Rambis’ Tenuous Hold on Job Recalls His Laker Beginnings

You don’t think Kurt Rambis has been through the NBA’s version of a day-to-day anxiety attack?

Not as a coach, but as a player, back at the start of the 1981-82 season. He was a free agent, coming back from a stint in Greece, trying to hook onto the glorious Laker squad.

And it didn’t look good.

“He didn’t talk a lot,” said then-forward Mitch Kupchak, now the Laker general manager. “He had just come back from Greece. And I think ending up in a training camp with Kareem, Magic, Jamaal Wilkes, Norm Nixon . . . was a little overwhelming.”

Rambis had a non-guaranteed contract, his current agent and then Laker public relations man Lon Rosen remembers. (Kind of like his current situation as the Lakers’ interim coach.)

“I’ve got vivid memories of him defending me in practice,” Kupchak said. “His effort, persistence, his understanding of the game--the little things of the game--made it difficult to play against him.”

Among a galaxy of stars, he could go at any time. (Kind of like now.)

“He kept coming up to me and asking when his contract would be guaranteed for the rest of the year,” Rosen recalled. “It really was touch and go.”

Then, all of a sudden, he got his chance--coincidentally, when Kupchak blew out his knee and other more veteran players didn’t fill the void--and the rest was four NBA titles and Laker hard-nosed history.

With a short season, on an interim basis, and on a team that has just fired one of the most accomplished coaches in the NBA, is Rambis history repeating itself?

“It’s not the easiest or the best situation to be working under--it is a challenge,” he said. “When I first came here as a player, I had a challenge.”

This young Laker team, some of the young Lakers themselves, said that a hard-knuckled motivator is exactly what’s needed.

“I think there’s an automatic level of respect that players had for him,” said Kobe Bryant. “Kurt, if you told him to run through a brick wall to win a basketball game, he was going to do it.

“I think this generation, period, needs a coach like that.”

Said forward Corie Blount: “I like Kurt. When I was struggling, he was the one who came to me and told me to keep my head up. He basically went through the same things I did sometimes. . . .

“I think he’s going to tell it like it is. He’s going to tell you when you’re getting your butt kicked.”

The voice of somebody who got the absolute most out of his limited talents, who was the rugged side of four title runs, that’s somebody the present Laker management wanted around the new Lakers.

Said Rambis: “I always pulled my teammates along with my hustle and my effort. And that’s what I’m going to help try to relate to the players, that if they do that, if they play with heart and effort and energy and play together, we have an excellent chance to win basketball games.”