John Lucas happy to be back with Rockets
Organization, city are salvation to reformed mentor
John Lucas found his calling and answered it.
Long after his career as an athlete “died,” as he put it, he discovered his gift to mentor and inspire young athletes hoping to fulfill their dreams and struggling strangers desperately searching for recovery.
Lucas gave himself to his mission with a religious zeal, and in doing so, served his own care.
He was exactly where he wanted to be, doing just what he needed to do.
But none of that could bring him what the Rockets could. The Rockets were family. Houston had represented his salvation.
When Lucas stepped away from his programs last summer to become the
Rockets’ director of player development, he made the move he had long resisted because the Rockets were his team, Houston his beloved home.
“It was a hard decision,” Lucas said of leaving much of his work behind to return to the NBA with the Rockets. “I did it for one reason. The history.
“People have tried to get me to do it before. I did it because I live and breathe Rocket red. Before all these people, I consider myself one of the original Rockets, ’76 and all the way through. This city and this organization loved me. I love them.”
The John Lucas Wellness and Aftercare Program had become legendary. John Lucas Enterprises had grown greatly. Lucas would rush with his usual drive from meeting to meeting, gym to gym, treating every endeavor with the life-and-death urgency many were.
To join the Rockets, he had to give much of that up. He can no longer train prospects before the NBA draft or work with high school and college players in the offseason. His organization will continue to counsel those in need of help with personal issues ranging from substance abuse to anger management, but he will not be as hands-on as he once was.
Desire to pay back
Mike D’Antoni was putting together his coaching staff when Rockets general manager Daryl Morey called. Lucas made the move not because of what he would be doing, but because of the people, team and city for which would do it.
“I’ve been blessed,” Lucas said. “There are a lot of people in this city who raised me. I owe them something. I owe them everything. I love this city.”
Lucas’ birth certificate says he came into the world Oct. 31, 1953, but Lucas believes he was born March 14, 1986. He often cites the date he found his rock bottom.
Lucas awoke in the early hours that day in soiled slacks and sunglasses on a downtown Houston street, high on drugs that meant more to him than everything he would soon lose.
The Rockets released him that day. He had been rich and richly talented, the first pick of the 1976 NBA draft and a professional tennis player on the side. He had tried recovery, sitting in the back of the room at Alcoholics Anonymous meetings he believed were not for him.
On March 14, 1986, he finally discovered “the gift of desperation,” admitted the power cocaine had over him and soon learned he had to lose whatever basketball meant to him to truly get it back.
“I fell in love with the game when it was gone, not when I had it,” Lucas said. “That was the first day of my life, March 14, 1986. That was the year the Rockets went to the Finals. I wasn’t a part of that. We ended up losing to the Celtics. It’s almost second nature to have an issue with marijuana and alcohol now, but then, I was the first athlete to admit to having a problem and struggling publicly with getting sober.
“When I came back to play and ended up playing in Milwaukee, I fell in love with the game. I always loved it, but I fell out of love with it. When I made it, it became, ‘Now what?’ I got there and I was like, ‘Is that all there is?’ ”
Renouncing pursuits
When he first reached the NBA, Lucas discovered he could not be the game’s best and was unfulfilled despite efforts to fill that void with the nicest cars and the finest jewelry. (He no longer will wear even a watch, a symbol of those pursuits left behind.) When his riches were not enough, he turned to the drugs.
“There’s nothing worse than emotional and spiritual bankruptcy in a person,” Lucas said. “They have a hole inside them. They try to use basketball, use sex, use everything they could to fill it up.
“Life intrigues me, just like basketball. I think a lot of people are scared to find out who they are. They say ‘I’m a lawyer. I’m a basketball player.’ No. No. That’s what you do. What makes you happy? What makes you cry? Is your self-worth making the game winning shot?”
His tough-love goading to find those motivations are at the heart of Lucas’ counseling, regardless of the problems or goals. That includes his mentoring of players. He began counseling just months after that night. He has been sober for 30 years and attends an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting at 6:30 a.m. every day.
“A lot of people who are trying to get sober think they can just talk to me and get it,” Lucas said. “It takes a lot of personal, self-inventory and a journey to go find yourself. People see this today, but they don’t see a guy March 14, 1986, downtown Houston, in the street.”
Much of Lucas’ work is about motivations and commitment, all built on the 12-step foundation of his own recovery and guidance of so many others over the years.
“When I was in Cleveland, we were getting LeBron James and my team was so young, I felt there was a need for player development in a more intense area than ever before,” Lucas said of his last stint as a head coach. “Not player development where you hire a former player to give him a job, but player development where you take a guy and develop him.
“There are a lot of guys that say they’re in player development and take a photo with them and say they developed them. Because of my recovery, I had to start from scratch. It’s really based on the 12 principles of Alcoholics Anonymous. It’s all about their life and their development as a basketball player at the end, but really their development as a person in the competition of life. It’s about transforming to becoming a champion.
“They get life lessons. Accountability in life is … to become reliable to avoid the pitfalls life has. You learn “before I do this, I can see the consequences.’ And in the gym, we learn, there’s no do-overs. There’s a lot of start-overs, but there’s no do-overs.”
Counsel for Lawson
Morey has long favored a more holistic approach to player development, bringing in mentors and advisers over the years. Lucas attended many Rockets practices last season after the Rockets traded for Ty Lawson following Lawson’s DUI arrests (with Lawson unsigned, Lucas still works with him). But Morey said he believed in Lucas’ approach well before he saw it so regularly.
“I think that’s all of our jobs, but he has had more success in that area than a lot of us,” Morey said. “I do think the successful organizations are working on things besides just basketball skills, but the entire approach and habits that players have.
“I’ve been pretty familiar with his work for quite a while and some of our staff even more. He’s been someone that has done a great job with tons of clients. He’s obviously known for helping people with issues, but people don’t know for every person like that he’s probably helped 100 players improve their skills.”
The whole individual
But Lucas’ teachings are never far removed from his philosophies.
“The way you play is a mirror of who you are,” he said.
Helping players shape who they are can make them better players.
“I think I have a gift to teach basketball and I have a gift to teach about life,” Lucas said. “I’ve been trying to teach how to play in the game of life. Now, I have to teach how to play within the scheme the coaches want and in life off the court.
“I tell them all the time, ‘I’ve been sober 30 years, but I know who I am.’ I never woke up a day and thought, ‘I’ve forgotten my past.’ I always tell them fail means ‘first attempt in learning.’ Let’s do it again. Here’s your training ground so you can dance at the dance. That’s on the court and off the court.”
With that in mind, Lucas is following his calling, after all.