ALSO BY JEFF PEARLMAN
Sweetness: The Enigmatic Life of Walter Payton
The Rocket That Fell to Earth
Boys Will Be Boys
Love Me, Hate Me
The Bad Guys Won!
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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Pearlman, Jeff.
Showtime : Magic, Kareem, Riley, and the Los Angeles Lakers dynasty of the 1980s / Jeff Pearlman.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-59240-755-2 (hardback)
ISBN 978-0-698-14861-1 (eBook)
1. Los Angeles Lakers (Basketball team)—History. I. Title.
GV885.52.L67P43 2014
796.323'640979494—dc23 2013026263
While the author has made every effort to provide accurate telephone numbers, Internet addresses, and other contact information at the time of publication, neither the publisher nor the author assumes any responsibility for errors or for changes that occur after publication. Further, the publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.
Version_1
CONTENTS
Also by Jeff Pearlman
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Prologue
PART ONE
DEVELOPMENT OF A DREAM
Chapter 1:Jack Kent Kook
Chapter 2:Of Sand Dabs and the Marlboro Man
Chapter 3:The Unlikely Head Coach
Chapter 4:Center of Complications
Chapter 5:Crash
Chapter 6:West Fall
Chapter 7:Picture Imperfect
PART TWO
DOMINANCE
Chapter 8:Riled Up
Chapter 9:Clark Kent
Chapter 10:Clubbing
Chapter 11:The Departed
Chapter 12:Earl
Chapter 13:Virginal
Chapter 14:Worthy of Superstardom
Chapter 15:Bring It
Chapter 16:Shattered Glass
Chapter 17:Motown
Chapter 18:Good-bye, Cap
PART THREE
DEMISE OF A DYNASTY
Chapter 19:Undone
Chapter 20:Bates
Chapter 21:Refreshment
Chapter 22:Shock
Afterword
Acknowledgments
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Photographs
To Catherine, Casey, and Emmett—my three diamonds.
And then a gatorsaur ate them.
The end.
PROLOGUE
Spencer Haywood?”
The name hangs there, awkwardly suspended in midair as if attached to the string of a balloon. I am looking at Jack McKinney. Jack McKinney is looking at me. It is a warm February day in Naples, Florida. We are on an enclosed patio. Small glasses of ice water have been served. A couple of birds chirp. The wind whistles gently in the background.
I am the journalist, here to interview the greatest NBA coach 999 of 1,000 basketball fans have never heard of. Jack McKinney is here to answer my questions. And yet, he can’t. Well, he can—sort of. The replies start, then stutter, then stop, then start again. The thoughts seem on point, turn left, hit a traffic circle and wind up somewhere in Bethesda. There are, he insists, wonderful basketball memories circulating throughout his seventy-seven-year-old brain; joyful tales of his eight years as the head coach at Saint Joseph’s College; serving as an assistant with the world champion Portland Trail Blazers in 1977; tender moments with Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Bill Walton and Jamaal Wilkes and Jack Ramsay. “There was this one game . . .” he says—then stops. Just stops.
“What’s your name again?” McKinney suddenly says, his eyes gazing downward.
“Jeff,” I say. “Jeff Pearlman.”
“That’s right. I wrote your name down five different times before you came here. It’s embarrassing, the way my memory . . .”
From the next room, his wife, Claire, speaks up. “No sob stories, Jack!” she says. “That’s not the way we look at life.”
With that, Jack McKinney refocuses. He glances at me, rubs his chin, looks down, then back up. “What were we talking about?” he asks.
“Spencer Haywood,” I say. “You coached him . . .”
“I coached Spencer Haywood? Are you certain?”
On the table, I have placed a manila folder. It is labeled JACK MCKINNEY in brown marker. Inside are photocopies of thirty or so articles, chronicling the rise and fall of a man who, in the summer of 1979, was hired by the Los Angeles Lakers to coach a team that featured Abdul-Jabbar, the five-time NBA MVP; Haywood, a four-time NBA All-Star; as well as a rookie point guard from Michigan State named Earvin (Magic) Johnson. The clippings tell the story of a forty-four-year-old basketball lifer finally getting his shot, of a humble and decent person brought in to revive a franchise in need of a spark. At his introductory press conference on July 30, a beaming McKinney admitted to the assembled Los Angeles media that his was a relatively simple basketball philosophy. “I’d like to run very much more than we have here, a constant running game,” he said, standing behind a podium inside the Forum. “I’d like a moving offense, rather than having everyone standing around watching Kareem all the time and putting pressure on him.”
McKinney was immediately embraced by his players. He ignored those who said Johnson, a 6-foot-9 ball wizard, was better suited to play power forward than point guard. He spoke regularly with the mercurial Haywood, a thirty-year-old journeyman forward with unlimited talent but a penchant for moody self-confinement. He would stop practices to confront and advise Abdul-Jabbar—“And nobody, and I mean nobody, ever spoke to Kareem like that,” said Michael Cooper, the Laker guard. In short, McKinney was the perfect coach at the perfect time for the perfect team. “He created Showtime,” said Norm Nixon, Los Angeles’ All-Star guard. “That should never be forgotten. You can talk about me and Kareem and Earvin and Pat Riley all you want. But Jack McKinney created Showtime.”
Yet now, as we sit here on a patio, sipping iced water to dull the awkwardness, the man who created Showtime barely remembers creating Showtime. The Lakers jumped out to a 9-4 start that season, prompting Sports Illustrated’s Bruce Newman to write a gl
owing piece titled “Doing It All for LA.” Though McKinney was personally as glitzy as a truck stop, fans loved the way his team played. Under Jerry West, the legendary Laker guard who was the head coach for the three previous seasons, Los Angeles was reduced to being a one-trick pony: See Kareem, wait for Kareem, pass to Kareem, watch Kareem shoot and hope the ball goes in. “Not very imaginative,” said Nixon. “Stilted.”
Suddenly, however, the Lakers were neon lights along the Sunset Strip: pow! and boom! and wow! Johnson and Nixon formed the NBA’s fastest backcourt. Wilkes, the smooth small forward, was gliding toward the rim. Haywood seemed revived and Abdul-Jabbar, the stoic, standoffish icon, was smiling and laughing and having the time of his life. The Forum, once the land where enthusiasm came to die, was alive. “The word is fun,” said Haywood. “We were really fun.”
Back in the day, when the NBA was still relatively bare-boned, teams employed one head coach and one assistant. McKinney’s sidekick was Paul Westhead, another young Philadelphia guy who played for his boss at Saint Joseph’s before coaching at La Salle College for nine years. Like McKinney, Westhead enjoyed run-and-gun basketball, lengthy intellectual discussions about the sport’s intricacies and, when time allowed, friendly games of tennis.
On the morning of November 8, 1979, the phone in McKinney’s Palos Verdes home rang. This was the Lakers’ first off day of the young season, and Westhead was itching for some time on the nearby clay court. The call stirred McKinney from his sleep.
“Want to play some tennis?” Westhead asked.
McKinney grunted—sure.
“I’ve got the court for two hours,” Westhead said. “We can play singles at ten, maybe some doubles with the girls at eleven.”
“What time is it now?” McKinney asked.
“Nine thirty.”
“OK,” he said. “Give me a chance to get some coffee. I can be there in a half hour.”
McKinney showered and drank his morning joe. When he entered the garage, he found that Claire had taken their one car to a nearby church meeting with, of all people, Cassie Westhead, her close friend and Paul’s wife. Leaning against the wall, however, was a red-and-white Schwinn Le Tour II. The bicycle had been a present for his son John, purchased in a Lake Oswego, Oregon, cycling shop two years earlier but ignored since the boy’s recent acquisition of a driver’s license.
Sure, it’d been a while since Jack McKinney had ridden a bike. But he certainly knew how.
“Of course I did,” he says. “Of course . . .”
• • •
“Spencer Haywood.”
The name is stated again, only this time with more confidence. “I coached him in Milwaukee, right?”
“No,” I say. “With the Lakers.”
McKinney glances at me, initially puzzled, then dejected. He knows I am here in my quest to tell the story of the Showtime-era Los Angeles Lakers, a story that, were it not for a day off and a tennis game and a vacant garage and a wobbly bicycle and awful luck, would feature Jack McKinney as a star, not merely a smallish name halfway through the credits. That’s what haunts everyone who knows and loves the man. Not the bike ride, per se, but what could have been had the bike ride never occurred. If—on the morning of November 8, 1979—Jack McKinney decides to ignore the phone, or opts to sleep in, or jogs the one and a half miles, is Paul Westhead known as one of the godfathers of fast-break basketball and the famed guru who ran Hank Gathers and Bo Kimble to 160-point games at Loyola Marymount? Is Pat Riley an eight-time NBA champion and multimillionaire pitchman and motivational speaker? Do the Lakers ever trade Nixon to the Clippers for some kid named Byron Scott? Do they draft Dominique Wilkins instead of James Worthy? Do they keep Abdul-Jabbar around for an extra season? Does Johnson have an even more gilded career? Does Los Angeles win five NBA titles, as it did throughout the 1980s? Or six? Seven?
Is Jack McKinney universally acknowledged as one of the greatest coaches in the history of the National Basketball Association?
“I have no doubt that he would be,” said Nixon. “No doubt whatsoever.”
As we sit here, still talking, still sipping water, McKinney glances through the folder, searching for faded memories and long-lost sparks. He would coach again, hired by the Indiana Pacers at the behest of a guilt-ravaged Jerry Buss, the Lakers’ owner. Yet despite being named the league’s Coach of the Year in 1980–81, he was never the same. Members of the Pacers took the unprecedented step of writing their names in black marker along the front of their shorts so their coach wouldn’t get confused. Later, in a game during his final coaching stint, with Kansas City, several Kings players told the media that, during a time-out, McKinney characterized a play as one “just like we did against St. John’s”—a reference to the New York City school he coached against while at Saint Joseph’s a decade earlier.
Ultimately, McKinney left the NBA altogether, devoting the remainder of his working days to selling sporting goods. He watched the NBA from time to time, but the pain of what could (and should) have been far outweighed any morsels of momentary joy that came from sitting on the couch for Lakers-Celtics. McKinney is not a bitter man, but he is human. “Life isn’t always fair,” he says. “I’m OK with how everything has turned out. I’m loved. But, well, it’s not always fair. . . .”
In his apartment, there is only a single hint that he ever coached the Lakers—a crystal wine carafe with LAKERS etched along the side. Occasionally, Riley, now the president of the Miami Heat, will leave McKinney tickets for a game. “He always says, ‘This is the guy who made my career possible,’” McKinney says. “‘This is the guy.’”
There is a pause. A long, lengthy, painful, awkward, ugly pause. I want to ask Jack McKinney more about the Lakers dynasty, about Westhead and Riley and Magic and Kareem. I want to know if he ever feels as if he’s been left behind, as if there were an enormous party, and he was turned away at the door.
I want to ask him so many things, but come the end of our interview, I simply shake his hand and thank him for the time.
Jack McKinney is the man most responsible for the birth of the Showtime era of professional basketball.
If only he could remember it.
PART ONE
DEVELOPMENT OF A DREAM
Dr. Jerry Buss, attending Michael Cooper’s birthday party with one of the hundreds upon hundreds of young, beautiful women who would sit by his side
CHAPTER 1
JACK KENT KOOK
The dressing-down of Claire Rothman would begin thusly:
First, Jack Kent Cooke made certain there was always a man in the room. It could be a high-rolling executive from another NBA franchise. It could be Jimmy, the Forum’s plumber. Hell, it could be one of Cooke’s boyhood pals from back in Toronto, visiting the home of the Los Angeles Lakers.
Second, Cooke would demand—in the loudest of voices—that Rothman, the Forum’s vice president of booking, see him immediately. “Mrs. Rothman, I want you in my office,” he would hiss angrily. “Now!”
Third, once Rothman entered, the screaming commenced. It would be loud and ugly and, 99 percent of the time, uncalled for. They were out of staples. The steak at the Forum Club was undercooked. Where were the new lightbulbs? Rothman was a sports visionary when it came to utilizing an arena’s full potential. Yet to the owner of the Lakers, she was often little more than a broad in a skirt, an object to be belittled as he, the 5-foot-8½, 160-pound Napoleon of Hollywood, showed off his manliness.
“Now, before you leave,” Cooke would shout, nodding knowingly toward any other men in the room, “repeat after me. ‘I. Will. Not. Make. This. Mistake. Again.’”
Without fail, Rothman did as she was instructed, then slunk out, humiliated.
“I’m going to be honest—Jack Kent Cooke was a real sicko,” Rothman said. “He once had a heart attack, and there was supposedly some loss of oxygen to the brain. I think that worked him a
little bit. Because he was psychologically sick.”
This, in the early days of 1979, was the man behind one of the NBA’s marquee franchises.
This was the owner of the Los Angeles Lakers.
Not that most people were aware of Cooke’s craziness. Though behind closed doors he was a snarling bully, to the business world—where the Lakers had been deemed a model of success—Jack Kent Cooke was a dignified financial genius.
Born in Hamilton, Ontario, on October 25, 1912, Cooke rose from suffocating poverty (his father, Ralph, was a struggling picture frame salesman; his mother, Nancy, a stay-at-home housewife) to earn a small fortune by purchasing struggling radio stations and magazines, turning them around and selling them for large profits. He made his first $1 million by age thirty-two, and used $200,000 of his earnings to purchase 80 percent of the Toronto Maple Leafs baseball team of the International League. His specialty was salesmanship. On preannounced nights, the Maple Leafs would distribute orchids and dollar bills to fans. He held 3-for-the-price-of-1 nights, and pregnant women were granted free admission if accompanied by a spouse. On Friday the 13th, those attending with black cats needed no ticket. The team employed its own flagpole sitter and once invited Fidel Castro, the embattled Cuban president, to Maple Leaf Stadium to throw out the first pitch.
In 1960, he sold most of his Canadian holdings, bolted for Beverly Hills and set his sights on American sports. He paid $350,000 to purchase a 25 percent share of the NFL’s Washington Redskins, then buttressed his fortunes in 1964 by creating American CableVision, a company that specialized in bringing high-level screen quality to areas with poor reception.
Finally, after the 1964–65 NBA season, he bought the Los Angeles Lakers.
At the time, the franchise was owned by Bob Short, a trucking magnate and former U.S. attorney who, in 1960, had relocated the Lakers from his hometown of Minneapolis.
Short had expressed little interest in selling his team. The Lakers made a $500,000 profit over the previous season, a staggering total in a league still struggling to find its way. But when Cooke—who had never before heard of the Lakers—asked about the franchise’s availability, Short named a price that he was certain would send Cooke running: $5.175 million.
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