A villain and a rock, a whiner and a winner

Sporting News, The, Dec 13, 1993 by Tim Povtak

The though of an NBA farewell tour brought a smile to the face of Bill Laimbeer. Or maybe that was a sneer.

No one would have been booed with such universal enthusiasm in 26 league cities. And no one would have appreciated it more.

Laimbeer was the sports world's best-known villain outside the World Wrestling Federation, and he played the role well. The black hat fit him perfectly. Fans and opponents loved to hate him -- and with good reason. The cheap shot was his best shot.

His trademarks were the knee to the groin, the elbow to the face, the constant whining. He could irritate and agitate like no one else. He tangled with an All-Star cast that included Robert Parish, Larry Bird, Michael Jordan and Charles Barkley.

Laimbeer, 36, announced his retirement in Detroit last week, ending a career that brought him an almost superstar status through a carefully cultivated reputation as the league's No. 1 bad guy.

He cited a sore back, a declining desire to compete on the level he was accustomed and an unwillingness to subject his body to the punishment dealt in an NBA game. To his credit, he didn't hang around too long.

Although his image likely will be his legacy, Laimbeer also should be remembered for back-to-back NBA titles won as the starting center for the Pistons. He is one of 19 players in NBA history to scorec 10,000 points and grab 10,000 rebounds. He led the league in rebounding during the 1985-86 season. And he played in four All-Star Games.

At 6 feet 11,260 pounds, he set a pick like a wall. He played hard every night, and his defensive rebounding was like a clinic. He was a rock. Before this season, he missed nine games in 13 years.

Detroit fans embraced him. No one else in basketball accomplished so much, or gained such notoriety, with such limited skills.

He was slow and he couldn't jump. But he knewc how to win -- by taking opponents out of their games with his questionable tactics, distracting them to the point of frustration and directing their focus on him.

Despite being so despised outside Detroit -- despite being fined so heavily -- he was good for the league, because it needed a foil for Jordan, Bird and Magic Johnson. The marquee guys always look better if there is a bad guy to beat up along the way.

Laimbeer is an example of why the NBA has grown so popular. The league makes it easy to love and hate players. That's why it allowed Laimbeer to playd his role for so long. It allows Barkley to roam wild. Unlike other sports leagues, the NBA lets players be individuals. It is a league that sells personalities.

It has lost a distinct one.

Fans missed a chancec to pay their last disrespects to Laimbeer. Thatc's too bad. It would have been fun to see the imaginative things they could have yelled at him. Or even the things they might have thrown.

Even he could have smiled at that.

Maxing out

The Rockets' Vernon Maxwell can't seem to shake his troubled past. He has become one of the better players on the best team in basketball, but a lot of people still don't want to believe it.

Maxwell, a sixth-year guard, has been instrumental in the rise of the Rockets. Yet he is the only Rockets starter not on the NBA All-Star ballot. Too bad, because his name deserves to be there.

He was the team's second-leading scorer (13.8 points per game) last season and is in the same position now. He has become one of the better defensive guards in basketball.

"(Leaving him off the ballot) is the most ridiculous thing I've ever seen," Houston Coach Rudy Tomjanovich says. "It's just not right."

Maxwell came out of the University of Florida with a soiled reputation after he flunked a drug test and was accused of taking money from an agent. He dropped to the 47th pick of the 1988 draft.

After the Spurs tired of his off-court problems, he was sent to Houston for cash in 1990. What the Rockets got, as Maxwell matured, was a steal.

"All my life, people have doubted me," Maxwell says. "They said I couldn't do this, I couldn't do that. But I've always thought I was as good as anyone. Never once in my life, even in the low times, did I ever doubt myself.

"Not being on the ballot this year upset me. But it's something I havec no control over. It just makes me want to play that much harder."

A new J.R.

If you haven't seen Spurs forward J.R. Reid lately, you might not recognize him.

When Reid, the former North Carolina star who was the No. 5 pick of the Hornets in 1989, was traded to the Spurs last December, he weighed 272 pounds and was considered a power forward/ center. Last week, he weighedc 239 pounds, and he looks like a small forward.

"It's not that big a deal," he says. "I don't feel like I've lost anything. My wife doesn't really cook, so losing weight was no problem.

"And if this will get me more minutes -- I've been playing a little now at small forward -- I'll do whatever they ask."

Uniforms look same, but . . .

It seems impossible that only two years and five weeks ago the Lakers were preparing to open the season with a starting lineup of Magic Johnson, Byron Scott, A.C. Green, James Worthy and Vlade Divac, using Sam Perkins in reserve.