He Gives Lakers a Big Edge

The success--or lack of it--of the Lakers in the NBA playoffs may depend on this formidable giant of a player, 7 feet tall, give a half-inch or so, near 300 pounds. He moves incredibly quickly for such a big man, has a deft touch around the basket, can set picks that are as hard to get around as the Empire State Building and blocks more shots than a jammed cannon.

Oh, yeah, you say, you know--Shaquille O’Neal, right?

Who said anything about Shaq? We’re talking about Elden, by God, Campbell here.

This Campbell is coming, all right. He gets better each year. He gets smarter every game. If all the opposition had to worry about in the middle was O’Neal, they would be high-fiving all over the place. But Campbell complicates that picture.

In horse racing, they would call them 1 and 1A. O’Neal is Hall of Fame stuff. The Franchise, and all of that.

But Elden Campbell is not your basic horus line figure. Elden can play the pivot too, and did when Shaq was injured this year. When O’Neal came back, Campbell slipped into his role of the sidekick. Held his horse, so to speak. He protected O’Neal’s flank, drew some of the coverage off. When O’Neal was double-teamed, Campbell was open.

In all sports, the one-two attack is the most devastating, indefensible. In baseball, you had Ruth and Gehrig, Aaron and Mathews, Maris and Mantle. A pitcher could afford to walk only one.

In basketball, it’s more common to have the Big Man in the Pivot coupled with the quick, sure-handed guard who would go get him the ball and keep the fleas from swarming all over him. Kareem had Magic, Wilt had Jerry West, and Bill Russell, a non-scorer himself, had a cavalry of Cousy, two Joneses, Sharman and Sanders for him to lay the ball off on.

The Lakers have Nick Van Exel, Eddie Jones and Derek Fisher to bring the ball up, but they have the Twin Peaks to know what to do with it. Not since the days when Hakeem Olajuwon and Ralph Sampson has a front line that looked like the Swiss Alps been seen sweeping down court, looking in poor light like runaway glaciers.

Campbell gets the Gehrig role in this pastiche. In show business, they’d call him the second banana. O’Neal is the top banana.

O’Neal has 9,331 points in five years. Campbell has 5,437 in seven. O’Neal has 970 blocked shots. But Campbell is right there with 903.

You would have to say these bananas are bunched. O’Neal is two inches taller, 50 pounds heavier and about $10 million a year richer. But all Campbell does is show up every day, improve every day and give defenses fits when he’s on. He doesn’t get the shoe contracts, the soft-drink promotions, the perks. But he does get the ball. which is sometimes all he needs.

The arithmetic is all in the Lakers’ favor: The other teams can’t put two guys on both Campbell and O’Neal or the league will have its first 200-point night.

How does accepting the star’s-best-friend role sit with Elden Campbell? Quite comfortably, he tells you. What did the addition of O’Neal to the club do to alter his role? “Well,” Campbell allows, “I have to play a more slashing and cutting game. He is the go-to guy when he’s in there. I have to busy myself directing attention away from him. When he’s not in there, I have to readjust. “

It is not exactly a vice president’s role. Campbell does not, so to speak, just have to go around ribbon-cutting and funeral-attending. He is more like a co-President, as important to the attack as O’Neal.

His coach, Del Harris, is sure the coming of O’Neal has made a better player of Campbell. “When Shaq got injured and he took Shaq’s position, Elden saw a lot of ways he wished some plays would be made to help him when he was in the low post. When Shaq got back, he incorporated them into his game. It gave him an insight into both roles. Those guys are mirror images of each other.

“Elden is a more confident player today. It gave him the confidence and the reassurance. He’s only 28 and there’s no telling how great a player he can become.”

It hasn’t always been thus. The scouting report on Campbell at first was that his attention was apt to wander. It was more of a perception than a fact. When Campbell first joined the Lakers he often looked on the floor like a guy trying to remember what he did with his wallet or whether he turned the water off in the tub. A writer one night called his play “comatose.”

But it was simply Campbell’s way. He never scowled, never slammed the ball down, or head-butted a ref. If he drew a foul, it was his elbows, not his attitude. And he has fouled out only twice this year. Given his physical type of play, that’s remarkable.

He wasn’t even recruited by a local college although he went to Morningside High in Inglewood. He enrolled at Clemson, a continent away in the Atlantic Coast Conference. “I considered going to SC,” he explains, “but I liked the whole idea of the ACC.

“I was a better baseball player, actually,” he adds.

But didn’t he have a lot of strike zone?

“I was all strike zone,” he laughs.

Harris notes that Campbell is a premier playoff player. “He was about our best playoff player a year ago. He blocked 30 shots in the playoffs two years ago. “

But even in the playoffs he’ll be second banana. All the focus, all the enemy attention will be on O’Neal.

That’s just the way Campbell wants it.