Lakers to Add Tomjanovich as One Piece of Their Puzzle

Rudy Tomjanovich, who led the Houston Rockets to two NBA titles in the 1990s, agreed Friday to replace Phil Jackson as head coach of the Lakers, even though the team might lose its two best players, Shaquille O’Neal and Kobe Bryant, before next season.

A team spokesman confirmed the agreement with Tomjanovich, who is expected to sign the contract this morning and be introduced at an afternoon news conference. A source close to the negotiations said the deal is worth about $30 million over five years.

Tomjanovich, 55, joined the Rockets in 1970 as a rookie forward and played or coached in 2,601 games over the next 33 years, guiding the team to championships in 1994 and 1995. He took a medical leave in 2003 while undergoing successful treatment for bladder cancer and returned last fall as a scout.

Tomjanovich survived one of the ugliest on-court incidents in league history -- one involving his new team. In a game at the Forum on Dec. 9, 1977, Laker forward Kermit Washington punched the unsuspecting Tomjanovich in the face during a fracas, fracturing his skull.

Washington was fined $10,000 and suspended for 60 days without pay. Tomjanovich sat out the rest of the season and played most of the next wearing a protective mask. The two recently have taken steps to smooth over the lingering ill will.

“If anybody can handle the soap-opera aspects of [the Lakers], it’s Rudy,” said John Feinstein, author of the 2002 book “The Punch: One Night, Two Lives, and the Fight That Changed Basketball Forever.” “Rudy was very close to death that night, and he went through a cancer scare.... Gary Payton [complaining] about playing time isn’t going to leave him awake at night.”

Replacing a coach known for his New Age inscrutability, as well as his occasional attempts to motivate his players through the media, Tomjanovich is described as supportive and unflappable.

“They’re both similar in that they respect players,” Robert Horry, a member of the San Antonio Spurs who played for Jackson and Tomjanovich, said Friday. “They both played. Both coached great players. They’re both good coaches. Phil tries to be philosophical. With Rudy, it’s just, ‘Go out and play, you’re a grown man, do what you do.’ ”

Under Tomjanovich, the Lakers will drop the triangle offense. Tomjanovich will call plays from the sideline -- usually while standing -- and players will be expected to run them. Tomjanovich is quick to call timeouts if the tide turns, a difference from Jackson’s philosophy of letting players sort things out themselves.

Tomjanovich’s offensive sets in Houston revolved around center Hakeem Olajuwon, but there was room for other players to prosper. Guard Clyde Drexler was an All-Star when he arrived from the Portland Trail Blazers, and he continued to be an All-Star in Houston.

“Those championship years in Houston, they had things about as close to perfection as I think you can get,” Laker forward Karl Malone said recently. “They had so many guys who did different things to win. Tomjanovich was the perfect coach for them. He never panicked and he passed the characteristic to his team.”

Whether Tomjanovich is the perfect replacement for Jackson, who won three NBA titles during his five years in Los Angeles, might hinge in large measure on whom he is coaching. But three weeks after the Lakers lost the NBA Finals in five games to the Detroit Pistons, the 2004-05 roster is far from settled.

Bryant is a free agent, having opted out of the final season of his contract, eight years after becoming a Laker. He is scheduled to stand trial in Colorado next month for felony sexual assault, a circumstance that apparently has not diminished his popularity with league’s general managers. After meetings this week with officials from the Clippers, Denver Nuggets and New York Knicks, he is believed to have narrowed his choices to the two L.A. teams.

O’Neal, annoyed by a perception that Laker management is catering to Bryant, has requested the Lakers trade him to one of half a dozen or so teams. Unwilling to meet O’Neal’s demand for a contract extension, owner Jerry Buss has directed General Manager Mitch Kupchak to trade the 32-year-old center.

Though Payton will return, Malone, Derek Fisher, Horace Grant, Slava Medvedenko and others are considering their options, with Grant and Malone possibly retiring. The soonest a free agent may sign with another team is Tuesday night.

Bryant has not commented about Tomjanovich, and O’Neal has said he will not return to the Lakers regardless of who the coach is.

In Tomjanovich, O’Neal would find a coach who often allowed Olajuwon, Drexler and Charles Barkley to stroll into the locker room 20 minutes before a game without saying a word.

“What Rudy does, he treats the players like men,” Feinstein said. “He doesn’t have a million rules, he doesn’t jump all over them all the time. The problem is, in the NBA these days, that’s too much of a leap of faith that the players will respond....

“In some ways, he’ll play great in L.A. because he’s just so honest the media will love that. Phil had all that smoke and mirrors and Zen. But with all things, if you don’t win, you’re gone.”

Tomjanovich grew up in working-class Hamtramck, Mich., where his father, Rudolph, repaired shoes for a living, charging 25 cents per shoe.

He became a three-time All-Big Ten player at Michigan and was the first-round draft choice in 1970 of the San Diego Rockets, who moved to Houston in 1971. Tomjanovich played 11 years, all with the Rockets, and averaged 17.4 points and 8.1 rebounds per game. After retiring he became an assistant coach with Houston, then head coach in 1992 when Don Chaney was fired.

Tomjanovich was being paid $6 million a year when he took an indefinite leave of absence during the 2002-03 season to undergo treatment for bladder cancer. He felt he was ready to resume coaching last fall, but owner Les Alexander replaced him with Jeff Van Gundy.

Instead, the man known as “Rudy T” returned as a personnel consultant, acting mainly as a scout and reporting to his longtime friend, General Manager Carroll Dawson.

“I’m always going to be a Rocket,” he said when Van Gundy was named.

But “he was crushed when the Rockets decided they didn’t want him,” Feinstein said. “Betrayal might be too strong of a word, but he thought that after 32 years in the organization, he deserved more rope.”

Doctors say Tomjanovich has fully recovered from cancer; he has given up drinking and smoking, and has shifted to a diet rich in fruit juices. Friends call him a “young 55,” and wondered when his competitive nature would lead him back to the sidelines.

In the last year, Tomjanovich enjoyed pursuits away from basketball. He spent a weekend riding in an inner tube down the Guadalupe River in Texas. He frequently attended pro and college football games featuring the Houston Texans or Texas A&M;, though he did not go to a single Rocket game. He planted a pair of climbing roses at his home, naming one Yao and the other Ming after the Rockets’ 7-foot-5 center from China.

“The farther and farther I get away from those championships, the more I appreciate them and see how hard it is,” he told reporters recently. “And as I see great players retire without getting some of the things that have come my way, I look at how fortunate I’ve been.”

Tomjanovich and his wife, Sophie, have two grown daughters, Nicole and Melissa, and a son, Trey, who is a college student in Texas.

Friends say Tomjanovich was happy for Piston Coach Larry Brown, whose NBA championship this season was the first in his long career; Brown assisted Tomjanovich in coaching the U.S. men’s team to the gold medal in the 2000 Sydney Olympics.

Despite Tomjanovich’s success on both the national and international stages -- as well as the passage of time -- the 1977 incident remains an indelible marker in the minds of many.

In that game, Tomjanovich rushed to break up a fight at midcourt and Washington turned around and swung. Tomjanovich and the Rockets sued the Lakers and were awarded $3.25 million by a Texas jury. The parties agreed on a $2-million settlement before an appeal could be heard.

“It took me a long time where I could get to the point where I could think about him without feeling any resentment,” Tomjanovich said of Washington in “The Punch.”

” ... I see it differently now. Since my sobriety, since I started looking at life differently, I really do feel differently. If he called me today and asked for help, I’d give it to him if I could.”

Not long ago, Tomjanovich helped find a job in basketball for a friend of Washington’s after they spoke on the telephone, their first conversation in years. Tomjanovich had been angry at Washington for the injuries he received in the incident, and Washington was bitter because he felt he had been protecting himself and thus received unfair treatment by the league.

Washington is now squarely in Tomjanovich’s corner.

“I think he’s rejuvenated,” he said. “What he told me was he finally could smell the roses. He appreciates life more, stepping away and looking at it. But a coach is a coach -- they’re always going to come back and coach. Their identity is what they do, and Rudy won two championships.”

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Times staff writer Tim Brown contributed to this report.