Maurice Lucas passes away at 58

[tlongII]

http://www.oregonlive.com/blazers/index.ssf/2010/10/trail_blazers_legend_maurice_l.html


Trail Blazers legend Maurice Lucas, the starting power forward known as “The Enforcer” on the team’s only NBA Championship, has passed away Sunday at the age of 58.

Lucas had battled bladder cancer for the past two years. He was an assistant coach for the Blazers when he had surgery in April of 2009, then appeared to be recovering when he suffered a relapse that hospitalized him in November of 2009.

Lucas was a five timeAll-Star, three times in Portland, during his 14-year career (2 in the ABA and 12 in the NBA). Portland has his No. 20 retired by the team. He was the team’s second-leading scorer and rebounder to Bill Walton on the 1976-1977 NBA Championship team. Walton has called Lucas “The greatest Trail Blazer of All-Time.’’

Lucas is survived by his wife, Pamela, sons David and Maurice II and daughter Kristin.


Sad day for Portland, Blazer fans, and me personally. Luke was a good friend of a very good friend of mine. I've met him a few times and he was always a terrific guy. R.I.P. Luke. :depressed

[LakeShow]

Sorry to hear that. Luc was one of the best Power forwards ever in his day. RIP Luc

[tlongII]

http://i.cdn.turner.com/si/multimedia/photo_gallery/0803/tough.guys.alltime.traditional/images/maurice-lucas.jpg

[Killakobe81]

Got to see hum play condolonces to you and the blazers family ...

this current NBA would of been too soft for a badass like Mo Lucas.

[Daddy_Of_All_Trolls]

wow, sorry to hear this. Lucas is the guy who basically made the term power forward get coined. He's also the answer to one of my questions in my trivia thread, and Bill Walton named his son Luke (Ever hear of him? I heard he's going to the Blazers for Brandon Roy) after Mo.

[Giuseppe]

"You can lose a man like that by your own death, but, not by his."

[DeadlyDynasty]

R.i.p.

[Daddy_Of_All_Trolls]

man, both guys on that SI cover are dead. Dennis Johnson is the Sonic player.

[Giuseppe]

Yep, it was frustrating when he landed with us. He was pussycat by then.

[Booharv]

http://i.cdn.turner.com/si/multimedia/photo_gallery/0803/tough.guys.alltime.traditional/images/maurice-lucas.jpg

That issue has a fascinating back story. Bill Simmons wrote about it in his book:


Crisis no. 5: fighting. Fighting had always been considered part of basketball, an inevitable outcome of a physical sport (much like hockey). Willis Reed put himself on the map by cleaning out the ’67 Lakers. Maurice Lucas made his reputation by dropping Gilmore. Dennis Awtrey lasted ten years because he was the Guy Who Once Decked Kareem. Ricky Sobers turned around the ’76 Warriors-Suns series by socking Barry. Calvin Murphy had the league’s most famous Napoleon complex, frequently beating up bigger guys and scoring a knockout over six-foot-nine Sidney Wicks. So when the Blazers and Sixers had their ugly brawl in Game 2 of the ’77 Finals, nobody was really that appalled. It started when Darryl Dawkins tried to sucker-punch Bobby Gross (hitting teammate Doug Collins instead), then backpedaled right into a flying elbow from Lucas, followed by the two of them squaring off like 1920s bare-knuckle boxers before
everyone jumped in. After getting ejected, Dawkins couldn’t calm down and ended up destroying a few toilets in the Philly locker room. Was anyone suspended? Of course not! Not to sound like Grumpy Old Editor, but that’s the way it worked in the seventies and we loved it! Portland swept the last four games and everyone agreed afterward that Lucas’ flying elbow was the turning point of the series. It was the perfect NBA fight for the times—no injuries, tremendous TV and a valuable lesson learned about sticking up for your teammates.

Fast-forward to October: Sports Illustrated revolves its NBA preview issue around “the Enforcers,” sticking Lucas’ menacing mug on the cover and glorifying physical players in a pictorial ominously titled “Nobody, but Nobody, Is Gonna Hurt My Teammates.” In retrospect, it’s an incredible piece to read; the magazine took intimidating-looking pictures of each enforcer like they were WWF wrestlers, with Kermit Washington (gulp) posing shirtless like a boxer. Each picture was accompanied with text to make these bruisers sound like a combination of Clint Eastwood and Charles Bronson. An example: “Kermit Washington, the 6’8”, 230-pound Laker strong man, is a nice quiet person who lifts weights and sometimes separates people’s heads from their shoulders. In one memorable game last November in Buffalo, Washington ended an elbow skirmish with John Shumate by dropping the 6’9” forward with a flurry of hooks and haymakers. ‘Shumate came apart in sections,’ an eyewitness said.”

Wow, punching people never sounded so cool! Since SI was the influential sports voice at the time—remember, we didn’t have ESPN, USA Today, cable or the Internet yet—the tone of that issue coupled with kudos given to Murphy and Lucas the previous season may have inspired the violent incidents that followed. Lucas was a valuable player who wasn’t good enough to command an SI cover unless it was for something else … you know, like beating the shit out of someone. Was it okay to punch other players in the face? According to Sports Illustrated, actually, it was. As long as you had a good reason.

Fast-forward to opening night: Kent Benson sneaks a cheap elbow into Kareem’s stomach, doubling Kareem over and sending him wobbling away from the play in obvious pain. An enraged Kareem regroups and charges Benson from behind, sucker-punching him and breaking his jaw. Unlike other ugly NBA events from the past, this one had a black-guy-decking-a-white-guy clip playing on every local newscast around the country, with the black guy doubling as the league’s signature player of the seventies. Uh-oh. The league decides against suspending Kareem, deeming it punishment enough that he’s missing two months with a broken hand from the punch.

Fast-forward to December: Kermit gets belted by Houston’s Kevin Kunnert after a free throw and they start fighting. Kareem jumps in to hold Kunnert back, Kermit nails Kunnert (who slumps over holding his face), then Kermit whirls around, sees Rudy Tomjanovich running toward him and throws what Lakers assistant Jack McKinney later called “the greatest punch in the history of mankind,” breaking Rudy’s face on impact and his skull after it slammed off the floor. Kareem later described the punch as sounding like somebody had dropped a melon onto a concrete floor. Rudy rolled over, grabbed his face, kicked his legs and bled all over the court as everyone watched in horror. The final damage: two weeks in intensive care, a broken jaw, a broken nose, a fractured face and a skull cracked so badly that Rudy could taste spinal fluid dripping into his mouth.

Four forces were working against Kermit other than, you know, the fact he nearly killed another player. With Kareem’s haymaker happening two months earlier, the combination of those punches spawned dueling epidemics of “NBA Violence Is Out of Control!” headlines and editorials (with everyone forgetting that SI had glorified that same violence ten weeks earlier) and “Why do I want to follow a league that allows black guys to keep kicking the crap out of white guys when I’m a white guy?” doubts (the underlying concern that nobody mentioned out loud unless you were sitting in the clubhouse of a country club, as well as the subplot that scared the living shit out of CBS and the owners). Second, the only existing replay made Kermit seem like an unprovoked madman out for white blood, but the cameras missed Kunnert’s initial elbow and the rest of their fight, catching the action only after Kunnert was sinking into Kareem’s arms and Rudy was running at Kermit. Third, Saturday Night Live made light of the incident on “Weekend Update,” showing the punch over and over again for a gag and giving it new life. And fourth, with TV ratings faltering, attendance dropping and the league battling the “too many white fans, too many black players” issue, really, you couldn’t have asked for worse timing. It was a best/worst extreme—the most destructive punch ever thrown on a basketball court, the perfect specimen to throw such a punch, the worst result possible, the worst possible timing (CBS’ contract was up after the season) and the worst possible color combination (a black guy decking a white guy). Kermit was suspended for sixty days without pay—no hearing, no appeal, nothing—losing nearly $54,000 in salary and becoming Public Enemy No. 1. (This went well beyond a few death threats. After Kermit returned from the suspension, police advised him against ordering hotel room service because they worried someone would poison him.) And Rudy eventually sued the league for $3 million, with his laywers portraying Kermit as a vicious Rottweiler who had been allowed off his leash by neglectful owners. Nothing good came from this incident. Nothing.

The Lakers coldly traded Kermit during his suspension, shipping him to Boston for my favorite Celtic at the time, Charlie Scott. Dark day in the Abdul-Simmons house. I remember attending my first Kermit/Celtics game, seeking him out in warm-ups, finding him, and thinking, “That’s him, that’s the guy,” then watching him fearfully like he was like Michael Myers or something. He may have been the league’s first pariah. But Kermit won Boston fans over immediately. Here was this tragic, forlorn figure carrying himself with undeniable dignity, attacking the boards with relentless fury, injecting life into Cowens like nobody had since Silas, throwing every repressed emotion into these games. Sometimes when the Garden was quiet—and that happened a lot, since we only won 32 games and fans were fleeing in droves—you could even hear Kermit grunt when he grabbed a ballboard: uhhhhhhhhh. Kermit averaged 11.8 points, 10.5 rebounds and 52 percent shooting in just twenty-seven minutes per game. By the end of the season, Kermit had become my favorite Celtic and I was convinced that Rudy’s face had attacked Kermit’s fist.

Of course, we traded him that summer. Go figure. He moved to San Diego and then Portland, where Blazer fans embraced him the way the Boston fans had. When Halberstam wrote beautifully about him a few years later—really, one of the great character profiles ever written of an athlete—Kermit evolved into something of a victim, culminating in John Feinstein writing an entire book about the punch in 2002. Maybe Rudy was in the wrong place at the wrong time, but so was Kermit. Like hundreds of NBA players before him, Kermit threw an angry punch with mean-spirited intentions … only this one connected. He became the league’s Hannibal Lecter, the guy who threw The Punch and nearly killed someone. The NBA took violence more seriously after that, making fighting ejections mandatory and handing out longer suspensions, although it’s turned into somewhat of an urban legend that Kermit’s punch changed everything. The league didn’t make a concerted effort to shed fighting completely until an ugly Knicks-Bulls brawl in the ’94 Playoffs spilled into the stands with a horrified David Stern in attendance. That was the tipping point, not Kermit’s punch.

There's also a ton of great stuff on Lucas in David Halberstam's awesome book The Breaks of the Game aka the best book ever written on basketball imho.

[lil_penny]

my condolences to his friends and family.. R.I.P. to a great man on and off the court. sad day for blazer nation

[tlongII]

http://www.oregonlive.com/blazers/index.ssf/2010/10/trail_blazers_legend_maurice_l.html



Trail Blazers legend Maurice Lucas, the starting power forward known as “The Enforcer” on the franchise’s only NBA Championship team, died Sunday at the age of 58.

Lucas battled bladder cancer for the past two years. He was an assistant coach for the Blazers when he had surgery in April of 2009, then appeared to be recovering when he suffered a relapse that hospitalized him in November of 2009. He passed away Sunday evening in Portland with his family by his side.

Following Saturday’s victory in New York, the current Blazers team was informed that their former assistant coach was in grave condition.

“It’s a sad, sad, sad day for the Blazers,’’ coach Nate McMillan said. “It happened too soon. It really did. He was a great man, and I mean that. He was a man.’’

Lucas will be remembered as one of the greatest players in franchise history, a physical and skilled big man who could shoot, rebound in traffic, and back up his bark with bite.

It was his physicality and intimidation that helped the Blazers turn the tide in the 1977 NBA Finals against Philadelphia and cemented his reputation as “The Enforcer.”

With the Blazers being badly beaten in Philadelphia on the way to a 2-0 series deficit, 76ers big man Darryl Dawkins threw Blazers forward Bobby Gross to the court.

Lucas, who hung around the boxing ring growing up in Pittsburgh, Pa., came from the other end of the court and clocked Dawkins.

“I just nailed him,” Lucas recalled in April of 2010. “BAM!”

Both players were ejected, and an irate Dawkins demolished the Philadelphia locker room in anger. By the time the series returned to Portland for Game 3, the fight had become the talk of sports.

But Lucas had already devised a plan.

During the introductions of Game 3 at Portland’s Memorial Coliseum, Dawkins was booed loudly. When Lucas was introduced, the place went nuts. But instead of running to the foul line to stand with his teammates, Lucas shocked everyone in the building.

He ran directly to the Philadelphia bench.

“Everybody backed up,” Lucas remembers. “And Darryl was standing there by himself.”

Lucas ran to Dawkins and grabbed his right hand from his side. Playing the part of gentleman, Lucas shook it.

“And I squeezed it hard,” Lucas said. “Told him, ‘No hard feelings.’ “

Dawkins, Lucas said, just stood there frozen.

“After that,” Lucas said, pausing for effect. “He was done.”

The Blazers never lost again, winning the next four games to secure the team’s only championship to this day.

Jack Ramsay, coach of the 1977 Championship team, said on Sunday that Lucas’ actions “significantly” changed the momentum of the NBA Finals.

“When he came out in Game 3 and shook ... well, he took Dawkins’ hand and shook it down ... when he did that, Dawkins wasn’t sure what to do,’’ Ramsay said. “And it just ignited the crowd. What a tactic.’’

Although center Bill Walton was the Blazers’ leading scorer and rebounder, and won the Most Valuable Player of the NBA Finals, he largely credited Lucas for helping his game. Part of Lucas’ role was to prevent opponents from beating up on Walton. Because of that, Walton has always referred to Lucas as “The Greatest Blazer of All-Time.’’

“He was the strength of the team,’’ Ramsay said Sunday evening. “He was The Enforcer. He was really the heart of that team. He liked the role. Plus, he was very skilled. But mostly, it was his physical persona that he carried with him that made us a different team.’’

Lucas, who starred in college at Marquette, came to Portland after two years in the ABA. He made the NBA All-Star team four times, three times in Portland, and made one ABA All-Star team during his 14-year professional career. He played with the Blazers from 1976-1980, then again for the 1987-1988 season. His No. 20 is retired by the team.

In 2005, he was the first hire by McMillan to join his coaching staff. McMillan and Lucas played together in Seattle during McMillan’s rookie season. Early in that season, McMillan was approached by a Seattle veteran, demanding McMillan to fetch him a soda. When McMillan refused, the veteran made a move toward him.

That’s when Lucas stepped in from the trainer’s room and performed another act of Enforcer.

“That’s my rook,’’ McMillan recalls Lucas saying.

At that time, Lucas dropped the sneakers he was carrying, and the teammate immediately backed down. From then on, McMillan and Lucas had formed a bond.

His toughness and force, however, was left on the court. He was widely regarded as a large teddy bear, quick to laugh and eager to befriend.

“More than anything, you won’t find a better person who care about you,’’ Blazers center Joel Przybilla said. “I mean, he cared about how we did on the court, but he really cared about what we did off the court. There will never be anyone like him.’’

Lucas is survived by his wife, Pamela, sons David and Maurice II and daughter Kristin. No details have been provided for a service.

[tlongII]

http://www.oregonlive.com/sports/oregonian/john_canzano/index.ssf/2010/10/canzano_maurice_lucas_will_be.html


Maurice Lucas died on Sunday. He was 58. And when you heard the lousy news maybe your impulse thought was about bladder cancer and the resident enforcer who helped the Trail Blazers win their only NBA championship.

Mostly, I thought about that amazing handshake of his.

Lucas was a 6-foot-9 power forward with a pair of cinder blocks for fists. Coach Dr. Jack Ramsay once told me that it was “Luke” who he always viewed as the key piece that put his title team over the top. And while I never saw the man play basketball in his prime, all you needed to do to understand what he was about was to shake his hand. (Lucas was named one of the Top 5 Blazers of all time.)

He make your own hand disappear. Lucas would hold the grasp and look you in the eyes. He’d smile, and bellow, and when he greeted you, he’d rock back and forth on the balls of his feet, tugging you around like a T-shirt in the wind.

If there's a better handshake on the planet, I don't know it.

Lucas wasn’t around the Blazers much in the last couple of years. He was in and out of the hospital, visiting with doctors, enduring chemotherapy. For a while there, even as we knew Lucas had cancer, we all expected "The Enforcer" would kick it's butt.

It's what Lucas did. And Darryl Dawkins knows what I’m talking about.

Lucas lost his battle on Halloween. I won't ever think of the holiday the same way. The Blazers media relations department made the call they’ve been dreading for weeks, one by one, reaching out to pass the message to the public. And while I’ve covered the Blazers for eight seasons, and seen some disappointing things, this is the worst news I’ve ever had to write about.

Losing a game stinks. Losing a legend is unspeakable.

Lucas was a terrific basketball player. Soulful. Fearless. Strong. But when you raised his name people rarely talked about the points or rebounds or even a big game, instead they told you, “Nobody was tougher.”

I think Lucas liked that.

During the 2008 season the Blazers got intimidated by a screaming, posturing, trash-talking Kevin Garnett in a loss at Boston. Rookie Greg Oden was on his first NBA road trip, and his eyes were wide as saucers after the game as I talked with him.

Lucas, then a Blazers assistant, walked past and said that nobody trash-talked like Garnett during his career. “Back then,” Lucas said, “it was only a $50 fine for punching a guy in the mouth.”

I will never forget the looks on the faces of the young Blazers.

Lucas showed up at charity events over the years, and in hospital rooms of dying Blazers fans, and at practices and games. He shook hands, and made everyone remember simpler times.

You kept asking about him, and I kept telling people I didn’t see Lucas at the practice facility much in the last 12 months. And he wasn’t on the team bench as much as he once was as an assistant coach. But that’s not to say he wasn’t around, because you could feel him everywhere.

Brandon Roy talked about instilling “a toughness” in his teammates, and when he did, he referenced Lucas. And when we discussed whether Lamarcus Aldridge would take the next step and become an All-Star, someone always brought up Lucas as the benchmark at that position. And when Oden was busy rehabilitating you figured that a month spent renting out Lucas’ spare bedroom was all the big guy needed.

It’s Lucas, not Bill Walton, Clyde Drexler or Roy, who ends up as the guts of the Blazers organization. Those guys are sensational, big-time players. But the contributions of Lucas can’t really be quantified any more effectively than you can catch a man’s spirit in a pillow case.

That handshake, I will never forget.

He’s gone now.

I hate writing those words.

As if showing up is all that matters. Because even when Lucas wasn’t visible recently, he was here. You felt him everywhere.

And you always will.

[Giuseppe]

- "Last stop on a long journey, as yet another human being returns to the vast nothingness that is the beginning and into the dust that is always the end."

- Rod Serling - March.18.1960

[Man In Black]

One of the guys I respected and despised at the same time when he helped beat my then favorite player, George McGinnis. Lucas was a monster forward. The only guy I hated more was Dave Twardzik. He wasn't close to an All-star but Twardzik would hit timely jumper after jumper. For the entire playoff run, the guy shot 59%

[silverblk mystix]

Rip

[TheManFromAcme]

We got him at the tail end of his career. Wish we had got him a ring. Condolences.


Yup. I totally forgot about that.
Sad day for b-ball in general. :depressed

RIP M.L.

[samikeyp]

Sad day for basketball.

Rest well. :toast

[Ashy Larry]

Mo Lucus was a monster. Played when it was common for blows being thrown. Actually Bill Walton named Luke after him. Tough minded son-of-a-bitch and didn't back down to anyone.

RIP

With all the money sent to cancer research, we should have ninety cures by now.

[Giuseppe]

"Problem with time I've learned, eventually time always runs out."

[lefty]

RIP Mo Luke

Lucas > Oden

[tlongII]

The picture of Luke standing in the alley is one of my favorite of all time! I would love to find a larger version of it. This one here flips back and forth with a pic of him playing for the Sonics.

http://www.ml-sports.com/2003/images/subpage/switch1.gif

[Mark in Austin]

Rip, Luke.

[duncan228]

RIP

Maurice Lucas: An Unforgettable 'Force' (http://nba.fanhouse.com/2010/11/01/maurice-lucas-an-unforgettable-force/)
By David Steele

http://nba.fanhouse.com/2010/11/01/maurice-lucas-an-unforgettable-force/

[ShoogarBear]

Late to this, but one more good Luke article:

http://www.boston.com/sports/columnists/pierce/2010/11/rip_maurice_lucas.html

RIP, Maurice Lucas
Posted by Charles P. Pierce November 1, 2010

Thirty-nine years ago this fall, I moved into the 11th floor of a 12-story
dormitory at the corner of 16th Street and Wisconsin Avenue in Milwaukee,
Wisconsin. I was a freshman at Marquette University. (The dorm, McCormick
Hall, is round and shaped like a beer can, which is remarkably appropriate
in more than the metaphorical sense, and the building has been rumored for
almost 40 years to be sinking into middle Earth.) Not long after I moved
in, I found myself intrigued by the music coming out from under the door
of the room next to mine -- music which I now know to have been
"Eurydice," the closing track from Weather Report's astounding debut
album. (Mmmmmm. Wayne Shorter!) As I was listening, an extremely large man
came out of the room and introduced himself. "Pretty cool, isn't it?' he
said.

And that was how I met Maurice Lucas.

For the next couple of years, we talked about music, at least as much as
Luke talked to anyone, him being what you call your campus celebrity and
all during the glory days of Warrior basketball and the high-sun period of
Al McGuire Era. Whatever I know about any jazz recorded after the big band
records to which my father listened -- Mmmmmmm. Basie! -- I learned from
Luke, with whom I don't believe I ever exchanged four words about
basketball.

Later that same year, when I was practicing with the fencing team in the
basement of the old gymnasium while the basketball team practiced
upstairs, Luke came out of the shower wearing only a towel. "Hey," he
said, "show me how to do that." I handed him a foil and we squared off, I
in my full regalia with a mask and Luke in a towel. I touched him once,
lightly, in the ribs. He slapped my blade out of my hand and about 20 feet
back down the hallway, hitched up his towel, and went off chuckling.

He was strong and he was tough, and he had a nice little jump shot. And
brother Ryan is correct in noting that Luke was the most upright player in
the history of the league. He played, always, with near perfect posture. I
followed his career as the Black Bart sidekick to Bill Walton on those
great Portland teams of the late 1970's, teams of which none of us got
enough. SI pictured him with his arms folded in an alley to illustrate the
new generation of NBA enforcers. But Luke had more game than that. In
fact, if there ever was a prototype from which basketball inevitably would
develop a Karl Malone, it was Maurice Lucas. I got a big kick out of his
becoming a star in David Halberstam's classic, The Breaks Of The Game, in
which Luke confessed to the author that he'd come to Marquette because, in
McGuire, an born operator had seen a master from whom he could learn so
much. Luke also told Halberstam that he felt strange at Marquette because
he was surrounded by white kids who drank a lot of beer and, most uncool,
talked about how much beer they drank. I didn't take that part personally
because, well, it was far from a non-fact.

The last time I saw him was in New Orleans, before the storm, when
Marquette made the Final Four in 2003. He was there as part of a
delegation of former players and Walton was in town for some event related
to the Basketball Hall Of Fame. I walked up to Walton and told him, and
his face lit up the way only Walton's can when his enthusiasm hits DefCon
1. I got the two of them together and backed slowly away. It wasn't my
conversation. It was theirs.

Anyway, Maurice Lucas, my former neighbor in a silly round building far
away, died yesterday of bladder cancer. He was 58. The obits are going to
concentrate on Luke as an "enforcer." The people writing the obits never
listened to music with him. Here's to you, big Luke. Here's something to
take you home.

[Giuseppe]

Maurice Lucas soldiered splendidly...

- "From William Shakespeare, Richard the Third, a small excerpt. The line reads, 'He has come to open the purple testament of bleeding war.' And for Lieutenant William Fitzgerald, A Company, First Platoon, the testament is closed. Lieutenant Fitzgerald has found the Twilight Zone."

- Rod Serling - 2/12/1960