Hall to welcome Clyde the Glyde

Hall to welcome Clyde the Glide
Nickname belies Drexler's style
By FRAN BLINEBURY
Copyright 2004 Houston Chronicle

Sometimes nicknames are deceiving.

Clyde the Glide.

There was never anything easy about the way he played, nothing at all that conjured a vision of a man going through life on cruise control.

Clyde Drexler came down the basketball court like a rolling bundle of razor blades, all sharp edges capable of doing so much damage. He played with a smile that belied the stone-cold heart of an assassin, with the ferocity of a tiger, so sleek, so composed yet so hungry, always on the prowl.

Gliding never would have gotten Drexler onto the varsity team at Ross Sterling High School, let alone into the lineup of back-to-back Final Four teams at the University of Houston.

Gliding never would have gotten Drexler's first foot into the door of the NBA, let alone all of those All-Star teams, or onto the roster of the first and only true Olympic Dream Team.

Or into the Basketball Hall of Fame, which is where he's headed with today's official introduction of the class of 2004.

It is too easy to turn on the TV, flip the remote control to ESPN Classic and fit him neatly into the stereotype of an endless highlight tape of slam dunks. It is simply being lazy to see the replays of that June night in 1995, after the Rockets had won the second of their back-to-back NBA championships, when teammate Kenny Smith sneaks up from behind at the podium and douses Drexler with that bottle of champagne, and think that his ride to the top was nothing but effervescent bubbles.

"The Hall of Fame? Are you kidding me?" he practically shouts with that full-throated laugh we have come to know through the years. "I never played organized basketball until I was in the seventh grade at Albert Thomas Middle School. I had trouble making the varsity at Sterling.

"I grew up as just your average kid who changed and played all the different sports depending on the time of year and the seasons. Baseball, football, basketball, whatever came around. That's what we did in our neighborhood.

"The idea one day of being able to go to college and get an education was almost more than I could ever have expected. Then to be drafted by the NBA and think you could make a living. You've got to be kidding."

But as the years slipped by, from Sterling High to the Phi Slama Jama days with the Houston Cougars to the Portland Trail Blazers to his fitting and so perfect homecoming to the Rockets on Valentine's Day 1995, so much had changed. As his hairline receded and eventually disappeared, the raw, spectacular athlete who had tried everything on his neighborhood streets had grown into more than one of the game's best players. He had become an ambassador. An icon.

"One of the biggest thrills, the greatest kicks I've ever gotten out of my whole career," he said, "is going around the country and meeting kids who would tell me, `Hey, when I'm playing ball with my friends on the playground, I'm always you. I'm Clyde the Glide.' "

It's a nickname that was given to him by a friend in high school, so fitting to describe the way he soared through the air on his way to the basket, nearly poetic for the way it rolls off your tongue. Yet it doesn't begin to describe the completeness, the complexity of his game.

"I laugh at that whole thing, because when I was growing up, all I ever wanted to be was Jerry West or Julius Erving," Drexler said. "As soon as I got onto the court, I'd tell everybody I was one of those guys and try to make moves to imitate them.

"To think that I eventually got to play in their league, to get to know them, to play against Julius, it's practically an indescribable feeling."

Erving, who played for Philadelphia, took the rookie Drexler under his wing in 1983 and became a mentor through the years in just the same fashion that a veteran named Bill Russell once instructed Dr. J. In 1997, all three of them were named among the NBA's 50 Greatest Players, and now Drexler will join them as peers in the Hall of Fame.

"It's not something that you ever go into a career thinking about," he said. "It's not the kind of thing that you give much thought to all during your career. I don't think you set it for a goal. The idea is to just keep playing to the best of your ability, let everything happen and see where it takes you."

But in 1993, while he was playing for Portland, the Trail Blazers had an exhibition game in Springfield, Mass., and Drexler had an opportunity to make his first visit to the Hall of Fame.

"You walk through those hallways, and you see all of those great names of players already there," he said. "You look at exhibits, displays, see all of the numbers and accomplishments. I guess it's only natural to think a little bit about where you measure up."

It had been in the previous year when the Olympic Games were opened to all professional basketball players and for the first time a collection of NBA stars represented the United States. The roster was a virtual Who's Who of the game, and Drexler was deservedly smack in the middle.

"That's a tough crowd to crack with Magic Johnson and Michael Jordan and Larry Bird and the rest," Drexler, 41, said. "I guess when I made it onto that team and went through the Olympic experience in Barcelona, that was a time when someday making it to the Hall of Fame actually crept into my thinking."

Such a long way from being the gangly kid who was frequently out of control in high school, labeled undisciplined in college and entered the NBA with a jump shot that was suspect.

Oh, he could glide all right. At a summer exhibition affair following his first season in Portland, Drexler, 6-7, won a slam-dunk contest by dunking on a 12-foot rim. But he was always about so much more than the flash.

What lurked behind Drexler's friendly smile was the snarl of the ultimate competitor. It ate at his insides to have come up short against the Detroit Pistons in his first trip to the NBA Finals in 1990 and to have been considered the foil for one of Jordan's championship showcases when the Chicago Bulls defeated the Blazers in 1992. It kept driving him and pushing him and eventually led him back home to Houston, where Drexler was reunited with his former University of Houston teammate Hakeem Olajuwon for the grittiest, most surprising run to a championship in NBA history.

The defending champion Rockets entered the playoffs that season as the No. 6 seed in the Western Conference, and virtually nobody gave them a chance to repeat. But when the deciding Game 5 in the first-round series was slipping away in the final minutes at Utah, Drexler suddenly stepped forward to grab every big rebound and make every key basket and allowed the Rockets to survive.

In the opening game of the second-round series in Phoenix, Drexler was ejected for arguing a foul called by veteran referee Jake O'Donnell. He returned to America West Arena for Game 5 suffering from the flu. Dehydrated and weak, Drexler received several bottles of IV fluids before the game and took the floor to play heroically, sparking the Rockets to a win that began their comeback from a 3-1 deficit to win the series.

Drexler was everywhere making plays in the third round against San Antonio and finally got to nail down his quest for a championship in the NBA Finals sweep of the Orlando Magic.

It had taken him a dozen seasons of anything but gliding. What you got from Drexler was intense defensive pressure, a jump shot that had the arc of a laser beam, and a man who attacked the basket relentlessly and repeatedly. It was always a mistake to look at the smile and think he wasn't the ultimate fighter, warrior, competitor.

"I have a lot of great memories," Drexler said. "And a lot of scars to get them."

His uniform number -- 22 -- hangs from the rafters at Hofheinz Pavilion and Toyota Center, and his accomplishments are burned into the consciousness of a city that always has kept him in an embrace.

Today when Drexler officially joins the list of this year's inductees, the headlines might say: Clyde Glides Into Hall of Fame.

Hardly.

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