The Fresh Prince of Lakers : Pressure Is on Dunleavy, Who Wanted to Coach a Winner

HONOLULU — His gaze is clear, his cheeks pink, his countenance innocent as a choirboy’s. He looks like Pat Riley did nine years ago, before Riles discovered Giorgio Armani and his eyeballs started sinking into their sockets from the pressure of trying to succeed himself annually.

Now, Michael Joseph Dunleavy succeeds Patrick James Riley as Laker coach, takes over the great talent and tries to meet the great expectations. Riley took a champion and made it a dynasty before climbing down off this tiger last summer. Today, as the team opens camp here, the new kid saddles up.

Give or take a little mousse, they resemble one another. Riley had never been a head coach when he tumbled into the crater created by Paul Westhead’s firing in 1982. Dunleavy’s previous experience as a head coach was a season as player-coach in something called the All-American Basketball Alliance.

Both are of Irish ancestry from New York, Riley from Schenectady, Dunleavy from Brooklyn. Both were hard-nosed players. Both are charming and low-key but confident to the point of brashness.

Now, if Dunleavy is a prodigy like Riley, if the aging Lakers respond the way they did for Riley when they were younger, everything will be fine.

Otherwise, look out.

He knows, he knows.

“I don’t think there’s a better job in the league,” Dunleavy says. “I have to love the opportunity to come in and coach very talented players.

“There’s also a lot of expectation. I mean, a lot of NBA people told me I was absolutely crazy to take this job because there were other possibilities for me. Here, the pressure on me to win, and not only to win but to really win, was going to be so great. I could have gone someplace else and had as good a contract, probably, and not had that kind of pressure.

“I pretty much agreed that that was probably true. But the one thing that this team has that other teams don’t have, this team could win a championship. That’s what it’s all about for me.”

Who is this guy?

Slight by NBA standards, he has a well-scrubbed, freckled, boy-next-door look that belies a street-wise tenacity.

He was a star at South Carolina but was overshadowed by Alex English, Brian Winters and Kevin Joyce. Still he finished as the school’s all-time assist leader and third-leading scorer. He had a 3.4 grade-point average and planned to go to law school if he didn’t make it in the NBA.

Drafted in the sixth round, he nevertheless stuck with the talent-laden 76ers in Philadelphia, where observers remarked upon his unusual maturity, if not his leverage. A year later, rosters were cut to 11, and Dunleavy, the only 76er without a guaranteed contract, was waived.

He played in 10 more seasons with the Houston Rockets, San Antonio Spurs and Milwaukee Bucks. He led the NBA in three-point shooting once.

Forced out of the game by a back injury in 1985, he became a stockbroker on Wall Street. Money rolled in, but something else tugged at his heart.

“Nelly (Don Nelson, his coach in Milwaukee) was always after me to come back and coach,” Dunleavy says. “I’d go see some games, I’d see someone he was going to play and I’d call him and tell him what I saw.

“After a couple times, he said, ‘You’re crazy. You’re wasting your time up there. You should be a coach.’

“I enjoyed what I was doing. The money was really good. But the one problem I had with being a broker, I couldn’t be the best. I was starting out late. I didn’t have the education a lot of people have for this job, people who’ve been to Harvard or Stanford. . . .

“I said to myself, ‘What is it you could do that you could be really good at, that you really enjoy?’ And it was coaching.”

In 1987, he became an assistant in Milwaukee, taking a 50% cut in pay.

Almost immediately, he caught the eye of Jerry West at the NBA’s workout for incoming college players.

“I was watching him work with some kids out there and pretty soon I was watching him and not the kids,” West says. “It looked like he had a great rapport with them. He was really enthusiastic. It was personal. He was giving something personal to those kids who had aspirations of being an NBA player.

“That was the first day I was there. And every day back, it seemed like I would invariably go over and watch him a little bit. I said, ‘Well, this guy’s going to make someone a good NBA coach.’ ”

Of course, West didn’t need a coach just then.

Nor did it seem likely he would last season, after the Lakers posted a 63-19 record, best in the league. Despite the talk about NBC’s interest, Riley had always said he planned to remain until Magic Johnson retired.

Then the Lakers fell in five games to the Phoenix Suns in the playoffs.

For the Lakers, to whom a loss in the finals had been cause for a summer-long funk, this was unacceptable. There were reports of dissatisfaction. When Riley announced he would need some time to consider an offer by NBC, the Laker front office sent out signals that it was growing restive.

Riley maintains he could have returned, and no one has contradicted him. However, as time passed, he and the Lakers seemed to drift apart. Maybe Riley wanted the Lakers to act as if they wanted him back. Maybe the Lakers wanted Riley to act as if he wanted to return.

Reports of player unrest surfaced. Players were reportedly upset at Riley’s hard practices before the Houston series. They were reportedly upset by his blowup after Game 3 in Phoenix.

Now, Riley had been blowing up for effect for years. In his book, he wrote of one instance in which he deemed a tantrum necessary, took a peek to see that no player’s clothes were in the way and then swept a tray of soft drinks across the dressing room.

Riley’s friend, director Robert Towne, liked the story so much, he wrote it into his movie, “Tequila Sunrise,” in which Kurt Russell, hair combed straight back a la Riles--Towne had even talked of having Riley play the lead--sweeps a row of soft drinks across a room.

Maybe that was another problem: Riley was big now. He had Hollywood friends, a book, endorsements, big-fee speaking appearances, plus a network panting after him visibly all season.

Riley says any problems were slight.

“Obviously, I was aware of the BS that was being speculated on,” he says.

“I had a relationship for nine years with those players, key players. There were times in the ‘80s when it became strained. It always happens with coaches and players. Back in ‘83, back in ‘85, back in ‘87--I can name 15-20 times there were major confrontations with players that never became public. But that’s just the way it is. You don’t get through life without having that kind of thing. Otherwise, you’re not coaching.

“It’s part of the process. But I didn’t detect anything that was real serious. It was a great time for me. It was a great run.”

It was over, too. Riley took the NBC job.

By the time he had decided, so had West. Dunleavy was introduced at Riley’s farewell news conference.

What does this mean for Dunleavy?

The roster seems to have a welcome sign hung out for him.

Says Johnson: “We’ve got freshness coming in where maybe we need something fresh and new and somebody to kick us right in our rear end.”

But they’re veterans, they’ve been doing it their way a long time, they’ve won championships. He’s from Milwaukee. Won’t they inevitably test him?

“It depends on what the test is,” Dunleavy says. “Basically, I think I’m a really fair person. It takes a lot to get me mad. But on the other side of it, I can be a bear, too. I can be a bulldog about something. Somebody wants to fight, I can fight.

“But I don’t see that happening with these players. This is a really impressive group of guys. I wasn’t the kind of player and I won’t be the kind of coach who says, ‘Something is to be done this way and that’s the only way it’s going to be done.’ ”

He seems sensitive to the situation. He retained Riley’s assistants, Bill Bertka, Randy Pfund and Jim Eyen.

“I think Mike Dunleavy is going to do a great job,” Riley says. “I have a lot of respect for Mike. I’ve known him since 1976. He’s fresh, he’s enthusiastic, he’s energetic, he’s young, he’s ready to roll.

“And I think the Lakers have made some great moves this summer, filling up some holes. I think it’s going to be a great start for everybody. They have a chance this year to really be a great team. I don’t know how quickly it’ll come together, but they have all the parts right there.”

Ready to roll?

More than ready.

“It’s funny, I never had any problem sleeping before in my life,” Dunleavy said a couple of days ago. “I’ve had some lately but it’s--I just kind of wake up and think of things.

“I’m just ready to go. I want to get started. There’s been a big buildup. There’s a lot of anticipation for me. I’d like to get out on the court and get things started.”

Today’s the day. The torch is passed, and a young man with freckles on his cheeks and stars in his eyes takes over.

Now to see if these Irish eyes can keep smiling the way the last pair did.