For Clyde, Life Begins At Age 32 Drexler Couldn’t Be Happier Unless Rockets Win Championship

In just four months, Clyde Drexler has gone from an unhappy player on a team headed nowhere to a revitalized star rocketing toward an NBA title.

It’s safe to say no one in Houston wants a championship more than Clyde the Glide.

“Win one for Clyde” has become a common theme among his teammates as they work out at the edge of the Gulf of Mexico in preparation for a return trip to the NBA Finals.

“The thing is, they know I’m hungrier than they are,” Drexler said. “They were on the team last year and they have a ring. They know I don’t have one and I really want one.”

If Drexler was to write a script for a movie “Escape from Portland,” it couldn’t have come out any better than this:

He demands to be traded and, on Valentine’s Day, he’s sent back to his hometown of Houston to be reunited with the superstar center who was his college teammate.

He struggles at first to fit in with his new teammates and the team is on the brink of elimination when it finally comes together and makes an incredible run to the finals.

“When you have good intentions, and you work hard, you never know what’s going to happen,” Drexler said. “Sometimes things work out the right way.”

There were many doubts when the Rockets sent Otis Thorpe to Portland for Drexler and Tracy Murray. Houston was giving up its best rebounder, a main contributor to its 1994 championship.

“When I first heard about the trade, I wasn’t too pleased about it,” the Rockets’ Mario Elie said. “Otis was a part of our team. He wasn’t just a basketball player. He was a good friend of mine.”

Coach Rudy Tomjanovich said there were too many reasons to make the trade.

“I know how chemistry is. We won a championship on chemistry,” Tomjanovich said. “If I’m going to change that chemistry, there are going to have to be a lot of things that are right.”

The list was a long one: Drexler is an elite player. He has a low-key personality that would make him easier to fit in. Houston is home, he’s a friend and former teammate of Olajuwon.

And he’s been close to winning a championship twice before.

“If we were on the fence, all those things tilt you over to making the deal,” Tomjanovich said, “and we weren’t that much on the fence.”

Drexler didn’t fit in right away, Robert Horry said.

“It’s going to take some time for guys to adjust,” Horry said. “He’s not used to our players and we’re not used to what he likes to run.”

Drexler was so low-key off the court Horry couldn’t believe it.

“It’s so funny. He used to speak to me and I’d be like, ‘What?’ because I couldn’t hear him,” Horry said. “He talked so softly. I’m just now getting used to it. I have to get up real close to listen to him.”

Olajuwon said the public Drexler is the same person he is in private, and, at age 32, the two are glad to be trying to win a championship, a goal that eluded them in college.

“We understand one another. There’s mutual respect since college,” Olajuwon said. “We’re great friends. I can’t ask for any more.”

Drexler had some big games in the regular season for the Rockets, especially when Olajuwon was out with iron deficiency anemia. Tomjanovich said he’s not sure Houston would even have made the playoffs without him.

Things got better after Vernon Maxwell, whom Drexler replaced as a starter, was banished from the team after the first playoff game against Utah.

Now Drexler smoothly assimilated into the Rockets’ offense and teams have to worry about double-teaming him as well as Olajuwon.

Drexler is averaging 20.2 points 6.4 rebounds and 4.7 assists in the playoffs.

With the Rockets, Drexler no longer is the No. 1 option on offense, and he seems relieved to be rid of that role.

“When he was in Portland, he had to be the main man,” Elie said. “Down here, he knows Dream is the man and he just wants to fit in. That one-two punch, they work together so well. It goes back to their college days. Those guys complement each other real well.”

Drexler and the Blazers made it to the finals in 1990 and 1992. If this trip means more to him than those did, he’s not saying so. Drexler avoids controversy as if it were the Ebola virus, especially if it has anything to do with his former life in Portland.

“It’s special if you’re young. It’s special if you’re old,” he said. “It’s special if you’re a player or a coach or a trainer or a scout. It’s just a special feeling.”

And a feeling that, not long ago, Drexler wondered if he’d ever experience again.