The eloquent John Lucas could have been the tipping point in DeAndre Jordan’s decision
John Lucas was the No. 1 overall pick of the Houston Rockets in 1976, and he coached the San Antonio Spurs in the 1990s. He currently runs his basketball camp out of Houston, so it is pretty clear that he is familiar with the Republic of Texas.
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He also might be the emotional tipping point that sent DeAndre Jordan out of the state and right back to Los Angeles.
Maybe. Jordan, who reneged on a promise to agree to a maximum contract with the Dallas Mavericks earlier in July in order to re-join the Los Angeles Clippers, apparently expressed his first misgivings about the potential move to Lucas. Lucas, who is now a bit of a hybrid life/basketball coach for a cadre of Texas-based pro athletes, discussed his talks with Jordan in a report from ESPN’s Ramona Shelburne and Tim MacMahon:
John Lucas could tell something was wrong the moment Jordan walked into his gym on Sunday morning.
“I consider him one of my children,” Lucas said. “When they come home to see me, something’s wrong.”
[…]
Lucas told him to be honest with himself and answer one question: Did he say yes to the Mavericks to please himself or others?
The report also introduced us to a pair of tweets from Lucas from that worried period between Jordan’s verbal commitment to Dallas, and that fateful Wednesday that saw Jordan barricade himself inside his Houston home with several Clipper coaches and players:
Yeah, that sort of sounds like someone who is camping around a friend that is wrestling with a decision.
For those that know Lucas, this is sort of what he does. A recovering substance abuser and alcoholic, he has been sober for decades while serving as a motivational speaker alongside his coaching pursuits (which included a stint, with Jordan’s Clippers in 2010-11), one that also knows how to set up a free throw rebounding machine:
You might roll your eyes at the sort of vague, subject-less delivery in the tweets listed above, but this is what Lucas does. I know: I had to read the guy’s book.
Dallas fans that were initially giddy with the free throw tweet (Jordan missed over 60 percent of his free throws last year) might conclude that Lucas was the absolute worst person to be around in the days between the verbal commitment and the lifting of the NBA’s free agency signing moratorium on July 9, but that’s because they (understandably) only have their favorite team’s best interests at heart. It’s clear that Jordan immediately regretted his move to make the agreement with Dallas, and Lucas was apparently the first of many that he sought counsel with.
The first of many with Twitter accounts, we found out.
In the report, it’s easy to see why Jordan wanted to make his new buddies from Dallas happy. Ramona Shelburne and Tim MacMahon detail a frenzied pre-July bro-fest between Jordan and Dallas swingman Chandler Parsons, with Parsons leaning on Jordan heavily in his role as a tamper-free recruiter for the Mavericks:
Parsons had been wooing and partying with Jordan for weeks in an elaborate, “Entourage”-style recruiting trip through the hottest clubs and most exclusive haunts in Los Angeles and Houston. On the first night of free agency, Parsons, Cuban and Mavericks star Dirk Nowitzki took Jordan out for a gluttonous sushi feast in a private room at Nobu, a few miles up the road from Jordan’s house in Malibu. After that, Parsons and Cuban had been in constant contact with the 26-year-old center.
More private jets trips and even an offer of a $30,000 private yacht for a July 4th weekend trip was extended by Dallas owner Mark Cuban in the hours following the tequila toast that came after Jordan’s verbal commitment to Dallas. Jordan declined, and instead flew from Los Angeles to Houston to take up free throw practice with Lucas.
That move alone would seem to tug on the heartstrings of those that like to say things like “pull yourself up by the bootstraps.” A millionaire athlete declined a chance to spend the holiday weekend on a yacht full of all the mod cons, preferring instead to work on a free throw stroke that cost both Jordan and the Clippers much consternation in 2014-15.
Instead, that move to go work on his stroke opened up all manner of emotions that went unexpressed during the Mavericks’ whirlwind, cocktail and sushi-filled courtship (to the Mavs’ credit, there was significant basketball talk about Jordan’s role in the offense, with Cuban quoting several advanced stats in this piece).
With no real deadline looming (DeAndre didn’t have to sign with anyone when the moratorium lifted; he could have considered his options all summer), Jordan may have come to his conclusion anyway. John Lucas’ words tend to cut to the core of things, though, and who knows what additional influence he could have brought?
After all, the Mavericks are the only team in Texas he hasn’t worked for.
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Kelly Dwyer is an editor for Ball Don’t Lie on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter! Follow @KDonhoops
