who hadn’t embraced the new program--Elliott told friends he thought Lucas was a con guy--for Rodman.

A WALK ON THE WILD SIDE

From the moment Rodman arrived in the NBA as a 25-year-old rookie, he was considered eccentric.

A late bloomer, he was small as a high school kid in Dallas, spurted later and got a basketball scholarship at Southeastern Oklahoma State.

He was desire personified. He became the greatest rebounder of his day, perhaps of any day. His 17.9 average this season is 30% ahead of the next man in the field. On a percentage-of-rebounds basis, his 18.6 average in 1991-92 was better than Wilt Chamberlain’s records. Even with the used-up Pistons, Rodman could tilt the arrow from losing to winning. With him last season, they were 36-26; without him 4-16.

The better he did, the more weird he became.

He was a fawn caught in society’s headlights. He hid out after games, pedaling on an exercise bike for an hour or so after having just played 48 minutes.

His marriage to a Sacramento model blew up. He mourned the departure of Chuck Daly as Detroit’s coach and began absenting himself, forcing the Pistons to trade him.

He showed up in San Antonio with his arms tattooed and his hair blond. Whatever he’d been doing, he didn’t intend to stop. Whatever he was trying to escape, it was bigger than Detroit.

What is he doing?

“I don’t know,” Rodman says in the visitors’ dressing room at the Forum, wearing a tie-dyed T-shirt, burgundy hair and a bemused expression.

“It’s fun to do. It’s like I’m so tired of the traditional NBA standards. You have to do this. You have to do that. I’m tired. I’d rather just do my own thing and be the person I want to be.”

He’s been blowing up a lot. . . .

“No, I haven’t.” Rodman says. “See, that’s what people make a mistake in. I’m not blowing up. It’s amazing how you perceive something when you see it. It’s like, ‘Oh hell, he just blew his cool.’ I don’t lose my cool. I’m just doing something that’s showing my frustration, that’s all. That’s about it. Everybody blows off steam once in a while. I do it all the time. There may be something off the court I need to blow off on the court. That way I don’t hurt nobody.”

Is he happy?

“Yeah, I’m really making myself happy, ‘cause I feel like my daughter is the most important thing to me. Nothing else really matters to me.”

Is she still in Sacramento with his ex-wife?

“She’s still in Sacramento. You read all these things--’Well, he can’t see his kid, he’s so disappointed, he’s sad.’ ”

How often does he see her?

“I don’t see her much at all. But I really don’t bitch and complain about it. If I see her, fine. If I don’t, there’s nothing I can really do about it.”

How long will he play?

“I could quit at the halfway point here. I don’t give a damn. I don’t care about the money.

“Nobody’s really close to Dennis Rodman. Everybody thinks that they know Dennis Rodman: ‘Oh, I know him real well, we hung out and we had a great conversation.’ ‘What did he say?’ ‘Well, I really don’t know. He’s just a real wild guy.’ ”

Who’s his best friend on the team?

“Nobody. There’s nobody in this room I’m best friends with. I’m friends with them, but I never get close with ‘em, ‘cause I won’t. That’s not my nature, you know. I care for everyone in this room, they’re just like my brother. But I can’t be best friends with them. I can’t throw myself into this lullaby-type situation--’Well, OK, we all going to be together forever and ever.’ But in my heart and my mind, they’ll always be there.”

The reporter clicks off his tape recorder, thanks Rodman and leaves.

Rodman follows him to the door of the locker room.

“Do you think I’m crazy?” he asks.

Put it this way: Who do you know who isn’t?

THE GREAT EXPERIMENT

How to make it work?

The Spurs had a lot of guys who had to find their way back. Lucas knew the feeling.

“You know,” he says, “I felt what I was doing, working in my treatment center with my drug program, was a form of coaching, helping people through their pitfalls, trying to do what I term the simple ABCs of life: Accepting where they are, believing in who they are and something greater than themselves and then learning how to care about other people.

“That’s what’s so exciting to me about coaching, finding the hoops people are willing to jump through for their own success. Not for my success, not for the organization’s success, but for their own success.

“When we acquired Dennis Rodman, I immediately put him in power. He and David Robinson, they empower our team. I had them take ownership and responsibility in where our team would go. And they’ve done a great job with that. I’m not the guy that gives this team the life that I used to be. They’re feeding off each other.”

Of course, there has been some give and take.

On Jan. 2, Rodman was ejected from a game against the Lakers. He refused to leave, tore away from teammates and security personnel, threw a chair and was suspended by the NBA for a game. Without their best rebounder, the Spurs then lost to the Houston Rockets, who took two offensive rebounds, setting Vernon Maxwell up for the game-winning basket.

“After Dennis got suspended,” Lucas said, “I stopped practice with 30 minutes to go and I said, ‘I want a commitment that once you get thrown out of a game--’cause I know you’re going to get thrown out again--that you’ll leave the floor. We don’t want a repercussion that causes us to lose the next game. Now I got 30 minutes, you got to promise me that.’

“(Rodman) says, ‘I can’t promise you that.’

“Well, I sat down on the floor. I said, ‘Y’all might as well take a seat ‘cause I’m going to wait.’

“So all the guys are going, ‘C’mon, man! C’mon, you know he’s going to wait!’

“And then at the end, Dennis says, ‘All right, I promise.’ ”

Rodman reformed completely, for a week. With the Spurs coasting to a victory at the Forum, Rodman began playing around, taking a late rebound and just walking off with it until the referees called traveling.

After the game, Lucas said they couldn’t stand for that, either.

The dialogue continues to this day, a work in progress, a flight of cuckoos soaring across the sky, looking for 12 salvations and an NBA title, getting warmer all the time.