Cool And The Gang

Coop and Rip and the crew up at Preston Hair Studio, in the heart of Seattle's Central District, know just how cool Sam Perkins is. He hooked them up, all of them, with tickets to Game 2 of the Western Conference finals. They appreciated it, but they still wanted a sign just for them.

So before he left for Salt Lake City for Game 3, they said, "Yo, Smooth, can we get our props?" They had it all worked out. They gave him a signal, kind of an OK sign, and he was supposed to look through the circle his thumb and forefinger made.

"Yo, Smooth," they said. "That's for Three in Your Eye."

Know what? Perkins went and drilled a three-pointer, a big one with 3:30 left. As he was backpedaling downcourt, it occurred to Sam Perkins that he hadn't given the signal. He could tell them at Preston that he did and they just didn't see it, but that wouldn't have been cool.

So Perkins made that OK sign and put it up to his eye. And, wouldn't you know it, NBC had him on isolation. And they blew him and that OK sign up big. And they lingered on that shot.

Three in Your Eye.

Well, all the boys at Preston just fell out.

And they said, "Yo, Smooth, you the man!"

And they might be right. Michael Jordan, Scottie Pippen and all the Chicago Bulls seem like they've been living in the NBA Finals. Big Smooth is the only Sonic to have been there even once.

That was in 1991, and Perkins won Game 1 for the Lakers by hitting a three-pointer. Can you imagine? Three in Your Eye, Michael.

Don't laugh. Perkins is so cool, he used to hang with Michael before he was even Michael. Back then, Michael was just a hick, Perkins says, like all the other clowns he played with at North Carolina. Michael got "citified," Perkins says, after he moved to Chicago.

What if the Sonics beat the Bulls? What if Big Smooth flipped in a game-winning three over the Chroma Dome, Dennis Rodman, and the paper ran a picture of it? The headline would have to read, "Cool beats Fool."

And, of course, Big Smooth would bring a copy over to Preston, a prime stop in Perkins' Cool World. This is a place where you can get your fade straight and your groove on, all at the same time. Four or five nimble-fingered cats clipping. A full house waiting their turn. Everybody in tune.

In a way, this place probably saved Perkins. He began the season with twists, a kind of dread-lock look. But the woman who twisted his hair fell in love and ran off, leaving Perkins uncoiffed.

The result was a schizophrenic procession of 'dos, including what Perkins calls "my Julius Erving afro." But his bad-hair days are over.

Less than 24 hours before the Sonics' biggest game in 17 years, Big Smooth is at the Preston, and the place is jumping and sweltering, as usual. Coop is putting the razor to Big Smooth's head while a Bobby Caldwell tune blares out of the boom box.

And Perkins is nodding off.

# # #

A doctor once tried to monitor Perkins' heart rate after a session on the tread mill, but couldn't locate a beat.

"Are you alive, or what?" the doctor asked Perkins.

"Well, you are talking to me right now, aren't you?" Perkins replied.

# # #

There's an advantage in sports to being cool. When the pressure comes, you're Teflon.

"If you think about it, what's there to be nervous about, if you're a player?" Perkins says. "Superstars get nervous. Everything is on the line for them. It's like David Robinson. He must've felt like everything was on his shoulders. No matter what happened the year before, it was twice as much this year. There was no Hakeem this time, and he was soft. That was the talk, at least, and it affected him a lot.

"Some can handle it. Some can't."

Sam Perkins can handle it now. He's no superstar. He owned up to that a while ago.

Still, he was a key figure, with Jordan and James Worthy, on North Carolina's national championship team in 1982. Two years later, he and Jordan were co-captains of the U.S. Olympic team and Perkins was the fourth player taken in the 1984 draft, right after Jordan.

Many believed Perkins was destined for superstardom. He was inclined to agree.

"But every time I stepped onto the court, I wasn't that player," Perkins says. "So one day I just said, `Forget it.' I wasn't going to sweat my nerves to get something that wasn't coming. I'd have to be selfish, and that wasn't me. I have to be what I am."

Sonic Coach George Karl says he could ask Perkins to score 30 points, and Perkins could, and would, but he'd be embarrassed that Karl asked. Perkins says he'd have to concentrate extra hard, just to get enough attempts to score 30, because he'd know others on the team could do it more easily.

He says most of his coaches have misunderstood him as a player because "I don't even understand myself half the time."

Perkins, who will be 35 on June 14, never knew his father, who died when he was 1. He and his three sisters were raised by his mother and grandmother in a brownstone in the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn. His grandmother, Martha Perkins, was a devout Jehovah's Witness, and Sam spent many a day at her side, distributing religious literature.

"It's a real quiet, disciplined religion," says Evette, Perkins' younger sister. "It's real smooth."

Naturally.

Perkins believes much of his selfless nature can be traced to Jehovah's Witness teaching, to which he still adheres. And, as luck would have it, those personality traits later were reinforced by a Tar Heel program that also preached against boastful, ostentatious behavior.

Perkins didn't play ball until his junior year of high school because he couldn't produce the grades to earn eligibility. Not that he didn't have the intelligence. He just, ahem, had a problem with showing up for class.

The aimlessness changed the day Herb Crossman, a job-placement counselor, spotted Perkins walking down the street. Needing a big man for his youth basketball team, Crossman asked some of his players if Perkins played. One thought he did and persuaded Perkins to join the team.

Crossman straightened Perkins out, became his guardian and took him to Latham in upstate New York, where he excelled at Shaker Heights High School. When Perkins moved, Evette, who'd acted all those years as his human basketball hoop until her arms burned with fatigue, watched him stroll out of sight.

And when he came back, she says he was still cool.

# # #

Fan: "Hey Sam, I saw you up in the Jack in the Box the other day."

Perkins: "Oh, yeah? Cool."

# # #

Some cool lore: After returning from the Sonics' big victory in Game 4 against Utah, Perkins, who lives on Alki, drove out to an overlook in West Seattle with a sweeping view of the city. There, he parked himself on a bench and put down a little dinner. And, relishing the moment, he started to fall asleep.

People see his droopy eyelids and measured demeanor and assume that Perkins is always asleep. But, all of a sudden, he's dropping the three on them, and they realize they were the ones in slumberland.

"Sam may look sleepy, but he's intense," teammate Vincent Askew says. "Very intense."

Just ask Mike Brown, formerly with the Utah Jazz. The last time the Sonics played the Jazz in the playoffs, in the first round in 1993, Brown was flapping his gums big-time. Perkins never said a thing in rebuttal, but kept taking notes.

"What are you doing here?" Brown asked Perkins before Game 4 in Salt Lake City. "You can't guard me."

Late in the game, Brown, a player so burly they nicknamed him the Brown Bear, tried to dunk on Perkins. Aroused, Perkins blocked the attempt and sent the ball skimming off the shocked Jazz center out of bounds. Then, unpredictably, Perkins did his Ali-over-Liston impression, wagging a finger at the fallen Brown.

The Seattle bench, at first frozen in disbelief, erupted and Seattle rode the ensuing wave of emotion to the seventh game of the Western Conference finals against Phoenix.

"I made Brown look more stupid than he already did," Perkins recalls. "I look back and say I can't believe I did it, but I'm still glad I did it. My teammates were almost in a coma; they couldn't believe it. I felt good, then I felt bad because I made the moment worse for him."

It was against his better judgment, but instinctively Perkins made the right basketball play, the perfect momentum move. But, more than that, he made it all look so cool.

# # #

Fan, pointing to her unborn son: "Could you make the autograph out to Austin?"

Perkins: "Oh, I guess I better put down the date, so he can remember this."

# # #

Broadway, on Capitol Hill, is about as close as it gets here to Sam Perkins' native New York. That's one reason he loves going up there. Well, that and the people.

In a lot of ways, Big Smooth belongs on Broadway, a funky, bohemian part of Seattle, but the last place you'd expect to find an NBA player. He enjoys differences. He's a closet artist and a Sunday evening disc jockey who loves his music and wants to operate a black-format radio station here.

On the evening before Game 7 of the Western Conference finals, he is among his people, sipping a strawberry lemonade sent over by a pair of women across the room and signing a procession of autographs.

"What are you doing up here?" someone asks Perkins.

"Oh, now I'm not supposed to be up in here," he responds.

"No," the man says, "you have a lot of support up here."

He knows. After the Sonics clinched an NBA Finals berth, Broadway was one of the first places Perkins went to share in the celebration.

The past couple years, Seattle has started to fit Perkins like the pair of custom-made jeans he picked up from the Zebra Club. A little loose at first, but better after a few adjustments. Right after he was traded here by the Lakers, Perkins found Seattle to be too dark, too wet and, well, too boring.

One day, on a whim, Perkins went down to the waterfront. He took a ferry ride, went to the Aquarium. Walked up and down, had something to eat. And a connection was made.

Now Seattle is "cool," and Perkins will consider making this his permanent home when he retires. He still owns a house in Dallas, his first NBA love. But he's selling the one in Marina Del Rey, Calif.

The problem with Seattle was that Perkins had just come up from Los Angeles, which swept him up. In Tinseltown, being a Laker opened a lot of doors.

"I found myself never home," Perkins says of living in L.A. "If I was home, it was only because I was tired from running around. I never read. I didn't even get to know my living room."

Last year brought huge change to Perkins' life.

Within three months, Perkins' older sister, Linda, died of AIDS, and his grandmother, Martha, died because of an enlarged heart. The deaths, especially to the grandmother who raised him, though fully anticipated, left him empty.

Perkins had done everything for his grandmother. Just before the Final Four in 1982, she'd admonished him to look presentable. He chopped off all his hair to comply.

"When my grandmother left, I didn't know what to do," Perkins says. "At the funeral, I couldn't even talk. When people came up to me, I had the weirdest feeling. I couldn't even form the words, `Thank you.'

"Early in the season, my mind would be somewhere else sometimes. I was still trying to concentrate on what was best for the team, but everything I did seemed so much harder. Just boxing out to get a rebound was harder.

"This year has been much different. Before the season started, I was determined to enjoy it, no matter what happened. I told myself that I would enjoy the games, have fun, just be relaxed as much as possible."

It's been almost impossible not to notice the difference. Throughout the season, Perkins has been decidedly more animated. After the Sonics' Game 7 victory against the Jazz, he was among the most joyful celebrants in the Seattle locker room.

Still, ask anyone in that locker room about the coolest among them. Askew nods down the line of locker-room stalls to Big Smooth.

"Sam is fly," Askew says. "He's laid back, a gentleman. He's soft- spoken, but when he speaks, people listen. He's cool. He's the coolest guy on the team.

"Everybody knows that."

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Sam Perkins' cool and not cool list

Michael Jordan: Cool. He's the only one of us (North Carolina alumni) that no one can talk to. He's the ultimate player.

Magic Johnson: Not cool. He has to work at it. He's more charismatic, but he has to work the media to get where he's at.

Chris Mullin: Definitely cool. He has this knack for doing what he wants on the court. As slow as he is, he still fools people.

Dennis Rodman: Cool? Take away the hair, tattoos and earrings and do you think kids would like that? He's the Hollywood of the NBA.

Pat Riley: He has cool ways. But he's such a mystery. He doesn't really want people to know him.

Gary Payton and Shawn Kemp: Not cool. They are the baby boomers. They need attention all the time.

Frank Brickowski: His difference makes him cool. He's like a rebel with no cause, no nothing.

David Stern: Not cool. Doesn't he look like Kermit the Frog? I'm serious. What is he going to do, make it so I don't get another call the rest of my career? I don't get calls, anyway.

Marques Johnson: He was the man. He has a cool name, for a ballplayer. Every time he'd score, it would be, "Mar-ques Johnson."

The Knicks: Not. As long as they've been together, I can't believe they haven't learned to play together. They have a lot of unfinished business.

The Lakers: Cool, as a whole.

Shaquille O'Neal: I don't think Shaq is cool. I think Shaq is big.

Sonic uniforms: They're almost cool.

Charlotte Hornet uniforms: They were cool when they first came out.

Wayman Tisdale: Anyone who plays jazz and basketball at the same time is cool.

Sam Perkins: I will never say I'm cool.