Kambala set to come back from injury

Victoria Sun

Thursday, Oct. 21, 1999 | 10:47 a.m.

If talk is cheap, then Kaspars Kambala is very expensive.

The 6-foot-9 big man for the UNLV basketball team doesn't want to say what he has done in the off-season that has gotten him in the "the best shape since I've been here."

He doesn't want to predict how well he could do this season because "I want somebody else to evaluate me when I get out there. I mean, I worked on a lot of things, but when the game time comes, that's where the test is."

And only after about an hour does he proudly offer that he once scored 98 points in a game during a Latvian youth league game when he was 15 years old.

To him, what's in the past and what's in the future don't matter.

He's more concerned with the present.

Last Feb. 15 against Tulsa, Kambala was defending a Tulsa player when he felt something click in his right knee.

He continued to run the floor on a fast break, then scored a layup before he realized something was wrong. He couldn't straighten out his knee.

"I was not sure what happened," Kambala said. "They had a few other doctors, they looked at me and said probably cartilage is torn.

"At first we were thinking I might be able to come back for the WAC tournament, so I would be out for two weeks."

It was worse than they thought.

Kambala underwent arthroscopic surgery on Feb. 17 and sat out the remainder of the season.

Before the injury, he averaged 12.8 points and 6.5 rebounds. In his absence, the Rebels were 1-5.

If anything, Kambala says the injury helped him to stop being complacent about his game.

"I came on crutches and watched the first game," he said. "We lost, then came another game, we lost another game.

"You feel like, if I had been out there we could've won the game, and you could contribute, but you can't do it. Then I was thinking I gotta get healed up soon, start working out again and get prepared for next year.

"Sometimes you know how you just go through the motions and nothing happens. Then when you get hurt you realize you only know how today's going to be, so you gotta work hard today. I'm definitely more hungry to be out there."

It took about five months before he was able to practice again.

The first thing he did was get into better condition.

Then he focused on improving his game, both facing the basket and facing away from it, at two camps, including Pete Newell's big man camp.

To improve his flexibility and balance, Kambala also started taking yoga classes.

UNLV head coach Bill Bayno says he has never been worried about Kambala's work ethic.

"My challenge to him has been always to improve his defense and to improve his passing," Bayno said. "I think the other thing is at times he has the tendency to baby the ball inside instead of getting the ball right above the rim.

"I think he'll surprise people at how hard he comes back and I think he'll surprise people this year that he can play an up-tempo game. And I hope he'll surprise people in how he defends."

That's how Kambala wants it.

A month ago, he got a tattoo on his right biceps of cartoon character Casper the Friendly Ghost cradling a basketball.

Since he immigrated from Latvia, a country of about two million people that was once a part of the former Soviet Union, people have called him Casper.

The ghost on his arm isn't very friendly, however. It has horns and a devilish grin.

"He's got a tricky grin," Kambala said. "Like you never know what he's up to.

"That's how I want to be on the court so that they don't really know what's going to happen. They don't know when you're going to show up or where you're going to show up."