Clippers' assistant Lucas hungers to coach again

He never meant for it to happen.

John Lucas thought he was coming back to the NBA to be an assistant coach for the Clippers. He liked the opportunity, especially liked working for long-time friend Mike Dunleavy and liked the possibilities of a team on the comeback. He didn't see it as clouds parting before him.

A few months later, training camp and preseason are over. The first 10 percent of the schedule has passed. Entrenched as a Clippers assistant, he now sees it clearly.

Lucas wants to be a coach again.

"Now that I've gotten back," he said, "I see how much I really missed it."

Lucas has been off the coaching merry-go-round since midway through the 2002-03 season, when he was fired by the Cavaliers after 42 games. It was such a bitter experience that it has stayed with him. He feels he took the fall for the eventual 17-65 record after Cleveland traded players from under him to position itself for a local prospect named LeBron James in the lottery.

Lucas was a "basketball development consultant" for the Raptors in 2007-08 and last season coached Nigeria in the African Games. He ran his clinic in Houston.

There had been other opportunities to be a full-time assistant or even interview for a coaching opening. But either the timing or the desire or the franchise didn't feel like the right fit. Then Dunleavy, a Rockets teammate in the 1970s, called in August.

Lucas had a strong connection with his boss, knew some of the players through his son's rise through the AAU and college ranks and from offseason pickup games in Houston, and thought the Clippers had a roster that would compete for the playoffs. A friend in Dunleavy, possibilities for a good season and no standing in the crosshairs. It seemed perfect.

Lucas would leave his prominent substance-abuse clinic in Houston -- personal and valuable work that grew from his own well-documented demons during a 14-year playing career -- to be part of a Clippers' turnaround he and Dunleavy envisioned. If it went well, Lucas would continue. If not, he had his mission in Texas.

Instead, he quickly felt the passion to be a head coach return.

"It's woken up again," Lucas said. "It has. It definitely has."

Maybe the chance comes again, maybe it doesn't. But the fact that Lucas was whiplashed into wanting a fourth chance is change enough.

"I really got beat up in that situation because it wasn't about winning," he said of his time in Cleveland, which spanned from 2001-03. "It was about winning for the organization and you happened to be the one that had to do the work to get the players to play better so they could trade 'em.

"They traded away all of our points -- Andre Miller, Wesley Person, Lamond Murray. All our good players. You feel like 'That's me' and they dump all that on you. But it comes with the nature of the job. It took this time to go teach and develop young kids to get better, help my son become a McDonald's All-America. It's rekindled. I've got that fire again now, yeah."

Lucas was with the Spurs first, going 94-49 from 1992-94 with a pair of playoff appearances, and then the 76ers from 1994-96 as coach and general manager at 42-122. There were the three seasons as a Nuggets assistant before the time in Cleveland that ate at him for years to come. He never thought coaching was necessarily out of his system. But he certainly didn't have a great desire to land another No. 1 job.

Now Lucas is thinking coach again.

"That's what I do," he said.

Once, and maybe again.

Scott Howard-Cooper has covered the NBA since 1988. You can e-mail him here.

The views on this page do not necessarily reflect the views of the NBA, its clubs or Turner Broadcasting.