Journeyman Ehlo Takes Career Turn For The Better
There is still no house on the 40 acres he bought several years ago between Regal and the Old Palouse Highway, but it’s easier now for Craig Ehlo to envision one there.
And not because it’s any easier to see the South Hill from Seattle than it was from Atlanta.
If anything, hiring on with the Seattle SuperSonics is a detour as much as a destination. He did not come just to be closer to his gold watch.
He came to postpone it awhile.
Your average third-round draft choice - which Ehlo was back in 1983, after his senior year at Washington State University - is lucky to last 13 months in the National Basketball Association, forget 13 years. So when the Atlanta Hawks decided to renounce their option on Ehlo last summer, he had long since come to terms with his professional mortality.
“My agent asked me what I wanted to do,” said Ehlo, “and I told him that unless a team like Seattle or Chicago or Orlando or the Lakers wanted me, I’m done. Lo and behold, I’m in Spokane and he calls and the Sonics are interested.
“Financially, it was no reward, but I’m not real concerned with that. I’ve had my good contracts.”
How about that? Someone to root for tonight who isn’t obsessed by the zeroes on the bottom line.
Of course, Craig Ehlo has been someone Spokane has rooted for ever since he decided to become rooted to us. Sometime after making himself into one of the most popular WSU players in history, he married Jani Webb of Spokane and has been among us ever since - at camps and clinics and show-and-tell and, finally, tonight in a Sonics uniform for the exhibition at the Arena against the Portland Trail Blazers.
Since he’s always known he’d retire here, he never much thought about what it might be like to play here.
“But I’m pumping gas at BP and I ask directions someplace,” he said, “and the guy says, ‘Take a right here and then a left there and it should be right there, Mr. Ehlo.’ Whoa. Mr. Ehlo? What’s going on? And the guy says, ‘Well, I’m an old Coug and a Sonics fan and it’s great to have you back.’ That’s when it hits home.”
He is among friends, at least, while he tries to make new ones on the job.
It shouldn’t take long. Craig Ehlo is a professional fitter-in.
He has been endured deep pine and a started and been a sixth-man extraordinaire over the course of his NBA career. He’s been everything - except a problem, and that’s perfect for the Sonics who for all their gifts and their splendid run of 1996, can’t make it through a season without a soap opera.
Ehlo has survived those, too. He saw the finger-pointing that eventually punctuated the breakup of the Cavaliers when they were Chicago’s perennial stooges. He arrived in Atlanta in time to witness the open warfare that characterized the latter days of Dominique Wilkins.
And he came to Seattle just in time for a front-row seat for Shawn Kemp’s extended Camille.
“He had to do what he had to do,” said Ehlo, his tone indicating that was the limit of his empathy.
“The funny thing is, we were a good team without him really - and I say that because everybody worked hard and tried to get things done without him there. I haven’t been exposed to that much lately and it was real refreshing to see guys go the extra mile. But I could sense, from being the outsider, that they were looking for something, too - looking over their shoulders. And after practicing with him for two days, I see what it was. He wants the ball. He gets to the ball and things happen.”
Championship things, Ehlo hopes.
His shopping list was short because that’s all that matters to him anymore - winning the ring that eluded him in Cleveland. Minutes and shots and money are just numbers, and the only number that counts is one.
He will move the ball and defend and shoot the 3 when asked, and when he isn’t he won’t complain - which already makes him an improvement on Vincent Askew.
Adjustments? One big one.
For the past 10 years in Cleveland and Atlanta, Ehlo played for just one coach - and doesn’t try to disguise his debt to Lenny Wilkens.
“I owe him everything,” Ehlo said. “I wouldn’t have had all these years in the league without him. I think I impressed him right off the bat with how hard I worked and how hard I played, but he molded me into the player I became.
“I feel like I did when my father sent me off to (college) - ‘OK, son, now it’s time to grow up and take some responsibility. I’ve taught you what I can.’ That’s the kind of separation this is.”
One he wouldn’t have bothered with, possibly, had it not been Seattle calling.
“It gives me a lot of confidence that a team like Seattle would even have an interest in me,” he said. “By signing me, it’s like they’re saying, ‘We may not have had all the parts last year to win the championship.’ Now they add you and your confidence level just soars - not your ego, just your confidence.
“Every athlete dreams of playing for a championship, and maybe four teams in the NBA have a chance to play for the championship. I’m lucky to be on one of them.”
, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Color Photo
The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = John Blanchette The Spokesman-Review