Dateline: INDIANAPOLIS
Let’s not ask the real Ralph Sampson to stand up, please.
Sampson in his underwear already is 7 feet 4 inches, an altitude with which the rest of us are unfamiliar, except on those rare occasions when someone might ask us to stand on a ladder to wash an elephant.
But the world of professional basketball would like to see just how far Sampson can stretch, for when that happens, as it did in inspired moments of Sunday’s National Basketball Association All-Star game, the sport becomes something never imagined by Dr. James Naismith or any of his heirs, who all now apparently live in Indiana and are convinced they know more about basketball than the rest of the world put together.
“Sampson is still growing,” said Los Angeles Lakers’ and West coach Pat Riley. “Growing in his basketball life, I mean. You look at him now and you just say, ‘Wow.’
“And then you think of what he can become, and you cannot imagine where he’ll be, where he’ll take basketball. He will have an impact no one else has ever had on this league.”
Or, to quote Mr. Magic Johnson of the Lakers, many of whose 15 assists went to Sampson in the West’s 140-129 disposal of its geographic opposite in the Hoosier Dome: “You bring the ball up, and you take two guys into the paint with you, and then you just flip it over your head and here comes Sampson. Woooo. Woosh. Wham.
“You can’t wait to give it to him again. You say: ‘Let’s do it. Let’s go again. Here it comes, big guy.’ You look up and there he is, so high, and you know the game is changing. Whooeee.”
“Playing like that,” allowed Sampson, “is a lot of fun.”
K.C. Jones, the East coach from Boston, mused: “You coach against a team like that and you try to do a halfway decent job on Kareem (Abdul-Jabbar). That’s a maybe. And then Magic, that’s a maybe. And George Gervin hits 10 of 10 or 20 of 20, and still you think there’s a chance.
“Then you see a guy like Sampson, a guy that tall filling the lane, bringing the ball up, getting offensive boards, playing defense, blocking shots. Sampson was kind of awesome today.”
Awesome translated into numbers is 24 points and 10 rebounds in 29 minutes of play, all of them in motion.
As long as there are so many people saying such nice things about him, or the press voting him the most valuable star of stars, Sampson will never have to speak for himself, which he has always had a tough time doing, though he tries to prove his education at Virginia wasn’t wasted.
“I just want to be able to do what there is to do,” Sampson said.
Which is? “Drive, dribble, shoot, whatever has to be done,” Sampson said. “I’d love to play point guard.”
The point is, Sampson is not supposed to be gyrating like a playground punk, juking and jamming and driving. He is supposed to be standing right under the basket, like all 7-footers before him, maybe skyhooking when the mood is right but mostly reaching over the rim while pygmies claw at his waist.
That’s the way he did it in college. That’s the way he did it in Houston last year, his first season as a pro. That’s the way he might have done it forever had not Houston drafted another 7-footer, Akeem Olajuwon, to take the interior pounding and free Sampson to be the best that he can be.
“Ralph is a better forward than center,” said Johnson.
“He is too versatile to just play in the pivot,” said Abdul-Jabbar. “It limits him.”
The votes of NBA fans put Sampson in the West’s starting lineup, but Riley’s sense of history kept him on the same floor with L.A.’s Johnson, who knows how to make ordinary giants look great, and what we saw on a snowy Sunday in Indy was just a hint of things to come.
“I would have to think in my own mind that he would be much better if he played with me,” said Johnson. “If I played with him all the time, I’d have 25 assists a game.”
Sampson with Johnson certainly impressed Riley, whose chief regret is that he has but the one.
“You can’t help marveling at the novelty of both,” said Riley. “Here is Magic, a 6-9 point guard, and there is Sampson, a 7-4 small forward.
“Nobody really knows what to do with either one, yet. They are just too unorthodox. They are stretching the perimeters of the game.”
“I really don’t know what I can do, what my limits are,” Sampson said. “All I know is I can do a lot more than I do now.
“I just want to get better and enjoy the days to come.”
So say we all.