ANY ROAD UP

The script sounded entirely plausible to Michael Holton. He would begin his basketball coaching career as a Division I assistant, gracefully parlay that into a head-coaching job, shape some young lives and maybe pick up the NCAA championship that eluded him as a player at UCLA.

It was a decade ago that he strolled into the office of Jim Harrick, then coach of the Bruins, and presented his plan. About an hour later, the dreamer stumbled out with three words of advice from Harrick:

Go sell tires.

That was no joke. Harrick even handed him the business card of a friend in tire sales. The reason? If Holton truly was intent on becoming a coach, he should first test the outside world.

“I left his office thankful but a little discouraged,” Holton recalled. “To me, the message was real clear: I needed to get more perspective on what coaching was all about.”

He never sold tires--instead, he sold blue jeans for a year--and now, as the Bruins’ top assistant coach and recruiting coordinator, he has a far more realistic outlook on the profession. In many ways, he’s a calming influence on a basketball program that has been through enough twists, turns, bumps and potholes to wear thin the most rugged of radials.

At the moment, the unranked Bruins are riding high. They come into today’s game at DePaul having won 10 of 12, including victories over No. 1 Stanford and No. 22 USC in the past week.

It’s a welcome hot streak not only for embattled Coach Steve Lavin but for assistants Holton, Jim Saia and Steve Spencer. After all, those three aspire to run their own programs.

Most experienced as a Bruin assistant coach and a player is Holton, 39, who played for four teams in six NBA seasons. In that respect, he serves as a real-life road map for his players who have hopes of making it to the pros.

“He’s played in the national championship game, he’s been to the NBA,” forward Matt Barnes said. “Listening to him really calms everyone’s nerves. He’s got stories. He’s just been where all of us are trying to get to.”

But Holton has been to dark places too, places he prays his players never roam. He battled substance abuse, something that got him kicked out of the Continental Basketball Assn. toward the end of his career.

“I really didn’t know how to live without basketball,” said Holton, who has been sober for a decade. “Basketball had become my identity. At the end of my career, I basically lost basketball overnight. I didn’t feel good about that, and I looked for other places to feel good. I experienced a downward spiral that required some intervention.

“I’m not embarrassed by the things that have happened in my life. If anything, I’m encouraged that I have the opportunity to now use my experiences as an inspiration to others.”

For Holton, basketball has been a series of high hopes and recalibrated realities. He was the Pasadena High star who became a role player at UCLA; the NBA journeyman who wound up finishing his career with teams such as the Tulsa Fast Breakers and Tri-City Chinook; the loyal assistant who patiently has waited for the right head-coaching job to come along.

It’s unclear how much longer Holton will call Westwood home. He wants to be a head coach, and recently has fielded inquiries from Athletes in Action and the NBA’s newly-formed developmental league. Despite all the murkiness surrounding Lavin’s future, Holton might be the first UCLA coach to be headed elsewhere.

He has plenty of experience. After selling jeans for a year, he was hired as an assistant coach at Pasadena City College by his former high school coach George Terzian. After one season, Holton went back to Harrick, who helped him get an assistant’s job at the University of Portland. Then, it was on to Oregon State for a season before returning to UCLA in 1995.

As for his next step?

“I guess the right call hasn’t come yet,” said Holton, who frequently says he’s grateful to Lavin for trusting him to coordinate recruiting. “I love being of service to the UCLA community, but obviously my goal is to be a head coach. Every spring, I get a call or two gauging my interest in a job. But each year, I’ve felt like our staff was engulfed in unfinished business.

“Each year, there have been so many events and distractions and challenges that I feel so much a part of being a solution to, that the timing [to leave] just hasn’t seemed appropriate.”

That comes as a relief to those UCLA players who have formed a special bond with Holton. Ray Young, for instance. When Young’s shooting touch abandoned him last season--taking his confidence with it--he turned to Holton. On the Oregon trip last season, the two sat up all night in the team hotel talking through the situation. A tearful Young had been ready to transfer.

“He was basically saying a lot of things that my father was saying,” Young said. “Things about making a commitment to somebody, to a team, to a program. Your first instinct is usually, ‘Well, maybe I just need to go to another school.’ Coach Holton just has so many perspectives on things. He just says, with some trials and tribulations, you just have to fight through them, and in the end it will make you a better person.”

Young, who had an outstanding game Thursday in the victory over USC, has had to wait his turn. So has Holton, the dapper fellow with the clipboard who occasionally weighs in with some coaching advice but more often lets Lavin do the talking.

During the season, Holton spends much of his time in high school gyms up and down the West Coast, miles from his wife, LaShell, and three children. He’s chasing a dream of becoming a head coach, yet he’s careful not to forget what he calls “the miracle of the moment.” Basketball is still a huge part of his life, after all, even though the road hasn’t always been smooth and his plans haven’t unfolded with the speed he once envisioned.

For Holton, it beats selling tires.