Johnson Pushes For An Acting Career

For a 39-year-old basketball dinosaur, Marques Johnson demonstrates a rare rapport with the Power Rangers generation.

His secret?

Getting the same air time on HBO or Cinemax that he used to get on ESPN.

He was the first winner of the John Wooden Award, college basketball’s Heisman, back in 1977. Two years earlier, he’d played on the Wizard’s last UCLA championship team. He went on to score almost 14,000 NBA points, which may be enough to get him into the Hall of Fame someday.

But not into an 11-year-old’s consciousness.

“He was the guy with the gun in ‘White Men Can’t Jump,’ ” a daughter reminded her mother when they spotted Johnson at the Seafirst Jammin’ Hoops Camp barbecue Tuesday evening. “He was in ‘Blue Chips,’ too.”

Oh. That Marques Johnson.

“In relation to basketball, these kids have no idea who I am,” Johnson said and laughed during a break between camp sessions at Whitworth College.

“To them, I’m Raymond Dickens, the guy who robbed the liquor store in ‘White Men Can’t Jump.’ That gives me some credibility when I talk to them. I’ve gone from NBA All-Star to the guy who robbed the liquor store.”

Of course, if he doesn’t show up on the New Releases rack at Blockbuster within the year, he’ll be the forgotten man again.

So this morning, Johnson is back in Los Angeles, pitching MGM vice president of production Greg Foster a project based on Terry Pluto’s occasionally hilarious memoir of the American Basketball Association, “Loose Balls.”

Allow us to cast it. Dennis Rodman as Bad News Barnes. Ice Cube as Warren Jabali. And we’re thinking Tupac Shakur as John Brisker, though the New York parole board is probably thinking otherwise.

Marques Johnson’s retirement, then, is not exactly life after basketball.

His playing career prematurely shortened five years ago by damaged vertebrae - “I ran into Benoit Benjamin’s stomach, if you can imagine,” he said - Johnson can hardly get away from the game. He does color commentary for both UCLA and Seattle SuperSonics, and gets even more vicarious thrills through his son, Kris - one of the prize freshmen on UCLA’s NCAA championship team last spring.

No, you didn’t see much of Kris - he was injured most of the season - and what you did see was too much.

“He lost 40 pounds this summer,” reported Johnson. “It’s kind of clicked in his mind what he needed to do to get minutes, how he needed to get his body together.”

Just how the Bruin Radio Network can reconcile this little case of nepotism is anyone’s guess, though it doesn’t seem to bother Marques.

“My problem is his whole life as a basketball player, I’ve been honing in on him,” said Johnson. “I have special eyes for him to the exclusion of watching the other players and what they do. I’ve got to get away from that, but I don’t see a problem.”

OK. Let’s just hope it isn’t a trend. Bud Nameck doesn’t need to be sharing the mike with some Cougar Dad.

Radio color men are rarely the most detached observers, anyway, and so it is with Johnson - who got as big a kick out of UCLA’s title run as anyone, having been a cog in the last one 20 years ago and having kin (Tyus Edney happens to be a cousin, too) on the court. He was particularly thrilled for UCLA coach Jim Harrick, who Johnson claims to have touted as a “great choice” from the beginning.

“Not because he was a great coach at Pepperdine,” Johnson explained, “but because he’s a guy who’ll be there for 20 years if they’ll have him. Replacing Wooden was more difficult than anyone imagined and what was needed most of all was stability. They’d been talking to guys like Larry Brown and Jim Valvano and Rick Pitino - guys who might have stayed for two or three or four years and moved on.”

Harrick, of course, endured enormous heat in L.A. before producing a champion. Now, Johnson says, “he holds court like the Pope - people come up and kiss his ring.”

That’s hardly the case with the coach of Johnson’s other employer, the Sonics. And count Johnson among George Karl’s critics, albeit a restrained one, for Seattle’s most recent playoff flop.

“George has to take some responsibility for being too rigid,” Johnson offered. “In sticking with that eight-man rotation for the playoffs, he left some guys - Sarunas Marciulionis, especially - out of the picture who could have helped in certain situations.

“I think you need an eight-man rotation, but you can be flexible with that eighth man. Maybe it’s Sarunas one night, somebody else the next. The Lakers, for instance, were getting something out of Anthony Miller, who hardly figured in the rotation during the year.

“But this is a team that won 57 games last year, 63 the year before. I don’t think there’s a whole lot that needs to be fixed.”

Except, naturally, the union tugof-war that threatens to wipe out the 1995-96 season.

“Everybody feels like they’re doing the right thing,” said Johnson, whose talents didn’t come cheaply when he was a player. “But some of us remember the bad old days, when teams were going broke and CBS was putting playoff games on at 11:30 at night. You don’t want to mess with this game. The fans are in no mood for something like this right now. I wonder if some guys know how good they have it.”

One thing’s for certain. There isn’t enough room for all of them in the Screen Actors Guild.

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Color photo

MEMO: You can contact John Blanchette by voice mail at 459-5577, extension 5509.

The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = John Blanchette The Spokesman-Review