Journeyman Takes a Right Turn Down Coaching Route : Basketball: Former Laker McNamara, who is guiding two rookie league teams, finds he has knack for job.

It took Mark McNamara nine stops in eight NBA seasons to realize he had learned more about the league than just how to survive in it. More than how to put a body on Moses Malone, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and David Robinson in practice. More than how to keep himself mentally and physically ready to play in case of an injury to a starter.

“After awhile, I started to become pretty decent with all the different systems,” McNamara said. “I saw a lot of different coaching philosophies. All of sudden, I said, ‘Geez, I know a lot about NBA basketball.’ ”

It wasn’t long before NBA people realized the same thing. George Karl, who had coached for Cleveland and Golden State, asked McNamara to be a player/coach for his Real Madrid team in Spain. The next year, Matt Goukas, then coach of the Orlando Magic, asked if McNamara would show his new big man--a guy named Shaq--a thing or two about playing the post in the NBA.

And suddenly, someone who had never considered coaching began looking at the profession in an entirely different light. And now, two years after his retirement as a player, McNamara, 35, is coaching two rookie league teams in the ASICS Summer Pro league at the Bren Center.

One day last week, McNamara spent 10 hours at the Bren Center coaching and scouting. The next day, his two teams--ASICS and XTRA--played back-to-back games.

“About halfway through the second game, I said, ‘Uh-oh, I have a bad headache,’ ” McNamara said. “I almost called out the wrong team’s plays. In the last three or four weeks, I’ve seen a lot of basketball.”

Eric Musselman, coach and general manager of the Continental Basketball Assn.’s Rapid City Thrillers, hired McNamara last week to be one of his assistant coaches.

Though McNamara’s ASICS team is 4-1 and in the playoffs this week, McNamara won’t be there. He’s with Musselman on a scouting trip back east, looking at talent for the upcoming CBA draft.

Musselman normally doesn’t hire former players as coaches, but he said McNamara was different.

“I was reluctant to hire him because he played, and sometimes players have had enough of the game,” Musselman said. “You want to be around people who really want to coach, who have a love for the game. And the biggest thing with me is commitment. I saw that in him.”

Musselman also saw what kinds of players and coaches McNamara had been around throughout his vagabond career.

“He’s been around people like Dr. J and Magic--winners,” Musselman said. “The thing that interested me the most, though, were the coaches he’s played for: Billy Cunningham, Pat Riley. He also believes in the CBA and I do, too. You don’t want somebody here who doesn’t.”

Before he hired him, Musselman made sure McNamara wasn’t going to hang around for half a season and then leave.

“The thing that’s great about Mark is he doesn’t want to be a head coach right away,” Musselman said. “Most players want to be handed an NBA coaching job without paying any dues. I get the idea Mark will stay here and tell players what to do to get to the next level.”

McNamara became an expert at knowing how to stay at the NBA level--he just wasn’t great at staying in place for long periods of time. His stint with the Lakers, in 1989 and 1990, was the longest he spent with one team.

After being the Philadelphia 76ers’ first-round pick in 1982 out of Cal, McNamara spent a championship season there before going to San Antonio, Kansas City and Milwaukee for parts of seasons. From there, the 6-foot-11 backup center went to Milwaukee, Italy, Spain, back to Philadelphia in 1987, the Lakers in ’88 and finally in 1992 to Orlando, where he tutored O’Neal during the preseason before being released prior to the regular season.

McNamara says his NBA career might have been different had he not seriously injured his back during his second year. Before his injury, he was starting at center for San Antonio and averaging 5.5 points with a season- and career-high of 22 points.

“I had some decent jump before that,” McNamara said. “But I lost six or eight inches after that. I should have been out of the league after that. But I learned I had to be fundamentally sound because I wasn’t as strong or as quick as everybody else.”

So after being released by Milwaukee, McNamara practiced his moves during a two-year stint with Cortan, an Italian team. He averaged 15.4 points with Cortan in 1985-86.

“When you know something well, you look quicker than you are,” McNamara said. “I had good first moves. I had adjusted my game to lesser physical ability and I felt confident.”

Not only was McNamara becoming a student of low post moves, he was becoming a student of the NBA play book.

“I turned into a journeyman, a guy you could bring in because he learned the plays quicker than most and had a good attitude,” McNamara said.

But it wasn’t until Karl asked if he would work with his big men on the Real Madrid team that McNamara discovered he had a knack for coaching.

“I really had no aspirations at all,” McNamara said. “But I worked with a lot of the guys and showed them my moves. Then, all of a sudden a guy would use a move and it worked. He’d come over and say, ‘Thanks for teaching me that.’ I said, ‘Wow, I like this.’ ”

The next fall, McNamara showed those same moves to Shaquille O’Neal during and after practice. O’Neal and McNamara would often play one-on-one for an hour after practice.

“Within the first 10 minutes of playing with him, I knew he had the potential to be one of a kind,” McNamara said. “I’d played with Moses, Kareem and David Robinson, and I saw he could be better than them. He’s an amazing physical specimen and he takes advantage of it.”

McNamara also was impressed that O’Neal was such a great listener.

“In the first preseason game, he had nine turnovers in the first half because he wasn’t reacting to the double-teams,” McNamara said. “But we showed him what to do at the half. He relaxed and didn’t make another turnover. Now, I think he has the best moves of anybody. He just needs to finish them off with a jumper.”

McNamara won’t be teaching players with O’Neal’s ability this season in the CBA, but he will be happy when one of his players uses a McNamara move.

“I’m excited about this,” said McNamara, who is also trying to complete the construction on his house in Capitola, outside of Santa Cruz. “I have a ton of respect for coaches. Being a player doesn’t make you a coach. You have to learn how to become a coach.”

If McNamara learns how to coach as well as he learned how to play, he could be coaching a long time.