On the Road, NBA Style : For Players, the Rules of the Road Are Very Simple: Stay Out of Trouble or Risk Being Called for Traveling

When a professional basketball team travels, there is one truth that rises above all others: The longer the trip, the further your hotel room is from the elevator.

At least it seems that way.

The routine is numbingly dull--a mixture of airports, hotels and taxis. Being away from home with nothing to do takes time getting used to.

Consider the Lakers, for example. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar passes much of the time reading. James Worthy likes to spend it either eating or sleeping. Mitch Kupchak just likes to eat. Byron Scott has developed an addiction to soap operas.

Since the Lakers play 82 regular season games (41 of them on the road), they spend half the season either leaving home or trying to get back to it.

They pack their lives in a suitcase and, after a while, they start to act like it.

It is the nature of the game that teams are never in one place for very long. Traveling by air doesn’t allow much time to keep your feet on the ground.

Most players learned long ago to cope with the boredom and monotony of travel. Michael Cooper prefers to sleep once he gets on an airplane. The first thing he does once he’s buckled his seat belt is throw a blanket over his head.

“And I’ve got to do it before we take off,” Cooper said.

What would happen if he didn’t?

“I don’t ever want to find out,” he said.

Developing a road mentality is a fine art and it isn’t easily done.

“You have to keep it all in perspective,” Scott said. “You can let it get to you if you want.”

And on the road, there’s a lot that can get to you.

The last time the Lakers were on the road for an extended period of time, they played four games in six days and lost three of them.

This is what the trip looked like away from the game:

Friday, Dallas--After getting three hours of sleep the night before, Abdul-Jabbar just wants to rest before playing the Mavericks. But he is given the wrong key and can’t get into his room. He gets to the arena late and then remembers he has forgotten his sneakers.

“Left them in the foyer of my house,” he says.

So, Abdul-Jabbar has a ballboy go find him a pair.

After Abdul-Jabbar wrecks the Mavericks, he tries to give the borrowed shoes back to the ballboy.

“Might as well keep ‘em,” the ballboy says.

Abdul-Jabbar doesn’t. He’s probably used up all the points that were in them.

Saturday, Detroit--An oddity. The flight is on time leaving Dallas and arrives early in Detroit. The players are here, the baggage is here, but the bus that is supposed to take the Lakers to the hotel isn’t.

Most of the Lakers find things to do. Worthy finds an ice-cream stand. It is 15 degrees outside. Jamaal Wilkes has his boots polished. Abdul-Jabbar finds a chair at the opposite end of the baggage claim area, sits by himself and reads a book. The rest of the Lakers sit on the conveyor belt. High-priced luggage with no tags.

Sunday, Detroit/Milwaukee--The Lakers are on the bus going to the Silverdome at 9:45 a.m., which would be 6:45 a.m. in Los Angeles, which is where most of them would rather be at this moment.

They play the Pistons at noon, get blown out, then retreat to the locker room to eat fried chicken prepared by Magic Johnson’s mother.

At the airport, Abdul-Jabbar can’t find his boarding pass for the flight to Milwaukee and dumps the contents of his bag on a table at the gate. He takes out a plate of fried chicken that he carried for an in-flight bite.

“Where’d you get that chicken?” the agent asks.

Abdul-Jabbar says nothing. Traveling makes you hungry, not talkative.

Monday, Milwaukee--Practice is a short bus ride away through the snow--at a high-school gym on Santa Monica Boulevard. Actually, it’s North Santa Monica Boulevard.

Assistant Coach Bill Bertka grabs a mop and pushes it through a thick layer of dust on the floor.

“You know why he’s doing it?” Chick Hearn asks. “He thinks he might find a nickel. He’s the tightest guy in the history of the world. If he sees a quarter out there ahead of him, he’ll start running.”

Two and a half hours later, the practice is over. Two schoolgirls ask Abdul-Jabbar for his autograph. He signs. One of the girls says to the other, “He’s so tall !”

Cooper and Scott attack Bob McAdoo outside the bus. All three square off in boxing poses and then laugh.

“We guards have to earn our respect from the big guys,” Cooper says.

Tuesday, Milwaukee--It is nearly four hours before the game, and Bertka sits in the hotel coffee shop. He explains that some people’s peculiarities show up when they are on the road.

“Take Chick for instance,” Bertka says. “He’s the first one on the plane, the first one off the plane, the first one on the bus, the first one to get his hotel key and the first one in his room.

Bertka shakes his head in admiration.

“If we ran the fast break as well as Chick, we’d go undefeated,” he says.

Wednesday, Boston--The last time the Lakers stayed at this hotel was last season in the playoffs when the fire alarms went off all night long. The players are understandably concerned about a repeat, but all is quiet.

They get on the bus for the ride to Boston Garden and everyone drops into his usual place. The coaches take the front seats, then trainer Gary Vitti, Hearn and color man Keith Erickson, publicist Josh Rosenfeld, the press and finally the players, who sit in the back.

The bus driver is playing a tape by Earth, Wind and Fire.

“Turn that up, will you?” Johnson asks.

Several Lakers sing along.

“This is the mellow bus,” Johnson says.

Thursday, home--In six days, the Lakers have crossed eight time zones and no one is happier to be on West Coast time than Worthy. Angela, his wife of five months, is waiting for him.

“Now I have something to come home to,” Worthy says. “Before, it didn’t matter if I came home because it was just like another hotel room.”

Another truth: Not everything on the road is fun and games, even though it may have seemed like it at the time.

Pete Maravich admits that when he was playing, he rarely met a party he didn’t like. Now 37, Maravich has been out of the game for five years and has become a born-again Christian.

Although most of Maravich’s NBA coaches were grateful for his talent, not all of them appreciated how he conducted himself off the court, especially on the road.

Cotton Fitzsimmons blamed Maravich for costing him his coaching job at Atlanta, where Maravich said he seemed to be acting out some sort of death wish, most of the time after-hours in bars.

Maravich remembers when he was grabbed by a couple of bar patrons who pinned his arms and placed a gun at his throat.

They told him, “You’re gonna die now, Pistol,” Maravich said.

Maravich escaped, but he had other strange episodes on the road, such as the time he showed up late for a game in Houston because he had too much to drink the night before, an off-night.

Maravich had instructed a taxi driver to take him to the toughest bar in Houston, where, after several drinks, he first was relieved of his money and then a knife was held to his throat. It was Maravich’s own knife, one that he kept hidden in his belt buckle.

The things that happened to him on the road, the bad stuff, is what Maravich remembers now when he talks about the NBA life style and the effect it can have on players.

“No matter how much money you make, no matter how many things you have, you still are going to try to get more,” Maravich said. “And that ‘more’ is usually what is going to self-destruct you as a player: more wealth, more money, more success, the right parties, the right cars, the right clothes, the right houses.

“We live in a fantasy world. It’s not what most athletes think it is. We think we live in a fishbowl and that everybody knows who we are and this is what’s happening. This isn’t what’s happening.”

This season, though, there were two things that happened in Oakland that caused an unusual reaction. Julius Erving spoke out publicly for some sort of protection for players from drug-dealers in Oakland.

Both John Drew of the Utah Jazz and John Lucas of the Houston Rockets had drug relapses when their teams were in Oakland on road trips.

“With them, it was the hangers-on,” Abdul-Jabbar said. “People that hang around and want to be associated with the glamour and have controlled substances in their pockets that they will share. They couldn’t keep away from them. And that’s part of the road.”

Lucas and Drew were waived by their teams, but there are indications that the Rockets and Jazz might be close to re-signing them. If so, Houston Coach Bill Fitch, who blamed the NBA life style for Lucas’ downfall and came down hard on giving drug users a second chance, is going to have to do some quick back-stepping.

“My own personal feeling is you’re not doing a disservice to a guy by not giving him a third chance,” Fitch said. “You’re doing a disservice to the guy who didn’t screw up the first time.

“The ones you have to look out for are the guys down the road who have never done it the first time. I’m interested in saving the ones who never have or never will.”

The Lakers claim they have no drug problems on their team.

“I know of none,” said Jerry West, Laker general manager. “We have a class group, but we are certainly not immune from that kind of problem. Nor is any other team. Yet we feel confident that our players have used good restraint and good judgment in most things that they do.”

At 36, the Utah Jazz’s Billy Paultz is the second-oldest player in the NBA. He admits to washing down a few beers in his time.

Paultz said he has seen the inside of quite a few hotel rooms and bar rooms during his 15 years of traveling.

“The road is what you make of it, but basically it’s pretty boring,” he said. “And this is the most boring team I’ve ever been with. They don’t even know what a deck of cards look like.”

The routine of travel is a burden on some, “and that’s when something goes wrong,” Paultz said.

“You can always go out and have a few beers, but if you go out, you take the risk of feeling crummy the next day. When you’re younger, it’s easier to absorb any kind of self-inflicted punishment, but those days are over for me.”

There is also the idea of guilt-by-association, Paultz said. If you play a bad game, it’s got to be because you were out late.

And just look at those eyes! “You walk into the locker room and the coach thinks the worst,” Paultz said. “More than likely, it’s not the worst. You just played a bad game. But the thing to remember is that if you abuse yourself too much, you won’t be here too long.

“I think moderation in life is the key.”

Paultz paused, then laughed.

“The only thing in moderation is my playing time,” he said.

The Lakers have team rules for traveling, many of them involving a dress code. Players can’t wear blue jeans and they must wear sports coats. But Riley does not have a team curfew, nor does he conduct bed checks.

When he was coach of the Houston Rockets, ex-Laker player Johnny Egan believed in bed checks and was never surprised by what he found.

“The bed was there every time,” Egan said.

Riley, however, said the player who needs bed checks to curb his life style won’t be around too long.

“If you party all the time, you’re gone,” he said. “I don’t think everything has to be so regimented. These are people contracted to play basketball. But I also realize a lot of these guys are young and single and they want to have a good time. It’s up to the judgment of the player.

“If a guy isn’t performing in a game, it doesn’t necessarily mean he was out having too much fun the night before. I have never had a problem with this team.”

One diversion that is available to the Lakers as well as any other team on the road is female companionship. Both players and coaches agree that the opportunity for romance on the road is there.

“If you wanted to, there’s plenty of action,” said Cooper, who quickly added, “My wife isn’t going to want to read that.”

After most games, players walk a gauntlet of female fans. Some call them “groupies.” The players call them “freaks.”

One Laker, who is still with the team, earned the nickname “Freak King” for his off-the-court exploits. There is a story, perhaps apocryphal, of one Laker fan whose personal business was to try to give each new player her own tryout.

“You don’t have to be around too long to see which guys are the ones who go out all the time and which ones don’t,” Kupchak said.

“But you know people have this image of what it’s like being on the road and it’s always about the women.

“I’m asked about it all the time. If I say it’s not a big deal, they don’t believe me. And if I go ahead and talk about it, they get this silly grin and go, ‘Yeaaahh.’ ”

Hearn has been the voice of the Lakers since they moved from Minneapolis, so he has experienced his share of of traveling and the accompanying headaches.

“My biggest problem coping with the road is going to, being in, and leaving airports,” Hearn said. “I detest airports. I can’t stand the waiting. I go bananas.”

Hearn remembered one Laker trip many years ago when an airport would have made him happy. The Lakers played a game on a neutral court in Pittsburgh and had another game in Chicago the next night.

Because Pittsburgh was hit by a blizzard, the Lakers boarded a train to Chicago that would get them there just about game time.

Laker Coach Fred Schaus instructed the players to put on their uniforms, but they had to dress in the baggage car.

“Can you imagine what the people thought when they saw all those guys jump off the train and hop into cabs at 63rd Street in Chicago?” Hearn asked.

Once they have been around the league a while, players quickly find their favorite cities--for a variety of reasons. The Lakers, for example, say you can get the best airport hot dogs in Portland; find the best big man’s clothing store in San Francisco; get the best deal on shoes in Atlanta and then the best place to have them shined is St. Louis. Got to be quick there, though, because you only change planes in St. Louis.

For all its faults, though, Riley said the road just isn’t that bad.

“The longer you are around, the more you find it easier to take and accept what people think is a real hardship,” he said.

“Everything is taken care of for the players. We fly first class and stay in the best hotels. It’s very easy for them. All they’ve got to do is show up and play.”