Although many of the NBA owners had, at one point or another, risen from poverty to earn their fortunes, there was something disturbingly new money about Buss that rubbed folks wrong.
Or perhaps it was just that he seemed to have tons of sex.
Born on January 27, 1933, Buss was thirteen when he moved with his family from Southern California to Kemmerer, Wyoming, a town of 2,656 best known as the site where, in 1902, the J. C. Penney Company store was founded. His mother, Jessie, and father, Lydus, both accountants, had divorced when he was a baby, and Jerry’s boyhood was one of waywardness and financial hardship. He lived with his mother; stepfather, Cecil Brown; half brother, Mickey; half sister, Susan; and stepbrother, Jim, in a small six-room home. “I can remember standing in a WPA line with a gunny sack,” Buss recalled, “and I remember having to buy chocolate milk instead of white because it was one cent cheaper.” To help with the bills, Jerry worked odd jobs, shining shoes and carrying bags at the Kemmerer Hotel and setting pins at the Kemmerer Bowling Alley. He and his close friend, Jim Dover, would rig the slot machine at the hotel, then use the money to buy banana cream pies. “Jerry was very industrious,” said Raymond Barp, a classmate. “If there was a job he could do and make a buck, he was there.”
Buss’s early career ambition wasn’t to be an entrepreneur but a gambler. He was a hustler at poker, and once took his high school teacher for ten straight games of $50-a-round pool. He briefly dropped out of school to work at Union Pacific, laying and maintaining railroad tracks. It was an awful way to make a living. “There’d be two, three fights a day,” he said. “It was pretty exciting for a sixteen-year-old kid. You never knew what those guys would do. I kept my mouth shut most of the time.”
After four months, Buss spotted an advertisement for civil service chemists. The pay was a significant upgrade from his railroad check. He was inspired to return to high school for his senior year, and—because of a falling-out with his stepfather—moved in with his science teacher, Walter Garrett, whom Buss later called “my inspiration.” Garrett saw true genius in his student, and signed him up to take a national science test sponsored by Bausch & Lomb. That earned Buss a scholarship to the University of Wyoming. “[Garrett] is the one who turned everything around for me,” Buss said. “I was not academically inclined—school was easy for me, I didn’t have bad grades—but he encouraged me and I was able to get a scholarship.”
On the Laramie, Wyoming, campus, Buss wasn’t merely another student. He petitioned to take algebra, trigonometry and analytical geometry concurrently, and earned a degree in chemistry in just two and a half years. “He never turned in a paper with an error on it, whether it was a daily quiz or a final exam,” said Kenneth Doi, a classmate and friend. “That’s really an accomplishment. Everything was 100 percent.” Buss’s 4.0 GPA resulted in graduate school scholarship offers from, among others, Harvard, Michigan, Caltech and the University of Southern California. Because of his love of college football and beautiful weather, he picked USC.
Upon completing both his masters and PhD in 1957, Buss moved to Boston to work for Arthur D. Little, a management consultancy firm. He arrived at the office at 9 A.M., took the requisite one-hour lunch break, returned to his desk—and dreaded every moment. “I couldn’t stand wearing a pinstripe suit and carrying a briefcase,” Buss said. He returned to California to take a job at McDonnell Douglas, and was employed briefly at a space laboratory. Once again, the uniformity irked him. “All I could see were 500 desks, 500 white shirts and 500 different colored neckties,” he said. “We were a herd of very educated cattle.”
In 1958, Buss asked Frank Mariani, a friend and aerospace engineer, whether he’d consider pooling some money to invest in a small apartment house in West Los Angeles. Mariani agreed, and each man put aside $83.33 a month until (along with the help of a handful of friends) there was enough to secure a bank loan to buy a fourteen-unit building. Before long, one property became two; two properties became four; four properties became, by 1962, hundreds. The two men—now officially Mariani-Buss Associates—flourished by purchasing repossessed buildings from banks and turning them around. The kid who once lived in a pool hall became the man worth millions; the men who began with a single unit owned more than seven hundred separate pieces of property in California, Arizona and Nevada.
That alone would have made Buss an appropriate NBA owner. But a person who lived and died with USC sports (Buss not only attended every Trojan football game, but nearly every Trojan track-and-field meet) wasn’t content to kick back and watch his wealth accumulate. No, Buss liked the action. “Life,” his daughter, Jeanie, once said, “gives him adrenaline.” While buying and building up the Strings of World Team Tennis (well, he tried to build them up. The sport wound up losing Buss nearly $5 million), he became known as Los Angeles’ most eligible bachelor.
Though married to his second wife, Veronica, since 1972—his first marriage, to the former JoAnn Mueller, ended in divorce; the couple had four children—Buss never tried to hide his infatuation with young, sexy women. He could often be found at the city’s hottest clubs, a big-breasted blond stunner on his left arm, a big-breasted brunette stunner on the other. Inside his bedroom, he kept piles of photo albums, loaded with pictures of the women he dated. In an inexplicable way, there was honor to it. Buss never sought to exploit or embarrass. “He had this routine, where he would take a girl out to buy her a dress and a pair of shoes,” said Linda Rambis, a future team employee (and the wife of Kurt Rambis, a Laker forward). “Then she would wear the outfit to dinner. It was very old Hollywood.”
“With Jerry,” said Charline Kenney, his assistant, “it was often more important to make sure he had a luncheon date than a meeting date. We’d arrange for one sweet thing to come for lunch, then another sweet thing for dinner. They couldn’t overlap—but he kind of loved it when they did.” In 1978, Buss had the good fortune of meeting John Rockwell, the actor best known for having played the title character in the 1961 TV series The Adventures of Superboy. Rockwell brought Jerry to the Playboy Mansion (where Rockwell lived for a spell) and introduced him to Hugh Hefner. “It was a match made in heaven,” Rockwell said. “I knew all the women from the Playboy Mansion, so I introduced him to a bunch of the Playmates. They immediately liked Jerry, because he was never pushy with them. If a girl needed a new car, Jerry would gamble, make the money and buy them a new car. What wasn’t to like?”
“Every man in America wanted to be Jerry Buss,” said Pat O’Brien, the CBS reporter. “You’re fifty, fucking underage girls, rich as can be.”
Unlike the majority of NBA owners, who made for a frumpish group, Buss cast a dashing figure. He was forty-six but looked thirty-five, with long brown hair and a porn star’s mustache. “When he entered a room,” Rockwell said, “people noticed. Especially women.”
The NBA held its official meetings at a hotel on Amelia Island, near Jacksonville, Florida, and many of the twenty-two owners in attendance came armed. Sure, Buss had the money. But wasn’t he also a certainty to embarrass a league already facing seemingly insurmountable image problems? Cocaine was allegedly poisoning the league. The Buffalo Braves recently relocated to San Diego, and the New Orleans Jazz bolted for Salt Lake City. An experimental three-point line was dismissed by many as a cartoonish gimmick. The league’s best player, Abdul-Jabbar, refused to engage the media, and its reigning MVP, Moses Malone, was barely intelligible.
And now, just because he had the financial wherewithal, they were supposed to approve a man who dated bimbos? Who, according to multiple rumors, engaged in odd sexual exploits that would cause Hefner to blush? Who had allegedly married his second wife, Veronica, while still married to his first, JoAnn? “There was genuine opposition,” said Roy Johnson, the New York Times writer. “I was covering the meetings, and back then you would know pretty much everything going on, all the details. Literally, you could sit outside the meeting room and listen in.”
Ul
timately, the Buss acquisition was approved thanks to one man: Jack Kent Cooke. Hardly known for his eloquence, Cooke presented his cohorts with a graceful defense of his friend. Like the rest of them, Jerry Buss was a true sports enthusiast who would do his absolute best to make sure the league succeeded. He also happened to be a marketing genius. Though Buss lost millions in World Team Tennis, he put his own money where his mouth was, lavishing enormous contracts upon stars like Chris Evert, Ilie Nastase and the Amritraj brothers. “I can assure you, Jerry Buss will do wonders for the NBA,” Cooke said. “I have no doubt about it. You shouldn’t, either.”
One night later, after the approval was official and the documents were being prepared for signing, Jerry Buss could be found inside a rickety one-bedroom apartment on Doheny Street in Los Angeles. He was there visiting his girlfriend, Debbie Zafrani, a gorgeous bunny at the local Playboy Club who was, not surprisingly, about half his age. “He was just hanging out with us, as he always did,” said Linda Rambis, Debbie’s sister. “For months he’d been telling us, ‘Someday I’m going to own the Lakers. I love that team, and I’m going to be the owner.’ My sister and I are from Chicago—we just thought he was eccentric. We’d watch the Lakers on TV, and he’d go on about owning them, usually while drinking his rum and Coke. Well, this one night he says, ‘I bought the Lakers! I really did! Let’s go out for dinner and celebrate.’ I probably didn’t even believe him. I mean, really, you bought the Lakers? C’mon.”
CHAPTER 3
THE UNLIKELY HEAD COACH
The long-distance phone call made no sense.
Jerry Buss?
Who the hell was Jerry Buss?
Jack McKinney sure didn’t recognize the name, even as Bill Sharman, the general manager of the Los Angeles Lakers, explained to him that the franchise was under new ownership, and that a coaching change had to be made, and that he—yes, he!—was being strongly considered.
Certainly, even with Jerry Tarkanian out of the running, there were sexier candidates for one of the NBA’s marquee franchises to pursue. How about John Wooden, the UCLA men’s basketball coach? Or Jud Heathcote, fresh off of leading Michigan State (and Magic Johnson) to the school’s first-ever national championship? Hubie Brown, the Atlanta Hawks’s forty-five-year-old hotshot coach, might be willing to head west for the right price. There was always Les Habegger, the top aide to head coach Lenny Wilkens with the world-champion Seattle SuperSonics. Or even the two Laker assistants from the previous season—Stan Albeck and Jack McCloskey.
And yet . . . as he sat on a couch inside his hotel room on Lake Maggiore, Italy, on the morning of July 11, 1979, McKinney realized that this was 100 percent serious, that Jerry Buss was the new owner of the Los Angeles Lakers, and that he had been told there was an obscure, understated assistant with the Portland Trail Blazers who knew the game as well as anyone in basketball.
“We love a lot about you,” Sharman said. “Dr. Buss would like you to fly to Los Angeles and talk about the coaching position.”
They spoke for a while, the fifty-three-year-old GM and the forty-four-year-old assistant coach, then agreed McKinney should leave Italy (and the basketball clinic he was running alongside Allessandro Gamba, the Italian national team coach) to come to Los Angeles in two days to chat face-to-face. As soon as he hung up the phone, McKinney’s thoughts spun round and round. He’d always believed Kareem Abdul-Jabbar could be an improved rebounder and shot blocker. He’d always thought Jamaal Wilkes could be a lockdown defender. He knew that, with two legitimate point guards—Norm Nixon and Magic Johnson—in the backcourt, the Lakers could run opponents to near death. He knew the Lakers needed a legitimate power forward. They also needed to be tougher. Meaner. Less giving, more attacking. “It was a dream job,” McKinney said. “You’re talking about a roster with historic talent, maybe just requiring some tweaks.”
When McKinney arrived, jet-lagged but jovial, he was warmly greeted by Buss, whose casual attire and youthful enthusiasm caught him off guard. Jack Kent Cooke had been the overlord of the Lakers for so long, people still half expected him to arrogantly emerge from his bunker. Instead, here was Buss (“Please, call me Jerry”) offering a scotch, leaning back in a chair, anxious to hear not merely what Jack McKinney believed but, specifically, who he was.
One helluva story waited to be told.
• • •
When Jack McKinney was nine, his father snuck him into Babe Ruth’s funeral.
It was one of those moments—rare, precious, special—that life doesn’t announce ahead of time. The Bambino had died of cancer on August 16, 1948. The following evening, Paul McKinney, a detective with the Chester (Pennsylvania) Police Department, picked up his son from St. Robert Elementary School and drove him to the nearby State Theatre. A special presentation of The Babe Ruth Story was being shown, and father wanted son to know what sort of man the world had lost.
As they exited the theatre, Paul turned to young Jack. Tears were running down his cheeks. “We’re gonna get up early tomorrow,” he said, “and say good-bye to the Babe.”
They made the two-and-a-half-hour drive from Chester to New York City, Paul McKinney telling his boy everything there was to know about Babe Ruth. The hardscrabble Baltimore youth. The trade from the Red Sox to the Yankees. The breathtaking 1927 season. The Called Shot. “My dad was a god to me, and he knew everything about sports,” said Jack McKinney. “He would take me all over the place—to heavyweight fights, to Shibe Park to see the Phillies and Eagles play. Everywhere.”
Upon arriving outside Manhattan’s St. Patrick’s Cathedral, the McKinneys were flabbergasted by the human tidal wave itching to witness history. There were men and women, boys and girls, blacks and whites and people of all ilks—packed in, twenty rows deep.
Paul McKinney took a tight hold of his son’s hand and said, “Stick with me.” They wove through the masses and approached a barricade. Paul spotted a New York City police officer, removed his badge from his belt and spoke with an invented Irish accent. “I drove my son all the way from Chester to New York City to see the Babe,” he said. “Can you help me?”
The officer lifted the wood beam and motioned for the McKinneys to enter St. Patrick’s. As he walked up the marble steps, then strode through the main entrance, Jack was flabbergasted. To his left stood Thomas E. Dewey, the governor of New York. To his right stood William Bendix, the actor who, a day earlier, he had seen on a large screen, starring as the title character in The Babe Ruth Story. “For a little kid, it was like being surrounded by royalty,” he said. “It was larger than life.”
Jack McKinney held on to that day. To the smells, the sounds, the profound sadness. Mostly, he held on to the buzz. Even on the occasion of a death, there was an indescribable magic stemming from the energy and outpouring of raw, powerful emotion. “Sports is one of the few things that has that effect on people,” he said. “That sort of unique power.”
Jack McKinney’s first taste of basketball glory came as a student at St. Robert, when Sister Edward Francis, his fourth-grade teacher, announced that Sister Michael Anita and her fifth-grade class had challenged them to a game. With seconds remaining, McKinney stepped to the line for two free throws. His first shot was released underhanded. It soared over the backboard and landed on the stage behind the baseline. Snickers ensued. The second shot, also underhanded, went in, and his classmates burst into cheers. McKinney’s point ended the threat of a shutout. His grade lost, 12–1. “The next day in class, Sister Edward Francis . . . was ready to canonize me for the greatest one-point performance of all time,” McKinney wrote.
As a sophomore at St. James High School, he made the Bulldogs varsity. His coach was a young Xs and Os wonk named Jack Ramsay. “Jack was a good, but not great, player,” said Ramsay. “He was a good defender, not a good shooter. But he could drive to the basket and he was intelligent. He also happened to be very likable. That never hurts.” As a senior, McKinney was asked by h
is chemistry teacher, Father Wesolowski, to forgo baseball and come out for track. “I didn’t really want to, but I wasn’t doing very well in chemistry,” he said. “Up until that point I’d never high jumped before then. Not once. Well, I won every meet I competed in, broke the school record and won the Catholic League championship.”
McKinney earned a track and field scholarship to Saint Joseph’s College in nearby Philadelphia. He played basketball as well, primarily filling the role of off-the-bench defensive specialist.
Before his junior year, Saint Joseph’s hired (coincidentally) Ramsay to take over as varsity coach. Thus began the lifelong kinship of the hard-nosed player with a firm understanding of the game and the professorial coach with an appreciation for on-court thinkers. “I really absorbed his teaching,” said McKinney. “We did an awful lot of setting up and arranging during the pre-season, so that, come important games, we were always prepared. He would always say, ‘We’re gonna work, because hard work brings about hard play, and hard play is what we want.’ I wasn’t someone gifted with tons of natural ability. So work ethic was my biggest strength.”
Actually, McKinney’s biggest strength was something much more profound: decency. He was a good person. Reliable. Capable. Empathetic. After graduating from college, he was hired by St. James High, his alma mater, to teach history, English and physical education, as well as coach varsity basketball. McKinney immediately fell in love with coaching: standing along the sideline, diagramming plays, positioning lineups, devising a strategy to overcome teams boasting greater talent. When, a couple of years later, Ramsay offered him a position as an assistant coach at Saint Joseph’s (as well as the title of assistant athletic director), McKinney jumped at the opportunity.
Six years later, after a brief stint as the basketball coach at Philadelphia Textile, McKinney took over for Ramsay, who had developed a retinal problem that forced him to step down. Entering the 1966–67 season, the Hawks featured a bottom-basement roster. Six of the top seven players had graduated, and the incoming freshman class was notably thin. Somehow, the team finished 16-10 and advanced to the MAC championship game. “Our teams used to be known for trapping and full-court presses,” said Mike Hauer, a 6-foot-3 guard. “But Jack adjusted to his players’ abilities. Also, he wasn’t a coach with an ego. He’d listen to us, and if something wasn’t working and we told him so, he’d often make the change. Even when I was at my worst, he never stopped listening. He was the kind of coach you’d be lucky to play for.”
Showtime: Magic, Kareem, Riley, and the Los Angeles Lakers Dynasty ofthe 1980s Page 4