Slightly Off Center

Nearly four decades after leaving the Lakers as part of the postage in a post-man package deal with Philadelphia, Darrall Imhoff returns to Los Angeles tonight for induction into the Pacific 10 Conference’s men’s basketball Hall of Honor.

The big question is whether he’ll have to show ID at the door.

Imhoff’s career seemed almost Zelig-like, the basketball player blending completely into his surroundings, as did Woody Allen’s fictional Leonard Zelig. He was “who’s that?” in the team photo, a 6-foot-10 historical footnote. Imhoff spent a lunch-pail existence amid transcendent players and seminal moments -- with the Lakers, he did it for $14,000 a year.

Imhoff, for instance, scored the game-clinching basket in California’s 1959 NCAA championship victory over West Virginia ... but we remember losing guard Jerry West. Imhoff hung gold around his neck as part of the 1960 Olympic basketball squad in Rome -- the original “Dream Team” -- yet was landscape behind West, Oscar Robertson, Walt Bellamy and Jerry Lucas.

“He never had a game to be a star player,” says the legendary Pete Newell, Imhoff’s coach at Cal and in the Olympics. “But he was selfless, set good screens, was a good rebounder and he was strong.”

Imhoff and fame never stood a chance. He was the Lakers’ center after George Mikan and before Wilt Chamberlain and he played four years in Los Angeles with West and Elgin Baylor.

“My whole career was setting picks for guys,” Imhoff says.

After graduating from Alhambra High, Imhoff studied forestry at Cal, then somehow carved out 12 years among the NBA’s tall firs before a knee injury led to his retirement from the Portland Trail Blazers in 1972.

Consider this: Imhoff made his debut in an NBA of only eight teams. The centers on opposing teams included Chamberlain, Bill Russell, Willis Reed, Nate Thurmond, Bellamy, Wes Unseld and, later, Elvin Hayes, Dave Cowens and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar -- all future Hall of Fame players.

Imhoff, nicknamed “the Axe,” averaged 7.2 points and 7.6 rebounds and managed to make the 1967 All-Star team.

“I never had to worry about getting up for a game,” Imhoff says.

His fate, however, was tied to Chamberlain’s.

Imhoff recalls the adrenaline rush he experienced in 1958 when, as a Cal bench-warmer, he picked up a meaningless rebound against Wilt in a game against Kansas.

“I thought, ‘Man, that was great, I got to play against Chamberlain,’ never realizing I would spend 12 years in his armpits,” Imhoff says.

Ten years later, in the holy cow trade of its time, Imhoff, Archie Clark and Jerry Chambers were traded to Philadelphia for Chamberlain.

Last week marked the 43rd anniversary of Chamberlain’s 100-point game against the New York Knicks in Hershey, Pa.

Imhoff, the Knicks’ first-round draft choice in 1960, posed as opposing center that night, March 2, 1962, only because starter Phil Jordan was out because of flu.

The day after, Imhoff received an unsigned telegram from a former Cal teammate -- Newell says it was Denny Fitzpatrick -- with the zinger, “I just wanted to tell you that Pete is really proud of the defensive work you did on Chamberlain last night.”

Imhoff has spent his adult life living down the Chamberlain game.

“That 100-point game was a fiasco,” Imhoff, 66, says from his office in Springfield, Ore. “They intentionally fouled us in the backcourt just so they could get the ball back and feed it to him. They were pouring it on ... trying to run up the score.” More notably, Imhoff played only 20 of 48 minutes that night.

Chamberlain had already reached double digits when Imhoff sat down with his third foul in the first quarter. On his way to the bench, Imhoff prophetically screamed at game official Willie Smith, “What are you trying to do, get the guy 100 points?”

Imhoff returned for the fourth-quarter center jump, played a few more minutes, picked up another foul and returned to the bench.

“I come back in the game with five minutes left in the game and Wilt’s got 89 points,” Imhoff says.

Imhoff has always considered Chamberlain’s effort more stunt than achievement.

“The 100-point game nowhere compares to the other things that Wilt did,” he says. “Averaging 50 points [50.4 during the 1961-62 season], that was unreal. But the thing that really stood out was the 55 rebounds he got against Russell.”

Imhoff tells another story.

Two nights after Chamberlain’s 100-point outburst, Philadelphia played New York at Madison Square Garden. Imhoff stayed out of foul trouble this time and guarded Chamberlain almost the entire game.

“I played my heart out against him,” Imhoff recalls. “I fouled out with a minute and half to go, and I got a standing ovation from the crowd. That’s how hard I worked, and they knew it.

“He had 54 points. Isn’t that something?”

Containing Chamberlain, he says, was like containing a cement truck.

“Many times, I’d put my knee between him and put my arm in the small of his back,” Imhoff explains. “I’m trying to hold him and he’s backing in. I’m not taking any steps, but I can smell the smoke coming off the bottom of my sneakers. He’s taking all the rubber off of them when he’s sliding me backwards.”

Imhoff respected Chamberlain but he idolized Russell, the Celtics’ center who, like Imhoff, was a defense-minded left-hander who’d led his Bay Area college team to an NCAA title (Russell at the University of San Francisco).

“Russell was a defensive genius,” Imhoff says.

Gangly kid from L.A. takes on Chamberlain and Russell?

That was a fairy-tale prospect considering Imhoff’s injury-plagued senior season at Alhambra, where he was coached by the young Bob Boyd.

Scholarship hopes took a header after Imhoff broke his right elbow when he slipped in the shower while chasing a teammate who had snapped him with a towel.

Imhoff trundled off to Berkeley to study wood, but not hardwood. The story goes that Imhoff’s aunt called Newell to inform him of a kid on campus in search of living quarters.

“I told her, ‘I’m the basketball coach, not the housing director,’ ” Newell recalls.

Imhoff’s aunt responded that her nephew was quite tall.

“How tall?” Newell asked.

When Newell got his answer, “I became really interested.”

Imhoff accepted a tryout invitation and eventually earned his basketball scholarship. As a forestry major, he spent his early years tramping through Strawberry Canyon.

Imhoff boasts, “I’m the only guy who played for Pete who took a shower before practice ... he didn’t want that poison oak rubbing off on the other players.”

Cal made the Final Four in Imhoff’s junior and senior seasons, defeating Robertson’s Cincinnati squad both years in the national semifinals.

Cal won it all in 1959, the victory clinched on Imhoff’s tip-in basket off his own missed shot in the final seconds -- still a painful memory in Jerry West Virginia.

Cal returned to the finals in 1960 but lost to Ohio State.

Imhoff played two years for the Knicks, then two with Detroit before joining the Lakers in 1964. He was part of three Laker teams defeated by the Celtics in the NBA Finals.

Who knows, in 1966, had the Lakers dispatched Boston in Game 7 by two points, instead of losing by two, Imhoff might not have been deemed expendable in the 1968 trade that landed Chamberlain in Los Angeles.

Imhoff actually thought he was the ideal table-setter for West, Baylor and a young Gail Goodrich.

“Sure it bothered me,” Imhoff says of the trade. “But [Laker owner] Jack Kent Cooke wanted to buy Wilt. He came to L.A. and they thought automatically they were going to win it.... West, Baylor and Chamberlain. How can you argue?”

You could argue that Chamberlain led Los Angeles to only one title, in 1971-72.

Imhoff says his only NBA regret is suffering the knee injury that ended a career that was getting better with age -- he averaged a career-high 13.6 points for Philadelphia in 1969-70.

Imhoff’s basketball jersey has yet to be retired at Cal -- “I’m hoping someday they will” -- yet he humbly returns home to take his seat at the Pac-10’s table of honor.

Imhoff will be enshrined with Pete Williams, Joe Caldwell, Goodrich, Blair Rasmussen, Ed Lewis, John Rudometkin, Rich Kelley, Jack Nichols and Gene Conley.

Many of Imhoff’s former Cal teammates will be in attendance, as will Newell.

The “Axe” finally gets his close-up.

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(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)

The last century

Wilt Chamberlain’s scoring by quarters in his record 100-point game:

*--* Qtr. Min. FG-FGA FT-FTA Pts. 1 12 7-14 9-9 23 2 12 7-12 4-5 18 3 12 10-16 8-8 28 4 12 12-21 7-10 31 Total 48 36-63 28-32 100

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Los Angeles Times

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A Basketball Life

Darrall Imhoff might not have been the flashiest center in the NBA, in the days of Wilt Chamberlain and Bill Russell, but he had a solid career, playing 801 games over 12 seasons. Imhoff’s averages:

*--* Season Team PPG RPG FG% 1960-61 New York 4.7 4.7 394 1961-62 New York 5.9 6.2 386 1962-63 Detroit 2.7 3.4 314 1963-64 Detroit 4.8 4.9 414 1964-65 Lakers 5.0 6.6 466 1965-66 Lakers 4.9 6.6 448 1966-67 Lakers 10.7 13.3 474 1967-68 Lakers 9.3 10.9 478 1968-69 Philadelphia 9.2 9.7 470 1969-70 Philadelphia 13.6 9.5 540 1970-71 Cincinnati 8.1 6.9 461 1971-72 Cin.-Port. 2.6 2.7 394 Totals 7.2 7.6 458

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