“I asked to see a profit and loss statement and told him I’d think about it,” Cooke said. “The P&L Short gave me was just thrown together. I couldn’t make any sense of it.” Cooke’s basketball IQ was -17. His business IQ, however, was off all charts. Though he was reluctant to admit it, his motivation in buying the Lakers was the assumption that it would help in his efforts to bring an NHL franchise to California. “That was the only reason he acquired the Lakers,” said Alan Rothenberg, formerly an attorney with the Lakers. “Jack Kent Cooke was a hockey guy.”
In 1966, the Lakers played in the Los Angeles Sports Arena, a seven-year-old facility located a stone’s throw from the University of Southern California’s downtown campus. The only other professional organization to regularly use the building was the Los Angeles Blades, a minor league hockey team. When the NHL announced its plan to move west, Cooke met with the Coliseum Commission, the city’s governing athletics body, and promised to build a stadium with his own money.
Nobody believed Cooke. Another arena in L.A.? Yeah, right—why not construct another Dodger Stadium, too? “If you look at the newspapers back then, everybody thought he was bluffing,” Rothenberg said. “The commission conditionally gave him a team, knowing it was never going to happen.”
It happened. The $16 million Forum was, in the sarcastic words of The Washington Post’s Bill Brubaker, “a modest little place with 57-foot-high columns and 17,000 upholstered seats.” Though it was, technically, located 16 miles away in the decrepit city of Inglewood, the Forum was all about Hollywood glitz and glamour. Cooke called it “the finest arena built since the original Roman Colosseum,” adding, “Perhaps 200 years from now, or even 2,000, people will say the Forum was one of the fine buildings erected in the 20th century.”
In 1967, the Los Angeles Kings—Jack Kent Cooke’s Los Angeles Kings—made their NHL debut, sharing the Forum with the Lakers. Before long, Cooke developed a reputation as a basketball kingpin, acquiring Wilt Chamberlain to play center in 1968, winning an NBA championship in 1972, then, in 1975, making a trade with Milwaukee for another dominant, in-his-prime center, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. In fourteen seasons with Cooke as the owner, the Lakers went 673-472, reached five championship series and endured only two losing years. “Mr. Cooke was a genius in many ways,” said Joan McLaughlin, a director of human resources with the Lakers for more than thirty years. “He was quick on his feet, very smart when it came to running a business.”
And yet . . .
“He also could be quite the SOB.”
On March 8, 1973, Cooke suffered a massive coronary thrombosis, returned to work after a couple of months and seemed determined to crush the collective esteem of his employees. He would call workers just to see if they’d answer the phone within three rings. If not, they were fired. He regularly berated Bill Sharman, the team’s general manager, after Laker losses, and called down to the Kings’ bench during games to lambaste coaches and players. He promised Rothman a substantial bonus should she book in excess of 185 annual events for the Forum. Upon reaching the goal, she asked Cooke for the money and was kicked out of his office. He would tell female employees to twirl in his presence, all the while standing to the side and critiquing their wardrobes and physical condition. “He liked to perform for people,” said McLaughlin. “He thought it impressed everyone.” According to a former Kings player, Cooke once demanded an employee remove his jacket—then placed the garment atop his beloved dog, Coco. In 1976, at a time when his estimated worth was $100 million, Cooke was paying his full-time houseman $8,400 annually. Chick Hearn, the longtime Lakers announcer, liked telling the story of how he suggested that the new building—dubbed simply the Forum—be called the Fabulous Forum. Cooke was so pleased, he told Hearn, “There will be a little something extra in your paycheck this week.” Indeed, there was—a wallet-size photograph of Jack Kent Cooke. “He was,” said Rod Hundley, the former Lakers player and broadcaster, “the number one asshole that ever lived.”
Despite his limited popularity, by the mid- to late 1970s, Cooke was, arguably, the most powerful man in professional sports. He also, secretly, wanted out.
On October 28, 1977, the City News Service published a piece that, for Lakers fans who assumed everything was hunky-dory, shocked the senses:
Sports entrepreneur Jack Kent Cooke may be forced to sell some of his interests in three professional teams to meet a community property challenge by his recently divorced wife, it was disclosed today.
Jeannie Cooke is seeking half of an estimated $100 million fortune now tied up partly in the ownership of the Los Angeles Kings, Lakers and the Washington Redskins, her attorney Douglas Bagby said.
. . . Mrs. Cooke’s attorneys estimate that the 64-year-old Cooke’s holdings, which in addition to the Kings, Lakers and Redskins, include the Forum and two million shares of Teleprompter stock, are worth about $100 million.
Before long, Cooke had relocated from his plush Bel Air estate to Las Vegas. Though presented to the public as a chance to live somewhere fun and new, Cooke turned to the land of fuzzy dice strictly as a tax-related shelter. Thanks to Nevada state laws, Jeannie Cooke would reportedly be unable to touch her husband’s holdings—as long as he resided there. If his soon-to-be-ex-wife wanted his money, she’d have to chase him to Nevada to get it. The result was a divorce that, over a two-and-a-half-year span, involved forty-one lawyers and 12,000 pages of documents. “He wasn’t one to give in,” said Rothenberg. “He assumed if he went to Las Vegas, he’d be protected. But, to be honest, my personal feeling is he also wanted to leave town and change his life.”
Midway through all the craziness, Cooke let it be known that, were someone to come along and show a sincere interest in purchasing the Lakers, the Kings and the Forum (as a package), he would listen.
• • •
“Why do you play in that shit hole?”
The question, asked by Claire Rothman, caught Jerry Buss beneath the chin. Shit hole! The Los Angeles Memorial Sports Arena wasn’t a shit hole . . . was it? Sure, the seats were kinda dirty, and the lighting quality was awful, and the neighborhood left one ripe for a mugging. But shit hole?
Truth be told, Buss, the forty-one-year-old owner of the Los Angeles Strings of the upstart World Team Tennis, had thought little about it. He had never owned a professional sports franchise before purchasing the Strings in 1974, and chose to have his team based out of the Sports Arena because, simply, it was available.
Then, in the winter of 1975, he received the call from Rothman. “I didn’t have a plan . . . just contacted him out of the blue, because I knew he owned the Strings and I knew we had open dates at the Forum,” Rothman said. “I remember telling him his team should be at the Forum, and his response was, ‘I can’t possibly afford that.’”
“Well,” Rothman replied, “I’ll make you an offer you can’t refuse.”
That same day, Buss came to the Forum, met with Rothman and bought a $12,500 box in the arena. Before he left, Rothman suggested that she introduce him to Jack Kent Cooke. The men lunched in the Forum’s Trophy Room. Though they shared but two obvious similarities (a love of sports and a bundle of money), the connection was strong. Buss liked Cooke’s bluntness, as well as the way he’d taken nothing and turned it into something. Cooke, meanwhile, heard Buss’s rags-to-riches narrative and felt a genuine kinship. They were two wealthy out-of-towners (Cooke from Toronto, Buss from Kemmerer, Wyoming) who’d emerged from impoverished childhoods and made something of themselves. Buss, a University of Wyoming graduate with a masters and PhD in physical chemistry from the University of Southern California, was a full-blown real estate baron. He had purchased his first property, a fourteen-unit apartment house in west Los Angeles, in 1959, and twenty years later boasted more than seven hundred pieces of real estate, ranging from hotels to apartment buildings to valuable vacant pieces of land. He was the type of thinker Cooke identified with.
Plus,
Buss agreed to relocate the Strings to the Forum. “That,” said Rothman, “certainly didn’t hurt.”
The men began speaking semiregularly—mostly Buss listening and Cooke blathering on about this success and that victory. He could be an insufferable braggart, Buss admitted to friends, but one with a sterling track record. They were an odd couple to behold. Buss wore denim jeans (“disgustingly shabby Levis,” Sports Illustrated’s William Oscar Johnson wrote) with a rumpled western shirt unbuttoned from the chest up. He once turned down an offer to play the Marlboro Man in a cigarette ad. Buss wasn’t verbally brash and, unlike Cooke, wasn’t afraid to mingle with the employees. While trying to sign Jimmy Connors to play for the Strings, Buss learned the tennis legend liked showing off his new jet-black Porsche to friends. The next time he was scheduled to meet Connors, Buss pulled up in his just-off-the-lot Maserati. He jumped out and dangled the keys before Connors. “You want it?” he said. “All you have to do is sign.” (A floored Connors ultimately declined.)
In the early months of 1978, Cooke reached a decision: He would sell his Los Angeles holdings (known officially as California Sports, Inc.) and focus on the Washington Redskins. Though he took bids from seven different entities, Buss always held the inside edge. As Cooke knew well, his wasn’t merely a passing interest in sports. In 1970, Buss considered purchasing the Los Angeles Stars of the ABA. Once, he tried trading half of a resort he owned, the Ocotillo Lodge, for a percentage of the San Diego Conquistadors, also of the ABA. More recently, he had put out feelers about purchasing the Oakland Athletics and Chicago White Sox. Each time, Buss came up empty.
Although the men were close, negotiations wouldn’t be easy. Cooke threw in oddball conditions—“He insisted Jerry buy a house in Las Vegas for the lady he was seeing,” said Charline Kenney, Buss’s assistant. “Weird things like that.” Here is how Sports Illustrated surmised what still goes down as the most complex transaction in the history of American team sports:
The deal is this: Buss and his partners will pay $43.5 million for the Forum and the Raljon Ranch near Bakersfield. Buss, on his own, will pay $24 million for the Lakers and the Kings and will own the teams personally. He and his partners will assume an approximate $10 million mortgage on the Forum. Cooke has a choice of taking the remaining $37.5 million in cash or $20 million in cash and $37.5 million in real estate, choosing properties from a list drawn by Buss’s corporation, Mariani-Buss Associates. Cooke has a month or more to decide what form of payment to accept, but Buss says, “I would imagine he’ll opt for a tax-free exchange and take the real estate. If he takes only cash, it could cost him an extra $9 million or so in taxes.”
What the article failed to mention was that one of the small pieces of real estate the two traded was the Chrysler Building, the seventy-seven-story New York City landmark, which went from Buss to Cooke. “It was staggering—all of it,” said Rothenberg. “These were bigger-than-life holdings being swapped like chips. It was amazing to be a part of.”
The transaction was formally announced on May 27, 1979, with a bold front-page New York Times headline: 2 LOS ANGELES TEAMS, ARENA ARE SAID TO BE SOLD.
“It was so cool,” said Jeanie Buss, Jerry’s daughter. “I mean, it was neat Dad owned the Lakers, but to have the Forum at eighteen was amazing. I was like, ‘You mean when Rod Stewart comes to town, I get front-row seats?’”
A couple of hours after he formally shook hands with Cooke on the exchange, Buss bought a bottle of Jack Daniel’s, entered the Forum, turned on a single light from the scoreboard, sat on the hardwood floor and got drunk. “I own this!” he screamed, lying at center court. “I fucking own this!”
Before everything was finalized, however, a few details needed to be taken care of.
Jack Kent Cooke wasn’t one to go out quietly.
CHAPTER 2
OF SAND DABS AND THE MARLBORO MAN
Earvin Johnson wanted a hamburger.
He was a nineteen-year-old kid, fond of burgers and pizza and French fries and any other cuisine guaranteed to block the arteries. Sure, he happened to be sitting in the presence of Jack Kent Cooke, perhaps the world’s least likely man to ever order a burger of any sort. But, hey, Johnson was hungry.
Scratch that. Starving.
It was a warm May afternoon in Los Angeles, and the most dynamic player to grace college basketball since Louisiana State’s Pete Maravich a decade earlier was in town to figure out whether he should return to Michigan State University for his junior season or jump to a professional sports league that had been crippled by poor TV ratings, player indifference and a dwindling fan base. On the one hand, in East Lansing, Michigan, Johnson—a local kid out of Everett High School—was a king. He had been nicknamed Magic as a fifteen-year-old high school freshman and now, having just led the Spartans to their first NCAA men’s basketball title, he could not walk the streets without being mobbed. “He really was beyond reproach,” said George Fox, his high school coach. “Earvin could do no wrong.”
There was, however, the siren call of the NBA and specifically the siren call of Jack Kent Cooke’s thick wallet. On April 19, 1979, the Lakers and Chicago Bulls had engaged in a coin flip to determine which team would be gifted with the number one pick in the upcoming draft. Coming off of a 47–35 season, Los Angeles was in such a position because, three years earlier, the New Orleans Jazz committed one of the worst free-agent acquisitions in league history. The team signed thirty-three-year-old Gail Goodrich, a long-ago star on his last legs. At the time, league rules mandated that the Jazz had to compensate Los Angeles with players, draft picks or money. After much haggling between the Lakers and Jazz general manager Barry Mendelson, New Orleans agreed to part with its first-round picks in 1977 and 1979, as well as a second-rounder in 1980. “Gail was great,” said Bill Bertka, the Jazz vice president of basketball operations. “But he was older, and he came to us and immediately tore his Achilles. That didn’t make us look so smart. Especially when we lost almost every stinkin’ game in 1978–79.” (The Jazz went a league-worst 26-56.)
When Larry O’Brien, the NBA’s commissioner, prepared to flip the coin inside the league’s New York City headquarters, the Bulls and Lakers felt their futures momentarily hovering in midair. Executives from both teams listened to the toss via speakerphone from their respective offices.
“Chicago, do you want to make the call?” O’Brien asked.
“We’d love to,” replied Rod Thorn, the Bulls’ general manager, who was sitting inside the team’s offices on the thirteenth floor of a Michigan Avenue building.
“Is that OK with you, Los Angeles?” O’Brien said.
“Fine,” said Chick Hearn, the announcer, who also worked as an assistant general manager with the team.
“We call heads,” said Thorn.
A pause.
“OK, gentlemen, here we go,” boomed the deep voice of O’Brien. “The coin’s in the air. . . .”
Another pause.
Another pause.
Another pause.
“Tails it is!” O’Brien said.
Hearn let out a triumphant whoop.
“I was playing basketball at Venice Beach,” said Pat O’Brien, at the time a reporter for KNXT-TV in Los Angeles. “The news came over a transistor radio, and people started screaming. ‘Yes! Yes! We’re getting Magic! We’re getting Magic!’”
Johnson was equally euphoric. The last place he wanted to go was Chicago, what with its awful winters (he was never one for the snow) and perennially dreadful basketball teams. The Bulls played in dumpy Chicago Stadium, and put forth an uninspired roster highlighted by the likes of Andre Wakefield and Wilbur Holland. Los Angeles, meanwhile, was but a dream to Johnson, who rightly envisioned a paradise of palm trees and 80-degree days and gorgeous women in wallet-size bikinis. Had the coin landed heads, Johnson would have returned to Michigan State for his junior season.
So here now, a mere few w
eeks later, the kid was itching for a hamburger, befuddled by what was placed before him. Sitting at a table inside the Forum’s Trophy Room, Johnson was in town for lunch, sure, but really to feel out Cooke and the Lakers. The draft was still two months away, and both sides wanted to know whether a partnership could be reached.
Accompanying Cooke and Johnson were Hearn and Earvin Johnson Sr. Two of the player’s representatives, George Andrews and Dr. Charles Tucker, also attended. “Gentlemen,” Cooke bellowed, “I’m going to order lunch for you! We’re going to have some marvelous fish!”
Moments later, the plates arrived. The first thing Johnson noticed was the awful smell. He looked down and saw something bland and crusty.
Cooke observed Johnson’s bewildered expression.
“They’re sand dabs!” he said. “Sand dabs!”
Johnson glanced at his father, leaned close and whispered, “I don’t know what a sand dab is.”
Cooke was nonplussed. “Young man, do you know how much a sand dab costs?”
Johnson shook his head.
“Well, they’re very expensive,” Cooke said. “It’s a very fine fish. Now eat.”
Johnson stabbed the listless sand dab with his fork. Nudged it around a bit. Pushed it left. Pushed it right. “I can’t eat this,” he said.
Cooke, a man who knew a high-quality sand dab when he saw it, was outraged. “What are you talking about?” he said. “Do you know how much that fish costs?”
“If it’s OK with you, Mr. Cooke, I think I’d rather have a hamburger and some French fries,” Johnson said softly. “Would that be OK?”
Showtime: Magic, Kareem, Riley, and the Los Angeles Lakers Dynasty ofthe 1980s Page 2