Filed under: Trail Blazers

It may not be the ultimate testament to the impact Maurice Lucas left on the NBA and on the sports world, but it’s near the top. Lucas is a prominent figure in the two best books ever written about pro basketball.

There he is in 1981′s The Breaks of the Game, the chronicle of the Portland Trail Blazers’ 1979-80 season by the late David Halberstam — Lucas grinding his way through a perplexing season, knowing his worth to the recent NBA championship team and to the league, battling over his contract, trying to both perform and lead under circumstances beyond his control.

And there he is, at an earlier stage of his career, in 1990′s Loose Balls, Terry Pluto’s oral history of the ABA — Lucas as a young powerhouse, a force of nature on the court and in the locker room, someone who made opponents ponder where the line was between respect and fear, who channeled his strength into defending and rebounding but occasionally into a punch as well. And, for the purposes of this book, as a player with principles and a desire to win stuck on possibly the flakiest, most undisciplined, most dysfunctional group of players collected, the Spirits of St. Louis: a man of character stuck on a team packed with characters.

The Maurice Lucas described in these books is the Lucas who played 14 seasons in the ABA and NBA, who was in and around the game for the 20-plus years between the end of his playing days in 1988 and his heartbreaking early death, of bladder cancer, Sunday at age 58. That also is the Lucas who his coach on the 1977 NBA champion Blazers, Jack Ramsay, told the Portland Oregonian was “the strength of the team. He was The Enforcer. He was the heart of that team. And he liked the role. He enjoyed it. He really liked being the enforcer-type player.”

Permalink | Email this | Linking Blogs | Comments