Reluctant Leader Takes Charge -- Drexler Finally Ready To Be `The Man'

It happens whenever Buck Williams and Clyde Drexler visit an art gallery together. They duck through the door as a most congenial pair, close friends and basketball teammates sharing a common love for African-American paintings. But soon they are fussing like playground kids choosing sides for the next game.

"What does it mean?" Williams asks Drexler about some abstract work, knowing his companion will see infinite artistic messages amid a maze of confusing brush strokes and blazing color.

"No, no," Williams answers when Drexler finishes his interpretation. "How can you say that?" And he'll point to a more traditional portrait. "Now this has form, this has a message that's easy to read."

Drexler will laugh. He'll disagree. It's boring, he tells Williams. And the debate is on. It'll last all that afternoon, and then it will start again in the next city, at the next gallery.

Williams, the traditionalist. Drexler, the abstract thinker. Traits that carry over to the basketball court, complicating the fragile balance of a team. Williams, the blue-collar grinder of the Portland Trail Blazers, sees a single-minded purpose behind the eight-month National Basketball Association marathon. You do whatever it takes to win, and if that means coming down on a teammate or two along the way, they'll get over it.

But Drexler, the delicate high-wire act with skills that Williams can only envy, sees a much more complex world amid the dribbling and dunking. Balance is the key. Never get too emotional. There are egos to massage and passes to distribute, and when the end of the game is near and a hero is needed, who's to say that it always has to be Clyde Drexler?

"I do," replies Buck Williams with a firmness that says "you had better pay attention." The art gallery debate has become a basketball squabble. Williams wants Drexler to cut through the abstract and see the real picture. "You're a great player," he tells his friend. "But you are so unselfish you won't demand the basketball."

Williams shakes his head. "I get angry at him. I tell him, `Whether we win or lose, let's do it with the basketball in your hands at the end of the game, just like Isiah or Magic or Larry.' I want him to demand the basketball, no matter what the coaches diagram in the huddle. He's too nice. It irritates me. For us to win the championship, he has to be our trigger man at the end."

Williams concedes he will never change Drexler's art tastes. But the basketball argument is faring better. Already, Drexler has produced the signature season of an often tumultuous, frequently brilliant nine-year career, elevating his game to where only Michael Jordan overshadowed him within the league. Now, as the playoffs wander into mid-May and the Trail Blazers stalk a championship-round showdown with Chicago, he can unload the rest of the baggage that has plagued his time in Portland: His team can't win the big ones, he disappears in the postseason, he doesn't take over in pressure situations.

But he can sweep away this dreary agenda only if he assumes an on-court persona that makes him uncomfortable. Williams knows this, yet he pushes his friend anyway. "If we are going to win the title, Clyde will have to be our man. I think he is getting the message."

What if Williams is right? Take the already talented Trail Blazers and give them a dependable Drexler when they need him most, and Jordan's Bulls may not be such a title lock after all. Isn't that the message we hear coming out of the West, gift-wrapped around a Clyde the Glide dunk?

"Exactly," says Williams.

Some athletes stalk greatness as if it were their God-given right. Others, like Clyde Drexler, slowly grow into the role, never quite sure why such a fuss is made over their gifts. For these stars, the public cauldron can be confusing, dumping on them expectations they neither seek nor feel they deserve.

In Drexler's abstract world, winning and losing are not the measure of success. Living that balanced life, so basketball doesn't dominate - now, that is success. Where others see failure, Drexler sees a temporary stumbling block to be forgotten quickly. So what if his Phi Slamma Jamma Houston Cougars had the 1983 NCAA title cruelly grabbed away by a last-second basket by North Carolina State? So what if his highly regarded Trail Blazers didn't win the NBA championship the past two seasons? At least he had a shot at a trophy. How many of his peers have even been that close?

But that's why Williams is nudging him so hard. If Drexler declines to see the big picture, others must do it for him.

"When they compare great players, they compare rings," Portland guard Terry Porter says. "That's why (Bill) Russell is considered better than (Wilt) Chamberlain. Unfair or not, to be considered a really great player, Clyde needs a ring."

Maybe so, but don't expect Drexler to agree, even if his coach, Rick Adelman, maintains his star's placid facade hides a burning desire for a title. "I want to win it all, but I'm not obsessed with it," Drexler says. "It won't mar my accomplishments."

Indeed, don't expect Drexler to agree with any criticisms. His knack of never acknowledging his inadequacies earned him a nickname from former teammate Mychal Thompson: "the Shell Answer Man." You can tell him his harshest critics accuse him of folding under pressure - the most devastating charge against any athlete - and he'll simply say, "I totally disagree with that." No hint of irritation, no show of anger. Always in balance.

Drexler could make our accounting easier by opening up the door to his life. But the Answer Man has constructed a shell around his private world, too, insulating himself from the probing eye of public scrutiny. In doing so, he has become the NBA superstar we know the least about. "I am just uncomfortable talking about myself or my family," he says. No national ads, no television cameras trailing him around, doing a day in his life. What a shame. From the little glimpses Drexler will give us, there emerges a man easy to like, a man who belies any jock stereotypes we'd drop on him. But get too close, and the door slams shut.

"When he was younger, there were so many things dumped on him that I think he got scarred," says Geoff Petrie, a former Portland star who now is the team's senior vice president of operations. "The guy is extremely thoughtful and honest. But he'd rather protect his privacy."

In polite Portland, Drexler has found the perfect environment for his whims. Although this is a community obsessed with its Trail Blazers - the franchise has the highest local television ratings of any NBA team for each of the past 16 years - he is allowed to lead a relatively normal existence, at least compared to Jordan. who regularly travels with bodyguards. In turn, nice-guy Drexler actually welcomes autograph seekers with a smile and a kind word.

Porter is amazed. "I've never seen any athlete more respectful of fans than Clyde," he says.

But if those autograph seekers are expecting a high-fivin', jive-talkin' off-court extension of Drexler's on-court flash, they are sorely disappointed. Clyde the Glide may play with a flair only a few have ever duplicated, but the private Drexler is an even-handed, pleasant jokester with a sparkle in his eye and an easy-going softness in his voice. And check the flamboyance at the locker-room exit.

Drexler's happy attitude is reflected in his family life. A bachelor until age 26, he married Gaynell Floyd, a lawyer, 3 1/2 years ago after they met on a blind date. From their $850,000 home in one of Portland's more fashionable areas, the Drexlers, who now have two small children, plot out a life far removed from the shackles of basketball. Gaynell sits on the city ballet theater's board of directors. Clyde is learning to play the piano. They collect art, and they love to travel which has spurred a joint interest in mastering foreign languages. He also does community work, including chairing BASIC, a team-sponsored program that gives students incentives to improve academic skills.

"Each year, I try to expand my learning experience by taking on a new challenge," says Drexler, who worries as much about the ozone layer as he does his jump shot. "I don't want to become stagnant as a person."

Or as a player. When he came into the league after his junior season at Houston, he was an immature, undisciplined natural talent with just five years of playing experience and an unrealistic opinion of his game. Amid the spectacular plays were too many wild shots and too much selfishness. "He had some weaknesses: shooting, ballhandling and decision making," new Milwaukee Bucks Coach Mike Dunleavy says bluntly.

Of course, Drexler never publicly agreed with any of that, either. Instead, he took care of things his way, retreating each summer to the privacy of solo workouts in quiet gyms, sweating a couple of hours a day, six or seven days a week, exercising for an hour, then crafting all his gifts into a more-rounded player. Dignified Clyde Drexler, a gym rat?

"It's a slap in my face to credit everything I've done to my God-given abilities," he says indignantly. "I never felt I was a very good player. At Houston, when everyone else was partying, I was in the gym with Michael Young at 2 a.m., practicing. I've always had keys to the gym. My edge isn't my talent; it's the fact I'm always in shape."

No, don't tell him everything has been easy, not when he knows it was sweat that erased the negatives of his game. That once terrible jump shooter - "He really didn't have one," Utah guard Jeff Malone says - has developed into a more-than-adequate perimeter player. That once weak ballhandler has gone from being a liability as a passer to Portland's assists leader. And that once free-wheeling rim walker has toned down his style just enough. He'll still toss up some wild stuff, but he is much more orthodox these days.

"I think he is a smarter player, more under control," Phoenix Suns President Jerry Colangelo says. Malone agrees. "He does so many things well that when you put him under control, how do you stop him?"

Last fall, Clyde Drexler named himself captain of the Trail Blazers. "Just wanted to be able to talk to the referees," he says. For years, he had claimed being captain had no bearing on his ability to lead. But this was the next major step in what has been a long maturation process. Finally, he was saying: This is my team.

All of that is reflected in his performance this season, during a time when Porter and center Kevin Duckworth slumped and the Trail Blazers easily could have dropped into the middle of the pack. Drexler became their stopgap. He was the only player in the league to lead his team in both scoring average and assists.

He is being rewarded for his labors. For the first time in his career, he started in the All-Star Game and would have been the most valuable player if not for Magic. He has never finished higher than fifth in the league MVP voting; he should be No. 2 behind Jordan this time around. He has never been selected first-team All-NBA. That also should change. He deserves to be in the backcourt, right next to Jordan. And, he'll be in Barcelona, playing for the United States after being named earlier this week to the U.S. team.

"I think this season, more so than in the past, Clyde is the reason they have the best record (in the West)," Sonics President Bob Whitsitt says. "If Clyde had an off-year, then they might be in fourth place. He's carrying a bigger load than ever before, and they're still the team to beat out here."

The previous two seasons, when the Trail Blazers lost to the Detroit Pistons in The 1990 Finals and to the Los Angeles Lakers in the 1991 Western Conference championship, Drexler had flashes of brilliance and just as many moments of mediocrity, a continuation of his postseason history. But more than that, you never had the feeling either year that Drexler was the dominant Trail Blazer, that he wanted to be their go-to guy, their Michael or Larry or Magic.

But there are signs this spring of a change. Throughout both the first-round series against the Lakers, which Portland won, 3-1, and in first four games against Phoenix, Drexler has been spectacular. He is averaging 28.5 points, 7.6 assists and 8.5 rebounds, all above his career averages, despite an ailing knee and hamstring.

"Talk about a player who is stepping up," snarls Adelman, a staunch defender of his star.

But on this particular afternoon, Drexler has no need for defenders. He is talking about a dream he has lived out thousands of times in those solo summer practices. This abstract man suddenly becomes a traditionalist: He is standing 15 feet from the basket, the championship on the line, time running out. He puts up a jumper. . . .

Does it go in? "I stay until it does," he says quietly. "In your dreams and in your gym, you never miss the last shot."

All of Portland can only wish this is one dream that comes true.