Magee Glad to Be Back in the U.S.A. : Basketball: Former UC Irvine standout is ready to enjoy the fruits of his successful 12-year pro career in European leagues.

How long has it been since Kevin Magee spent an autumn at home in Southern California?

Apparently, a very, very long time.

“This is the most exciting time of my life,” said the former UC Irvine All-American who recently retired after 12 years of playing pro basketball in European leagues. “I can’t wait to see the leaves turn colors on the trees.”

Uh , Kevin, you might be in for a disappointment there. But you can’t deter his enthusiasm. He’ll settle for watching Buddy Ryan’s face turn colors.

“Then Monday Night Football,” he said. “Isn’t Monday Night Football great?”

Twelve years ago, Magee was deeply disappointed that he wasn’t a first-round pick in the NBA, then hurt when the Phoenix Suns didn’t offer him a guaranteed contract. He finally decided to take his chances in Verase, Italy.

For 12 years, he fought his crusade in Italy, Spain, Israel and France, and has returned home with a capitalist’s version of the Holy Grail--a string of investments that will allow him to live a life of leisure.

Today, Magee is a very wealthy man of 35, sending his children off to school, having lunch with the contractor who is landscaping his new Rancho Santa Margarita home and pondering what to do with his spare time.

Today, Magee smiles a lot.

Twelve years ago, he didn’t.

At UC Irvine, Magee was unstoppable, indefatigable and simply incredible. Game after game, he faced special defenses, double- and triple-team schemes and game after game, he foiled them. During his two seasons at Irvine, he twice was a first-team All-American and twice he was in the top 10 nationally in field-goal percentage, scoring and rebounding, a feat never before accomplished.

Regarding Magee’s chances to make it in the NBA, Jerry West said, “He’s a great rebounder and a tremendous runner and that’s what this league is all about.” In March, 1982, West predicted Magee would be drafted in the first half of the first round.

Three months and a less-than-inspired performance in an NBA pre-draft camp later, Magee ended up going in the second round, the 39th selection.

“I always counted on playing in the NBA, but I really have no regrets,” he said. “At first, I was hurt that they didn’t think I was worth a guaranteed contract in the NBA and I thought I got the raw end of the deal.

“But in the NBA, I just would have been another player, another number. In Europe, I was almost like a Michael Jordan. I was voted most valuable player six times in three different leagues. I won eight rebounding titles in 12 years. I had an illustrious career.”

Magee made more than $600,000 playing in Paris during his second-to-last season. In the mid-1980s, he signed a four-year, $1.2-million deal with Maccabi Tel Aviv that included a rent-free, five-bedroom home in an upscale suburb, a new car, the hefty tuition for his kids to go to a private American school, travel expenses for his family and a clause that paid all foreign taxes.

Who needs the NBA?

“My wife and kids had the chance to experience different countries and different cultures,” he said. “I did what I wanted to do, I had fun and I made a lot of money.

“Now, I wouldn’t change nothing about my basketball career.”

The money was always guaranteed, but each move was a bit of a gamble nonetheless. Magee usually only had a notion of what he was getting into.

“Israel?” he says, smiling. “I expected nothing but sand and people riding camels.”

After a year in Italy, Magee signed a contract with Zaragosa of the Spanish League. He and his wife, Melanie, stayed in a hotel for the first two months.

“Jeremy was 10 months old then,” Melanie said, “and we didn’t have a refrigerator so we either had to keep the formula in the sink or go to the kitchen downstairs. It was pretty depressing.”

Said Kevin: “We weren’t used to being overseas, we both were crying like babies all the time. You go to the grocery store, you can’t read what anything is. You turn on the TV, you can’t tell what anyone is saying.

“I called Dennis (Harwood, Magee’s attorney/agent) and said, ‘Get me out of this contract. I’ll come home and get a job at McDonald’s.’ I just didn’t think I could take it. But Dennis told me to just hang in there because it will get better. I figured it couldn’t get worse. And we hung in there . . . we hung in there for 12 years.”

Magee’s next stop was a stint in Israel where he immediately endeared himself to the Tel Aviv fans by telling reporters how “damned rude” the people were and how bad the food was.

“Kevin’s kind of opinionated,” Melanie said, smiling. “The journalists were really (angry) when he complained about the food and said the only reason he was in their country was to make money for his family.”

Magee tried to explain that “I didn’t mean no harm,” but his rebounding and ability to flash the numbers on the scoreboard did more to soothe the fans’ anger than his semi-retraction.

“After I played a few games, everything changed. But if I had been a (lousy) player, they probably would have ran me and my family out of the country.”

The Magees stayed six years and Maccabi played in the European Cup finals three times. By the time Magee decided to move on and signed a contract with a team in Torino, Italy, one would figure he would be a seasoned traveler.

“I’d been in the city two weeks and went out to a restaurant with some guys from the team,” Magee said. “It was only 10 minutes from my apartment, so I figured I’d be macho and drive myself.

“I left and started driving and driving and suddenly I was outside the city limits. I said to myself, ‘Let me turn around. If I’m going to be lost, I’m going to be lost in Torino.’ I didn’t have a number to call anybody or anything so I just kept driving and driving in circles. It was foggy and cold and it was scary.

“Finally, about two hours later, I made it back home. And for a month afterward, I didn’t go anywhere without somebody who knew their way around.”

Just how good of a college player was Kevin Magee? That depends on who you ask.

Pick your favorite hyperbole:

* During his first season at Irvine, the Anteaters played Texas A&M;, which featured a towering front line called “The Wall.” Magee went over it like a low hurdle. He scored 31 points and grabbed 14 rebounds in a 91-74 upset. “It was like a man came into the YMCA to play with the boys,” A&M; Coach Shelby Metcalf said afterward.

* “Bill (Mulligan, then Irvine’s coach) would call timeout at a crucial spot,” said Chapman Coach Mike Bokosky, then an Anteater assistant. “Maybe we’d make a little adjustment, Simple-Simon stuff, and then Bill would grab Kevin with both arms on his shoulders and look straight in his eyes and say, ‘Kevin, go dominate.’

“And Kevin would go back out, grab a rebound, dunk on somebody, run the floor, block a shot, run the floor, catch it back and finish. And then he’d run by the bench and look at us like, ‘Is that enough?’ ”

* “I’ve played with and against a lot of big guys who went on to play in the NBA, (Bob) Thornton, (Johnny) Rodgers, (Tod) Murphy and others, and I always thought Kevin was the best,” said Mark Spinn, a teammate at Irvine. “The rule in pick-up games was simple: The team that got Kevin won. If you needed a bucket, you dumped the ball into him and he scored. It was that simple.

“A few years ago, they set up this game between some Irvine alumni and the South high school all-star team. There were seven of us who showed up, including Kevin and Wayne Englestad. I was talking to one of the (high school) coaches before the game and he said, ‘Gee, only seven guys, I hope you guys can give us a decent game because we’re really going to be running up and down.’ I couldn’t help but laugh.

“I think we beat them like 160-108 or something and Kevin had about 80.”

* “I’ve got a player now,” said Mulligan, who coaches at Irvine Valley College, “who is 6-11, can run the floor like you’ve never seen and shoot three pointers.

“He has a chance to be as good as Kevin. If he had Kevin’s heart, he could be better than Kevin. But I don’t think anyone will have Kevin’s heart.”

In 1979, when Mulligan was coaching at Saddleback College, he took under his wing a 255-pound steel worker from Mississippi on recommendation from a friend.

In two seasons, Saddleback lost only twice with Magee in the lineup, in the State semifinals and final. When Mulligan took the coaching job at UC Irvine, Magee went with him. It is a fusion of loyalty that has never waned.

“This man is like a father to me,” Magee said. “I love him. I would do anything for him. I would dedicate my life to this man.

“He made me a man, made me accept responsibility and I love him for that.”

Magee was the fourth of six children born to Willie and Ina Mae Magee in the Ivanhoe Projects of Gary, Ind. When Magee was 12, some gang members tried to persuade one of his older brothers to join, at gunpoint.

Willie moved his family to Magnolia, Miss., for safety reasons, but he stayed in Gary to keep his well-paying union job in the steel mill.

In their back yard in Magnolia, the Magee boys cleared a spot of dirt, punched a hole in the bottom of a metal wash basin and hung it on a fence post. By the time he attended South Pike High, basketball was second nature for Kevin Magee.

The college recruiters came and were duly impressed, but Magee--something of a momma’s boy--decided on Southeastern Louisiana, just 40 miles from home. Still homesick, he came home every day. After three months, he came home and never went back.

Then came a three-week stay at the University of Houston before he was back home working at a lumber mill. The late Jack Holly, then coach at College of the Ozarks in Clarksville, Ark., persuaded Magee to give college basketball another try. Holly liked Magee, but Magee didn’t like the school.

Then came a call to Mulligan. Seems Magee had a sister in Oceanside and thought he might like California. Mulligan says the first time he saw him, Magee was nailing jumpers while wearing work boots.

“I wasn’t rich, that’s for sure,” Magee said, “but I did have a pair of gym shoes. The point is, my career was going down the drain and the man saved my career. I wouldn’t be where I am today without him.

“He was a breath of fresh air for me. He was understanding and fair. He may have shot from the hip sometimes, maybe you didn’t want to hear what he had to say, but he was always honest with me. And that’s all you can ask from a coach . . . or anybody for that matter.”

Mulligan can’t help but shake his head when Magee suggests he is responsible for his success.

“Kevin says that stuff about me, but it’s really the other way around,” Mulligan said. “Kevin got me the job at Irvine. Kevin built the Bren Center. I owe a great deal to him.”

Irvine’s campus arena carries the name of the man who donated much of the money to build it, but Mulligan still calls it the “house that Kevin built.”

Irvine officials may not be ready to concede that, but on Saturday, Feb. 4, during a game against New Mexico State, Irvine will officially retire No. 44, “the number of the best player ever to play at UC Irvine,” according to Coach Rod Baker.

“They’re going to hang a banner up in the rafters, just like Boston Garden,” Magee said, beaming. “That’s gonna be great.”

Each morning, Magee runs four laps around Lake Santa Margarita--4.4 miles--and about once a week he shows up at a South County gym and wows the gym rats in a pickup game.

At 216 pounds, the 6-foot-8 Magee looks as fit as ever, but he doesn’t have any regrets about his decision to retire.

“I was tired of being overseas and the last couple of years Melanie and the kids weren’t with me because the kids wanted to stay in school here,” Magee said. “But that wasn’t really the biggest part. I was getting (angry) all the time, upset with my teammates. I just didn’t seem to love the game like I used to. I was just in it for the paycheck and when you’re just in it for the paycheck, it’s time to quit.”

And Magee has no illusions about a future in coaching.

“I don’t have the patience,” he says. “Anyway, I’ve been playing basketball since I was 12 and it’s time to do something else. I’m sick of basketball.”

Still, Magee is aware that he needs to find something to do. Not the idle type and with no interest in golf or most other leisure pastimes--and an acquired aversion to travel--Magee admits he and Melanie are getting on each other’s nerves.

“I’ve been off since April and I’m going crazy,” Magee said. “I’ve put a resume in at Converse, looking for something in sales or promotions. I don’t want to start my own business yet, because I don’t want to throw a lot of money into something that two months down the road I might decide I don’t want to do.

“But I’ve got to get out of the house. What’s the deal with all these talk shows? I told Melanie I’m going to go out and pick up cans if I don’t get something else to do soon.”