No Quit in Him

By Bill Plaschke

April 17, 2005 12 AM PT

On his 58th birthday Saturday, the head coach of America’s most glamorous sports franchise showed up at the team’s practice facility in the usual glamorous manner.

He drove his Toyota past the head coach’s spot and into the general parking lot with the other hockey moms.

He avoided the head coach’s office and plopped down in one reserved for assistants.

He didn’t turn on a cellphone that has received five voice-mail messages all season.

“And two of those were for somebody named Ruth,” he said.

He is Frank Hamblen, and this entire winter has been one wrong number, from the moment he replaced ailing Rudy Tomjanovich at midseason to the moment he realized nobody was buying it.

“I remember trying to walk to the bench in one place and the security guard says, ‘Hey, you got a pass?’ ” Hamblen recalled. “I told him, well, you know, I’m the coach of the Lakers.”

So he has been, reluctantly, painfully, unsuccessfully, nobly.

As the Lakers take the floor today for the final home game of one of the most troubled seasons in franchise history, there can be no heroes, but there are survivors.

There are those who have somehow retained dignity and grace amid failure and disillusionment.

There is Hamblen.

Strong enough to ward off chaos even while losing a dozen pounds to stress.

Stealthy enough to keep order even while increasing his smoking to nearly a pack of cigarettes a day.

“It’s been long,” Hamblen said of the season, his trademark gravelly voice treading softly. “It’s been real long.”

What would you do if, after 35 years of serving as assistant coach in eight cities and two leagues, you were finally given a chance to fulfill a longtime dream?

But what if you were awakened in the middle of a thunder-wracked night to do it?

When Hamblen was summoned by General Manager Mitch Kupchak in the first week of February, the team was rebuilding, resisting and rehabbing.

The best player was considered uncoachable. The expectations were considered unreachable.

It was a job nobody wanted until the eternally positive Tomjanovich was coaxed out of retirement and then, halfway through the year, even he didn’t want it.

“I said, ‘Rudy, you can’t do this, you’ve got to get through the year,’ ” Hamblen recalled.

Then Tomjanovich disappeared, and the next time Hamblen stepped out of that Toyota amid the hockey moms, everyone was looking at him.

The old castle guard finally got his crown, but just as the peasants were storming the moat.

“Mitch said, ‘We want you to take the job,’ ” Hamblen recalled. “I said, ‘I just don’t know.’ ”

For eight games, he didn’t know, coaching without a contract while he tried to figure out his options.

“I knew back in October that this was not a playoff team, there were now injuries, I just didn’t know whether I could put myself through a situation like that,” he said.

After another talk with Kupchak, though, the old basketball coach realized he didn’t have a choice.

“Mitch said that if I didn’t do it, he might have to come down and do it,” Hamblen said with a grin. “I think I realized then too that it wasn’t fair for this team to have two coaches quit on them. And it wasn’t fair to leave all these assistants without contracts.”

So he signed the new contract, which, like Hamblen, made history.

He retained his assistant coach’s salary with a bonus for each game he served as a head coach.

Thus, in all probability, making him the first head coach of a defending conference champion to essentially be paid by the hour.

There is a reason he keeps a pocket schedule in the wrinkled trousers of his old black Laker sweat suit.

“It’s always been like, tomorrow, we could be gone,” said his wife, Uta. “The first half of this year has gone by pretty fast. But since Frank took over, it has taken forever.”

Forever, with the reluctant new king waking up in the middle of the night, time and again, trying to figure a way to make things work.

Said Uta: “He will toss and turn and I’ll say, ‘Are you asleep?’ He’ll say no. I’ll say, ‘Well, now we’re both up.’ ”

Forever, with the uncomfortable new king bypassing the team bus and walking to the hotel from the arena after a loss in Utah.

“Every time I felt like quitting it was like, ‘You won’t do it. You can’t do it. You have to see this through,’ ” he said.

Forever, from the time his promotion was announced in a national sports magazine with his name misspelled.

He always imagined that if he were ever head coach at a place as powerful as Los Angeles, he would have a training camp to implement his system, a contract to support his credibility and players to share his vision.

For the last three months, he has had none of those.

But he has had a wife who watches this new creation closely on television.

“The other night, I was tucking my shirt into the front of my pants, and I guess the TV caught me putting my hand in there, and my wife called and said, ‘That doesn’t look good!’ ” he said with a grin.

Any chance he has had to joke, he has taken it, entertaining the media and softening some of the criticism with his wit.

“You know, I really haven’t met many celebrities,” he said. “By the time I get to the Chairman’s Room after the game, they’re all gone. They must know I’m coming.”

Any chance he had to be honest, he has also taken it, ripping the team after it obviously quit in Denver, enraging some players but gaining respect from the fans.

“I know some of the players were mad at me for that,” he said. “But I was just telling the truth. Sometimes you have to do that.”

There have been loud disagreements in the locker room, but where another coach might put them in a book, he has kept them out of the newspaper. There have been blatant challenges to his authority, but he has chewed on his lip.

“We will never forget Frank’s loyalty in a time of need,” Kupchak said. “That’s when you find out about people, when you really need them, and Frank is as loyal as the day is long.”

Loyal, and realistic.

After all, this is a man so consumed with basketball, he didn’t marry until age 54, his children being his five championship rings.

What other coach, in his first day on the job, would say that he would welcome the return of the old coach?

“If Phil Jackson wants to come back, that would be great,” Hamblen repeated. “This is Hollywood. This is Showtime. This is razzle-dazzle. They need a big-name coach here.”

What other coach could stifle his ego enough to admit the obvious about his position?

“I once wanted to be a head coach, but my time has probably passed,” he said. “I don’t consider myself the head coach of the Lakers. I’m just keeping the seat warm.”

Yet few have warmed it so honorably.

With three games remaining, his record is 10-26, a .278 winning percentage that would be the worst mark of any coach of more than 30 games in Los Angeles Laker history. It is a record that says plenty about the team, yet nothing about the man.

Attend today’s game against the Mavericks and notice where Hamblen is standing ... or not standing.

“I don’t like to stand too much because I don’t like to get in people’s way; they pay good money for those seats,” said Frank Hamblen, strange but fitting words from one of the only Lakers worth watching.

Bill Plaschke can be reached at bill.plaschke@latimes.com. To read previous columns by Plaschke, go to latimes.com/plaschke.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)

Bench marks

L.A. Laker coaches, in order of

winning percentage:

*--* Pat Riley .733 1981-1990...533-194

Phil Jackson .700 1999-2004...287-123

Jack McKinney .692 1979... 9-4

Paul Westhead .691 1979-1981...112-50

Bill Bertka .667 1994, 1999...2-1

Del Harris .659 1994-1999...224-116

Bill van Breda Kolff .652 1967-1969...107-57