Berry Starts Fourth ‘New Beginning’

Less than three full seasons into his National Basketball Association career, it appeared three weeks ago that Walter Berry’s act had come to an end.

Pushed to the limits of endurance, the New Jersey Nets, his third pro team in as many years, finally said, “Enough!” On Jan. 30, Berry was unceremoniously given his unconditional release. Put on waivers.

He had lasted just five months with the Nets, his second-longest stop since being selected by Portland in the 1986 NBA Draft and then traded to San Antonio two months into his first professional season.

“Realistically, it was a matter of feeling the time had come to make a move,” Nets General Manager Harry Weltman said. “I didn’t feel he was performing in his role, mentally or physically.”

Once again, though, the 6-8 forward has been given another chance to fulfill the promise hinted at when he left St. John’s University after his junior year, in which he won the Wooden Award as college basketball’s player of the year. Once again, he will play basketball in Madison Square Garden, Tuesday night against the New York Knicks as a member of the Houston Rockets.

“We’re very pleased with him so far,” Houston Coach Don Chaney said of Berry, who was salvaged by the Rockets Feb. 2 and has averaged 6.3 points and 3.3 rebounds in eight games since. “We really like his potential, what he can do.”

Others have said as much, only to become disenchanted with the downside of Berry’s game: the nagging “injuries” and his apparent unwillingness to work. It was only last August when Larry Brown, in his first summer as coach of the Spurs, authorized a trade of Berry to the Nets for Dallas Comegys after Berry told him his game “does not consist of the fundamentals.”

Once, Walter Berry seemed to have it all. Sure, his game was filled with awkward, almost unnatural moves. But he had this ability to score. Anytime, anywhere. Against anyone.

Everybody wanted him.

He led his high school to the 1981-82 New York State title. He took San Jacinto, a junior college in Pasadena, Texas, to the national championship in 1983-84. He was a major reason that St. John’s went to the NCAA Final Four in 1985.

But along the way, there emerged a distressing pattern, one that has dogged Berry throughout his career. As Nets trainer Fritz Massmann said: “He was the laziest athlete I’ve ever seen.”

Many agree. Portland General Manager Bucky Buckwalter spoke recently of “the back problems” that team doctors could not diagnose. He recalled ankle injuries and headaches and stomach aches and other “mystery ailments.” Berry played only seven games before the Trail Blazers dealt him to the Spurs for Kevin Duckworth on Dec. 18, 1986.

“What did we say to him?” Buckwalter said. “The usual, regular things you would say to someone trying to get them to play. . . . The problem is he is not willing to do things to help himself. He is his own worst enemy. Before we took him, we spoke with St. John’s (about his work ethic). They said he had made great progress. He was here only about a month before we found out the work ethic wasn’t what it needed to be to make it in this league.”

The pattern of not working as hard as he might began in high school and continued through college. Although St. John’s Coach Lou Carnesecca said that he preferred not to discuss the negatives, a source said that the staff at St. John’s often had to be creative just to get Berry to practice.

“Louie would tell Walt, ‘Just give me 30 minutes today, then you can leave,’ ” the source said. “They’d go 30 minutes, 40 minutes, 50 minutes. And Walter would be looking, looking. Then, eventually, Walter would say, ‘I thought you said 30 minutes?’ Then Louie would look at an assistant and say, ‘Didn’t I tell you he was only going to go 30?’ It was the only way.”

Carnesecca said: “Not all opera singers sing their hardest every day. It happens sometimes.”

When it happened in Portland, people bid Berry . Then it happened with the Spurs. Once, when the Spurs were in Indiananapolis, Berry finished the morning shootaround and said he felt ill. He said that he was in such severe pain that para-medics took him to the emergency room of the local hospital.

A member of the Spurs staff, who asked not to be identified, said: “The doctor took one look at Walter, said there was nothing wrong, and sent him on his way.” As it turned out, Berry found out he wasn’t going to start that night -- and became ill.

Former Spurs Coach Bob Weiss, who now does television commentary for the Dallas Mavericks, said that he had heard all the negatives about Berry but, like so many others, was willing to take a chance because of his talent. “My attitude was, ‘Go get me a headache who can play and I’ll work with him,’ ” Weiss said.

That attitude worked . . . for a while. “I don’t get mad at an orange for not being an apple,” said Weiss, but even he finally realized that Berry--who averaged 16.7 points in 129 games for the Spurs--might more resemble a lemon.

There was the much-celebrated incident when Berry, chided and badgered by teammate Alvin Robertson for his work habits, threatened Robertson with a butter knife in the hallway of a Missoula, Mont., hotel in October 1987.

There was the time when Berry went out and played what Weiss said was “the game of his life” against the Los Angeles Clippers, then went dancing that night and showed up on the team bus the next morning saying that he couldn’t play the next night because his back hurt. The team was headed to Portland, where Berry figured to be booed.

“In many ways, Walter was not a problem,” Weiss said. “He listened, even if he couldn’t always do the things you wanted him to. At one point in the season, Walter came to me and said, ‘Coach, from now on you’re not going to get less than 100 percent from me.’ That was great. But as he was walking away, all I could think of was that Walter had just told me he had been dogging it all this time.”

It took the Nets hardly any time before they realized the same thing. Preseason camp was barely under way when Berry began to be hobbled by an assortment of injuries -- ranging from ankle problems to back problems to illness. “Whatever he came up with,” Massmann said.

Then there was the much-celebrated, late-night scuffle between heavyweight champion Mike Tyson and Mitch Green at Dapper Dan’s in Harlem. Berry happened to be there with Tyson, and his reputation suffered.

Those problems, combined with the lack of refinements in his game, quickly took him from a starter, to a sub, to a “DNP” -- Did Not Play. Berry -- a one-on-one player to a fault, one who rarely, if ever, plays defense and almost never passes the ball on offense -- averaged 8.9 points in 19.2 minutes over 29 games. By the time of his release, a running joke among the media was: “Walter didn’t play again tonight. How many shots did he have?”

Though Nets Coach Willis Reed said only, “It takes some guys a little longer to get it done than others,” Nets assistant Lee Rose, an assistant to Weiss in San Antonio, said, “Some people simply are incapable of understanding advice. Berry had the spot and played himself out of it.”

Nets captain Buck Williams, an eight-year veteran, said: “It just seemed that he never understood his role. The problem was once that role was defined, he never seemed able to accept his situation. Walter has a certain picture in his mind of how things should be for him. When the situation doesn’t conform to that picture, he has a problem and works himself into a hole. He doesn’t know how to handle it. He has to somehow grasp what people are trying to tell him,” Williams said. “This is a crucial period in his career. Maybe he will finally understand that.”

Will Walter Berry ever learn? No one, including the Rockets’ Chaney, can say for sure. “But,” Chaney said, “maybe this last time provided the jolt. I like Walter. He comes early, stays late. And he works hard. If, after a month, he gets back into the old Walter Berry syndrome, then he’s out of here. He knows that.”

Last week, Berry came off the bench and scored seven straight points, then handed out an assist to spark a come-from-behind win over Boston. He came off the bench and scored 15 points--at Portland--in another victory.

“They booed him from the time his name was announced,” Chaney said. “But he never let it bother him.”

Maybe the message has finally gotten through to him. Who knows? Berry did not return phone calls to his hotel in Houston.

“He and I had a long talk,” Chaney said. “We basically confronted his past and discussed each situation. We wiped the slate clean. I explained to him that he’s at the bottom now. That he was on waivers and nobody claimed him and there was a reason for that. I told him that, most likely, there are no more stops. I think he understood that this might be it for him in professional basketball. I think, sometimes, you have to hit rock bottom before you understand that.”

So, a question: How long will Berry last this time? “Call me again in about two months and I’ll let you know then what I think,” Chaney said.