Jeff Ruland analyzes Andrew Bynum; reflects on career

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Jeff Ruland, who years ago offered Sixers fans a preview of coming distractions, doesn’t know Andrew Bynum. But he knows better than anyone what he’s going through.

“I hope he recovers, I really do,” Ruland said over the phone Tuesday. “Tell him I wish him the best.”

Then he chuckled.

“He probably doesn’t even know who the bleep I am,” Ruland said.

Suffice it to say that a great many others remember Ruland. Especially now, given the parallels between his tale and that of Bynum, who has yet to play this season because of bone bruises to both knees, and might not play at all.

Like Bynum, Ruland was once a proven center who came to the Sixers in a monstrous trade. And like Bynum, knee problems prevented him from ever making a significant impact in Philadelphia. So as he looks on from afar, Ruland -- now the head men’s basketball coach at Division II University of the District of Columbia -- realizes that the paying customers’ patience has surely been stretched beyond the breaking point.

At the same time, he said this: “Fans, as bitter as they get, should also understand that he wants to play a lot more than they want him to, trust me.”

It is something coach Doug Collins has said repeatedly: Bynum wants to be out there. And it would obviously behoove Bynum to play, since he is in the last year of his contract -- a deal that pays him over $16 million this year -- and would thus sacrifice bargaining power if he cannot take the court.

But season-ending arthroscopic surgery is a possibility, and Bynum surely did himself no favors in the public’s eye when he told reporters the following last Friday: “I don’t want to play in pain.”

While not on par with Ricky Watters’ “For who? For what?” rant of years ago, it was not the best thing to say, given the dashed expectations, ever-elusive return dates and, of course, the whole bowling thing. It is a statement that might come to define Bynum’s Sixers tenure, such as it is, if not serve as an epitaph.

The 54-year-old Ruland, though, would like you to believe that players always want to play. And surely it was true in his case, a quarter-century ago.

In his pre-Sixers incarnation, he was a low-post mangler for the Washington Bullets, a blacksmith with a velvet shooting touch. He and his tag-team partner, Rick Mahorn, came to be known as the “Bruise Brothers.” (Also “McFilthy and McNasty,” according to the cantankerous Johnny Most, the Celtics’ late radio voice.)

Ruland was twice an All-Star while averaging a double-double over five years in Washington. Under different circumstances, his blue-collar style would have made him a folk hero in Philadelphia. But he came over in a trade with forward Cliff Robinson, for no less a player than Moses Malone, on the eve of the 1986 draft. That came in tandem with the deal that saw the Sixers ship the No. 1 overall pick to Cleveland for forward Roy Hinson. The Cavs then used that choice on North Carolina center Brad Daugherty.

While Malone slogged through nine more seasons (and 21 in all) and Daugherty enjoyed a productive eight-year career with the Cavs, Hinson and Robinson provided little to the Sixers. And Ruland provided next to nothing.

He played five games in ’86-87 before his balky left knee forced him to retire. He did undergo microfracture surgery -- a relatively new procedure at the time -- affording him the opportunity to attempt a comeback in ’91-92. He played 13 games for the Sixers that year, 11 the following year with Detroit, and then was done for good.

“It’s difficult when you’re one of the best players in the world, and it’s taken away from you at 28,” he said, referring to his age in ’86-87. “It’s not an easy row to hoe. You can understand the fans’ point, but they didn’t get it, either. They didn’t understand that nobody wanted to play more than me. … It was my life. I was only 28.”

Goodness knows, some red flags were waving before the deal was struck. Ruland had played exactly 67 games over the previous two seasons because of injuries to his right shoulder, right foot and left knee. Years earlier, while starring for the late Jim Valvano at Iona, he had also torn the meniscus in his left knee. And Ruland had injured a foot so badly while spending the ’80-81 season in Spain that it required seven pain-killing injections, according to what he told the Inquirer at the time.

The trade was consummated anyway.

“At that time, I thought I was all right,” he said. “After training camp, the knee didn’t feel right. Just didn’t feel right.”

He played two games, shut it down, underwent an arthroscopic procedure and was out until February. He managed three more appearances, but could play no more.

After that, he wanted to get into coaching, but learned he needed his degree to do so. Problem was, he was some 70 credits short of earning that, despite spending three undergrad years at Iona. It took him some 18 months, and countless commutes from his home in South Jersey to the school’s campus in New Rochelle, N.Y. (with stopovers at his mother-in-law’s house in Yonkers), to finish it off. But there it was, in 1991: Jeff Ruland, BA, communications.

“Actually made the Dean’s List and everything,” he said. “When you actually open the book and study, instead of selling it, it’s a lot easier.”

He spent some time with the Sixers as an assistant, then served in the same capacity at Iona before becoming the school’s head man in 1998, going 139-135 in nine years and making three NCAA Tournament appearances before his dismissal in 2007.

He coached in the NBA Developmental League for a year, then returned to the Sixers as an assistant, in ’08-09. UDC hired him on the eve of the following school year, and he endured a 1-20 campaign, one in which the Firebirds were so short-handed that they were forced to play four-on-five part of one game. But last season they went 22-6 and earned their first NCAA berth in 25 years.

This year? Not so good -- 6-20. Injuries, Ruland said, were a factor.

His long-term prospects? Not much better. He’s approaching the last year of a contract, and he said a four-year renewal was recently yanked off the table.

“Life isn’t a bed of roses,” he said. “It’s what you make of it.”

There are plenty of other reasons for him to believe that. His second stint with the Sixers ended after he was struck in the back of the leg by a luggage cart steered by a Celtics ballboy, resulting in a torn Achilles tendon. (Ruland sued the Celtics, and lost. “You don’t want to sue the Boston Celtics in Boston,” he said. “You’ve got a loaded deck right there.”)

All of which pales in comparison to having to bury your wife. Or in his case, his ex-wife, Maureen. They divorced in 2001 -- it was, he said, “because of her drinking” -- but remained close. She underwent treatment for her alcoholism, and appeared to be getting a handle on things; Ruland said that in 2008, she marked six years of sobriety.

Then, another cruel twist for Maureen: Leukemia. The doctors felt like they caught it in time, though, and she went through one round of chemo, then another. Maybe she could beat this, too.

But a heart attack took her in September 2008, the end sudden and shocking after the grinding travails of the preceding years. Even now Ruland grows emotional when he speaks of her. Even now his voice catches.

“I got three girls, you know?” he said, referring to his three adult daughters. “Gotta be strong for them.”

Life isn’t a bed of roses. Sometimes you’ve got to tiptoe around the thorns. Jeff Ruland would like you to believe he has always tried to do that, in all circumstances.

And he can only hope to make you believe others would, too.

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