Showtime: Magic, Kareem, Riley, and the Los Angeles Lakers Dynasty ofthe 1980s

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Showtime: Magic, Kareem, Riley, and the Los Angeles Lakers Dynasty ofthe 1980s Page 6

by Pearlman, Jeff


  The Vikings’ white returnees were slow to embrace Johnson. In his sixth game, however, he finished with 36 points, 18 rebounds and 16 assists against Jackson Parkside, and afterward was approached by Fred Stabley Jr., a writer for the Lansing State Journal.

  “Great game, Earvin,” he said. “I think you should have a nickname. I was thinking of calling you Dr. J, but that’s taken. And so is Big E—Elvin Hayes. How about if I call you Magic?”

  Johnson was fifteen years old and predictably embarrassed. Surely he would be mocked for this one. “Fine,” he said, somewhat dismissively. “Whatever you like.”

  A phenomenon was born.

  Fox had first seen Johnson play in the summer before his arrival at Everett, and he wondered why such a large kid was roaming the perimeter. Once practices began, however, he understood. Earvin Johnson was the Vikings’ best rebounder, best shot-blocker—and best passer and game manager. “Coach Fox was the perfect coach for me,” said Johnson. “He still allowed me to play guard on offense and then, of course, center on defense. And I don’t know many coaches that would allow me to do that—because at that time, the tallest guy would go to center.” Johnson understood the rhythms of basketball better than anyone Fox had ever seen. His decision-making abilities were beyond compare. “There was no one like him,” Fox said. “I don’t mean no one on the team. I mean no one anywhere on the planet.”

  Basketball junkies flocked to Everett games, and chants of “Mag-ic! Mag-ic!” often filled the small gymnasiums. He became a crossover star, as beloved by whites as by blacks. Oftentimes, he kicked off Friday and Saturday nights by hanging out with his black friends, then traveled across town to an Everett party with the whites. When a reporter from The Detroit News asked what, were he given the chance, he would write about himself, Johnson thought for a moment and said, “That he likes to get to know people. He’s a fun person to talk to. . . . He’s an outgoing person. He loves to sit down and talk, talk, talk.”

  As a senior, Johnson led Everett to the Michigan Class A state title by scoring 34 points in a 62–56 overtime victory over Birmingham’s Brother Rice. Throughout the year, there was great debate as to whether he would attend the University of Michigan or Michigan State. Johnson actually visited three other schools (Maryland, Notre Dame and North Carolina), but knew, deep down, he wanted to stay close to home. Michigan was presumed to be the front runner. Johnson had attended the Wolverines’ summer camp after his freshman year, and the program was coming off of a 26-4 record behind All-American Phil Hubbard. Michigan State, meanwhile, was a mess. The Spartans went 12-15, hadn’t reached the NCAA Tournament in nearly twenty years and recently lost the head coach, Gus Ganakas, after a walkout of the black players. He was replaced by someone named Jud Heathcote, who last coached at the University of Montana.

  Both schools pined for Johnson, especially following his showing at an AAU tournament in Florida. Johnson led the upstart team from Michigan into the finals against a club from Washington, DC. The twelve boys from the nation’s capital were clear favorites—among their ranks were forward Larry Spriggs, a future NBA player, as well as soon-to-be college standouts like Kenny Matthews, Earnest Graham, and Jo Jo Hunter. On the night before the big game, Spriggs and Co. knocked on the door of Johnson’s hotel room. “You’re the guy they call Magic, huh?” Spriggs said. “Well, you’ll be seeing the DC All-Stars tomorrow. Be ready.”

  “Why we did that,” said Spriggs, “I’ll never know.”

  Johnson went off for 49 points, 15 assists and 13 rebounds, and Michigan destroyed Washington by 30 points. “He just put on a show,” said Spriggs. “He was the best high school player I’d ever seen, by far.”

  Michigan badly wanted Johnson. The campus was gorgeous, the tradition was impressive, the opportunity for a national title undeniable. Yet Michigan State held three enormous advantages: Location, location and location. Johnson was a Lansing kid, and the Michigan State campus was a 10K run from his home. When, on April 17, 1977, he returned from an international basketball tournament in Germany, he was greeted at the Capital City Airport by more than four hundred people—including Heathcote. “I thought there might be a couple of reporters and my family at the airport, but nothing like this,” he said, wiping away the tears. “It means a great deal to me to see that a lot of people really care about me.”

  When Heathcote promised Johnson a future at point guard, the deal was sealed. A couple of days later, he held a press conference from an Everett classroom. When he announced his choice, the students squealed with delight. “I always wanted to go to Michigan State since, I don’t know, sixth, seventh grade,” he said. “Once you get that Spartan in you, I guess it can’t come out.”

  Johnson was everything Michigan State had hoped for, and he ended his freshman year by averaging 17 points, 7.9 rebounds and 7.4 assists for a team that went 25-5, won the Big Ten Conference title and reached the NCAA Tournament’s Elite Eight before falling to Kentucky. The statistics were wonderful; the charisma was out of this world. For years, the Spartans seemed miserable. Johnson, on the other hand, was always happy. “What does Earvin mean to us?” Duane Vernon, a Spartan die-hard, told Sports Illustrated. “My God, what did Eisenhower mean to the soldiers?”

  Johnson’s sophomore year statistics (17.1 points, 7.6 rebounds, and 7.9 assists per game) were nearly identical to his first-season numbers, but this time he carried the Spartans all the way to the national championship game against undefeated and number one–ranked Indiana State in Salt Lake City. The matchup was the most hyped college clash in thirteen years, since Texas Western’s all-black starting lineup toppled all-white Kentucky, 72–65. The Sycamores were led by their own transcendent star, a quiet forward named Larry Bird from French Lick, Indiana. Unlike Johnson, Bird rarely smiled. Unlike Johnson, Bird could not have cared less about the spotlight. Unlike Johnson, Bird had zero charisma. Yet, like Johnson, he was a brilliant all-around player who, in averaging 28.6 points and 14.9 rebounds, captured the nation’s attention. The two had actually been teammates the previous summer on America’s entry into the World Invitational Tournament, and brooded side by side as the team’s coach, Joe B. Hall, gave most of the on-court time to his players from the University of Kentucky. “I’ve never had a coach completely ignore me before,” Johnson said. “Joe B. Hall was the first.” When they played together—usually on the second unit during practices—Johnson and Bird soared. They were, simply, the two best performers on the court, and everyone (save for Hall) knew it. “When we scrimmaged at night,” Johnson said, “we were blowing his guys off the floor.”

  Now they were, again, rivals. In the lead-up to the game, Johnson warmly approached Bird, but his greeting was rebuffed. Bird didn’t come all the way to Utah to make friends. He was here to win.

  So, however, was Johnson. For all the hype generated by Magic vs. Bird, the contest wasn’t especially close. Approximately 35 million viewers watched Michigan State control Indiana State, 75–64, as Johnson was named the tournament’s outstanding player. It was neither a back-and-forth affair nor a game that ended with a final-second heave. And yet, it proved bigger than anyone could imagine. Said Tim Brando, the renowned broadcaster: “Most of America defines 1979 as being the seminal moment in the history of the NCAA.”

  • • •

  On the night of July 27, four months after he won the collegiate championship, Johnson was making his official professional debut. Though they had yet to name a full staff, and though their roster was far from determined, the Lakers—like all NBA teams—fielded a squad in the annual summer pro league. This was a place for free agents, long-shot rookies and fringe pros to try to state their case. Among the players representing Los Angeles were Mike Cooper, a second-year forward who had missed nearly all of the previous season with a knee injury; Victor King, the second-round pick from Louisiana Tech; Walter Daniels, a third-round selection out of the University of Georgia; and Irv Kiffin, a free agent from
Oklahoma Baptist. In other words, the dregs. “We were all there for the same thing—to get noticed and give ourselves a shot,” said Kiffin. “Wasn’t about anything else but that. Except for one of us.”

  The Lakers were scheduled to face the Detroit Pistons, a summer league matchup that would—under normal circumstances—draw no more than a couple of hundred fans to the Cal State Los Angeles gym.

  Yet an hour before the seven thirty P.M. tip-off, the building was overflowing with spectators. By one count, 3,600 fans jammed a place that seated, uncomfortably, 3,000. Another 1,000 or so stood outside, hoping to catch a glimpse of the new kid in town.

  Of Magic.

  Only a day earlier, the team announced that Johnson would be playing. That meant, it was assumed, an extra 500 or so spectators might come out. Yet as the grandstands filled, fans shuffled in three deep behind the baskets and stuffed the stairways. According to a Los Angeles Times report, the lining of bodies caused the building’s temperature to shoot into the 100s. Observing the madness, George Andrews, Johnson’s attorney, turned to general manager Bill Sharman, grinned and said, “We want to renegotiate.”

  Johnson jogged onto the court a half hour before tip-off, a half-moon smile crossing his face. Those in attendance let loose with a thunderous applause. He was wearing a white jersey with the words ADIDAS SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA PRO BASKETBALL screen-printed across his chest. His number was—randomly, and for no apparent reason—11. For those accustomed to Johnson in the Michigan State green and white, it was a perplexing vision.

  Cooper, the one returnee on the roster, had never seen anything like it. During warm-ups Johnson tapped him on the shoulder.

  “What’s your name, man?” the rookie asked.

  “I’m Michael Cooper,” he replied.

  “OK . . . OK,” Johnson said. “I’m gonna call you Coop. Is that cool?”

  “Sure,” Cooper replied, smiling. “And I’ll call you Earvin.”

  “He had this big Afro, we did the black guy handshake,” Cooper said. “I thought, ‘OK, this brother’s all right.’”

  Johnson began on the bench, backing up the unheralded Daniels. When he rose to enter with seven minutes gone by in the first quarter, fans gave yet another ovation. Johnson jogged halfway onto the court, slapped Daniels on the hand and took an inbounds pass from Cooper, a lightly regarded slasher who grew up mere miles from the Forum.

  Johnson was too new to know any plays, so he simply dribbled up the court, looking left, looking right. He was a dashing sight to behold—a long, sinewy 6-foot-9 point guard, hammering the ball into the hardwood, looking . . . looking . . .

  Whoosh!

  As he approached mid-court, Johnson was accosted by a blue-and-red blur. Roy Hamilton, the Pistons’ first-round pick from UCLA, was also a rookie point guard, and more than a tad irked having to hear the crowd hail Johnson in his own backyard. “I mean, I went to college in Los Angeles,” Hamilton said, laughing. “I had lots of friends at the game. And all these people came to see him play.”

  Hamilton recalled watching Johnson during the 1979 Final Four, and finding himself intrigued by his unusually high dribble. “He was so big, if he turned his back to you, there was very little chance of you taking it,” Hamilton said. “But if he was directly in front of you, you could get the steal.”

  Hamilton measured Johnson, reached across his body with his right hand and quickly slapped the ball away. A shocked Johnson watched as Hamilton took off in the other direction, scoring on an uncontested breakaway layup. Welcome to the NBA. “For that one moment, everyone started going crazy,” said Hamilton. “They started booing him and everything. I actually felt bad for him. It was a pretty amazing situation for him to be in.

  “Later on we became friendly, and he told me, ‘Roy, I was so scared . . . so nervous. And you really embarrassed me.’”

  Before long, Johnson was a spinning, twirling, no-look-passing, on-court maestro. He played 28 of the game’s 48 minutes, scoring 24 points and adding 9 assists, 4 steals and 6 turnovers.

  When the game ended, fans surrounded Johnson, reaching out with pens and scraps of paper. He stopped briefly by the bench for his first post-game interview as an NBA player. “It was beautiful,” he said, smiling. “These fans are really basketball fans, not like I’d heard. They really cheered—not only for us but for both teams. I’m really kind of excited everyone came out.”

  If only his soon-to-be teammates shared his enthusiasm.

  • • •

  Despite eventual talk to the contrary, the veteran members of the 1979–80 Los Angeles Lakers weren’t exactly giddy over the arrival of their new point guard.

  Way back in the fall of 1979, before Johnson and Larry Bird had emerged as all-time stars; before Michael Jordan was enrolled at the University of North Carolina; before LeBron James and Kevin Durant were even born, the NBA was a selfish, me-first, gotta-get-mine land of mistrust and animosity. Winning was important to some players. But, somewhere between Bill Russell’s Boston Celtics heyday and the late 1970s, the well had been poisoned by greed and arrogance and a league-wide epidemic of substance abuse. “The NBA was going downhill—it was obvious,” said Dennis Awtrey, a journeyman center throughout the 1970s. “There were drug things, there was a sloppiness to the game. It just wasn’t good.”

  Wrote the Times’s Jim Murray in a column titled “Lakers Smile? It’s Magic”: “Some teams need a power forward, others need an outside shooter or someone to bring the ball up the court. The Lakers just need somebody to dispel the gloom. This is not a team, it’s a wake. They go about the game as somber as a coroner’s inquest.”

  Johnson was a happy-go-lucky kid who disregarded personal statistics and loved—no, needed—to win. Phrases such as “I want the ball” and “Get it to me and get out of the way” never crossed his lips. He was a pass-first, pass-second, pass-third ballplayer, and the other Lakers would have been wise to embrace him as their personal basketball savior.

  Instead, as the players reported to the College of the Desert in Palm Desert, California, for training camp on September 16, Johnson was eyed warily and, in some cases, hostilely.

  First, there were his blatant expressions of joy—the smiles, the laughs, the easy banter with the media. It all seemed so . . . collegiate and phony. “His personality was electric,” said Kiffin, the rookie forward. “Some people don’t like electricity.”* NBA veterans—and, in particular, Laker veterans—didn’t behave in such a manner. They were surly and offputting. The city treated them like royalty (free meals; free women; free drugs) and the Lakers walked and talked and carried themselves as such. Many of the players took their cues from Abdul-Jabbar, who would just as soon spend time chatting with fans as he would take an injection to the spine. “Once you accepted that Kareem was a prick,” said Pat O’Brien, the CBS reporter, “you could get past it.”

  “I don’t think anyone was mad at Earvin personally,” said Ollie Mack, a rookie guard with the Lakers in 1979. “But he represented change, and veterans generally don’t love the idea of doing things differently.” Johnson made certain to greet every Laker employee by name and, on breaks, could be found lounging in front of a television with the staffers, watching Days of Our Lives and General Hospital. “He was one of the girls,” said Joan McLaughlin, the director of human resources. “Gabbing about who was kissing who on TV.”

  There was also the issue of Norm Nixon, the third-year veteran out of Duquesne who had little interest in surrendering control of his team. During the 1978–79 season, he had established himself as one of the NBA’s elite floor generals, averaging 17.1 points and 9 assists. Though only 6-foot-2 and 170 pounds, Nixon had legs resembling oak trees, and a first step that left opposing players grasping at air. “Boy, Norman was a tremendous player,” said Robert Reid, the longtime Houston Rockets guard. “When he got hot he was like another Nate Archibald. He had a little lean-back jumper, he was sneaky.
The only thing he lacked, to be honest, was charisma.”

  And thick skin. From the moment the Lakers drafted Johnson, most members of the team knew Nixon’s days as a point guard were numbered. Sure, there were those who questioned whether a man standing 6-foot-9 could run an NBA team, whether he could survive the defensive pressure of swarming gnatlike opponents. “But then you saw Magic pass the ball, handle the ball, control an offense,” said Cooper, “and there was no question where he was supposed to be. We were all looking at a man who could revolutionize a position. It was exciting.” Nixon, however, didn’t share the sense of wonder. Playing point guard for the Lakers seemed to be, in his mind, the equivalent of roaming center field for the New York Yankees or quarterbacking the Dallas Cowboys. He was the point guard, and Johnson—irksome rookie—would need to yank the position from his fingertips. “I felt like he was going to have to adjust his game to play with me,” Nixon told The New York Times. “But I learned different.”

  “Jealousy is ugly,” said Cooper. “And we all knew Norman was really jealous.”

  • • •

  McKinney, the Lakers’ new head coach, held his first official team meeting on a Sunday night. It took place inside a lounge on the ground floor of the Ocotillo Lodge, a Buss-owned property that served as the franchise’s base of operations during training camp. Seventeen players attended, ranging from Abdul-Jabbar and Wilkes to unsung rookies like Dawan Scott and Brad Holland. Twelve would make the opening-night roster.

 

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