It’s the Best Chance for Best Friends

https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1989-02-22-sp-139-story.html

BY MIKE DOWNEY

LOS ANGELES TIMES - FEB. 22, 1989 12 AM PT

Now that they finally are playing on the same side, working for the same cause--that being: dethroning the Lakers--allow me to tell you something about Isiah Thomas and Mark Aguirre, an odd couple who either could create a dreamy double date for the Detroit Pistons or turn out to be a match made in hell.

I watched them play high school ball, college ball, watched them make the Olympic squad that never made Moscow. I saw them go 1-2 in the 1981 National Basketball Assn. draft, then go out and buy matching Mercedeses. I watched them be voted co-rookies of the month their first month in the league.

The three of us had a midnight supper once at a Dallas hotel, when they were NBA newcomers and Detroit was in town. Things were going so well for both that Thomas turned to Aguirre and asked: “What should we do next?”

“Co-MVPs in the NBA,” Mark said.

Isiah winced, thought that was going too far. “Aw, don’t say that.”

“Three years. What do you think?” Aguirre pressed. “Three years?”

“Oh,” Thomas said, “maybe we could just buy a team.”

They were bosom basketball buddies. They grew up eight blocks apart on Chicago’s seedy West Side. To friends and rivals, Aguirre was never called Mark. He was Laundry Bag, Big Drawers, Dough Boy, because of his shape. His own high school coach called him Ziggy the Elephant.

Thomas was the opposite--a waif, a peanut, Zeke the Mouse. But he could handle a basketball. At 3, he would put on dribbling exhibitions for Our Lady of Sorrows, lead the older boys onto the court before games. Reader’s Digest even ran a photograph of li’l Isiah doing his act.

“My first memory of Mark was at the Martin Luther King Boys Club,” Thomas said. “We’d choose up sides, but he wouldn’t get chosen. Too fat.”

Aguirre, on defense: “Well, the first time I saw Zeke here, he was playing Biddy Basketball. Biddy Ball--for all the iddy-biddy basketball players.”

Funny how life worked out. For college, Thomas chose Indiana and Bob Knight, Aguirre chose DePaul and Ray Meyer. One picked a piranha, one a panda. Mary Thomas wanted her son to take Iowa over Indiana because southern Indiana had been the founding home of the Ku Klux Klan. Mary Aguirre wanted her baby close to home, and lent him her ’79 blue Lincoln Continental with the white top and wall-to-wall chrome to drive to practice.

Oh, how I loved watching Mark Aguirre play ball at DePaul. He arrived with a pair of hands so large that Coach Meyer memorably described them as “big as toilet seats.” He was listed at 6 feet 7 inches, though he was more like 6-5. And when the ball was in those oven mitts of his, Aguirre could score, score and score some more.

His first night as a collegian, he zoomed over the face of UCLA’s David Greenwood for a dunk. Usually, though, Aguirre impressed with gentle push-off jumpers and shimmying little swoops for finger-rolls, shots that reminded everybody of that other not-too-tall but dangerous forward, Adrian Dantley.

Dantley, Dantley, Dantley. Aguirre heard the comparison wherever he went. He even took a recruiting visit to Colorado because he heard an assistant coach there had helped develop Dantley’s game. Mark Aguirre was going to be the next Adrian Dantley, if not better. That was the general idea.

Little did they know that a decade later, they would be traded for one another, in a mid-season deal between NBA contenders. Or that Aguirre’s team would be thrilled to see him go. Or that Dantley’s team would be obliged to throw in a first-round draft pick. Or that whereas Aguirre would be feeling a sense of salvation, Dantley would be so distressed that, a week after the trade, his new team still would be waiting for him to report.

Thomas got credited/blamed for the trade for his pal. Dantley’s mother called Isiah “a con artist.” Dantley’s fans in Detroit blitzed their local newspapers with mail, denouncing the deal. Aguirre plays his first home game for Detroit tonight--and he and Thomas acknowledge that they are expecting some boos.

When Sam Perkins, a Dallas regular, heard about the Feb. 15 trade, he said: “Yesterday was Valentine’s Day, but today should be an all-day party because he’s gone. Good luck, Detroit, because you’ll need it.” That’s how loved Mark Aguirre was in Texas--not.

“At Dallas, I was supposed to carry the load. I was always the focal point,” Aguirre said on his own behalf. “When we didn’t win, I got blamed. It won’t be that way in Detroit. Before it was me. With Detroit, it’ll be us .”

Aguirre always has had trouble making friends and influencing people--not because he is a bad guy, but because he is unreliable and sometimes lazy. He might get away with it more if his teams had won more titles, but that’s the thing about Mark Aguirre. He is a winner, but not a champion. Mark Aguirre’s teams never take first prize at the fair.

His high school team never went to the state championship game, even with Aguirre, Eddie Johnson and other great players on the premises. His college team never went to the national championship game, even with Aguirre, Terry Cummings and other stars. And the Dallas Mavericks have never been to the NBA finals. Whereas Isiah Thomas won the national collegiate title as a sophomore and reached the NBA finals in 1988.

Dallas could have drafted Thomas instead of Aguirre, but whereas Isiah went for a visit and made jokes about how funny looking he found Western clothes to be, Aguirre plopped a Stetson on his head and won owner Donald Carter’s heart. Carter did everything but adopt Aguirre and move him onto his ranch.

Aguirre continued to be a piece of work, though. After gaining a bad reputation during college, Aguirre said upon being drafted: “The people in the pros put that label on me, and I’ll probably never get rid of it. But I’ve changed, man.” Uh huh. That was 1981.

Although he put DePaul on the map, Aguirre was a leopard with indelible spots. He brooded. He back-talked. He mugged for Al McGuire and TV cameras during games. He missed team meals, was late for team meetings, sassed Ray Meyer on the sideline, jived during warmups and froze out teammates when he was in a foul mood. Sometimes his high school coach sat at courtside and held up a handmade sign that read: “Not Impressed.”

He was wonderful, but couldn’t be trusted. One day before a trip to Maine, Aguirre got out of the rest of practice because he collapsed with an injured ankle. At the Boston airport, changing planes, Aguirre had a teammate push him in a wheelchair. They flew to Bangor, and played the University of Maine that night. Aguirre scored 47 points.

He came within a rim-brushing jumper of beating Larry Bird and Indiana State in the 1979 NCAA tournament semifinals and putting DePaul in the championship game against Magic Johnson and Michigan State. That was a loss Aguirre accepted and handled, because he was a freshman and better things loomed ahead.

After losing to UCLA in the next year’s regional at Tempe, Ariz., Aguirre ran outside into the cactus, crying. One year later, when the top-ranked Blue Demons were beaten by St. Joseph’s of Pennsylvania on a last-second shot at the Dayton (Ohio) regional, Aguirre went to the doorway, flung the basketball into the parking lot, peeled off his DePaul jersey and threw it to the floor. He put on a warmup suit and headphones and walked 10 miles to the team’s hotel, leaving his teammates weeping in the locker room.

Aguirre never hid his feelings. Dave Gavitt, U.S. Olympic coach in 1980, toured his team against NBA all-stars, and sat amazed as Aguirre hollered to teammates to pick up his man instead of easily crossing the court and catching the guy himself. Once when Larry Brown, Gavitt’s assistant, told Aguirre to hustle, Aguirre gave him a snotty “Yes, sir!” whereupon Gavitt instantly yanked him from the game.

Is Mark Aguirre worth Adrian Dantley? With the league trading deadline at hand Thursday and contenders plotting how to knock off the Lakers, it is the NBA question of the season.

Rolando Blackman of the Mavericks said: “I won’t miss Mark, but I’ll miss the knowledge that he can be a great player.”

Maybe with Dantley, the Mavericks can beat the Lakers in the Western Conference finals this time, unless Utah or Phoenix gets there first.

Aguirre said: “I’m used to winning. I always played for winners, and I wanted the ultimate and never got it. In college, everybody thought we’d win the national championship, and so did I. When we didn’t, it was my fault. Then we didn’t win in Dallas and I was disappointed, so much it physically hurt. Then I got blamed. I’d like to win the championship now. Me and Isiah, grabbing the money.”

I would like to see that, too, because frankly, I like Mark Aguirre. Always have. He is emotional, childlike at times, hard to read, but essentially harmless, playful, and a player capable of great things.

Taking the NBA title will be tough because the Eastern Conference playoffs alone should be murderous from beginning to end, yet Detroit’s fans are angry and fearful that Aguirre by himself will wreck their team. They at least ought to give the guy a chance.

Besides, what championships did Adrian Dantley ever win?