“What are you trying to say?” Nixon asked.
“Well,” said McKinney, “I think Earvin would be a better point guard for us. I know that’s hard for you, because you’ve—”
Nixon interrupted. “So you want me to play shooting guard?” he said.
“Yes,” said McKinney.
“OK,” he replied. “I can do that.”
Nixon was far from elated, but he knew players don’t tend to win battles with their coaches. Plus, he had to admit, there was something infectious about the kid. “If the first pick in the draft plays hard and practices hard,” said Nixon, “what’s the excuse for other guys to take it easy?”
After starting out 2-0, the Lakers lost their first game, 112–110, at Seattle on October 17, and also endured the first major scare of the season. With 1:25 remaining in the third quarter, Johnson collided with Jack Sikma, the SuperSonics center, while fighting for a rebound. He collapsed to the court, holding his right knee and withering in pain. The initial diagnosis, a partial tear of the medial collateral ligament, would result in Johnson spending six weeks in a splint, then another two to three more weeks in rehab. It was Buss’s worst nightmare. Though the team’s on-court centerpiece remained Abdul-Jabbar, the calling card was Johnson. He was the reason tickets to the Forum were flying out of the box office and the reason Hollywood royalty was filling the building’s most expensive seats. “It was instant charisma,” said Dyan Cannon, the actress who sat courtside for every home game. “Instant, magical charisma.”
This was suddenly a charmed team, engaged in what was becoming a charmed season. Johnson missed a paltry three games, and returned with a clean bill of health on October 26 to face the Kansas City Kings at the Forum. In the best showing of his brief career, Johnson scored 26 points in twenty-eight minutes, while adding 7 rebounds and 6 assists. Los Angeles cruised, 116–104. “Johnson’s enthusiasm was infectious, as usual,” Scott Ostler wrote in the Los Angeles Times. “Abdul-Jabbar traded soul slaps with a teammate after one good play, and when [forward Jim] Chones tossed in a 20-foot jump shot in the second quarter, McKinney leaped off the Laker bench and onto the court to trade slaps with Chones.”
The perennially dull Lakers were suddenly the talk of Hollywood—and the league. Every move GM Bill Sharman made seemed to pay dividends. Johnson was terrific, Haywood revived, Nixon the best two guard in the west. Worried about a lack of toughness under the boards, Sharman acquired Chones, a power forward, from Cleveland for Dave Robisch, an ineffective forward and a third-round pick. Before long, he was starting alongside Abdul-Jabbar, with Haywood coming off the bench. “I wasn’t happy in Cleveland,” Chones said. “Walt Frazier was my roommate, and the phone rings. It’s Stan Albeck, the coach. He tells me about the deal, and I’m smiling. Walt says, ‘What happened?’ I told him about Los Angeles, and his face just dropped. ‘Goddamn,’ he said, ‘that’s where I wanted to go.’
“I was thrilled, because I had seen Magic Johnson play and I knew he was special. In fact, I was watching Magic play Bird in the NCAA Finals, and a friend asked, ‘What do you think of that Johnson guy?’ I swear to God, I told him, ‘If I ever get to play with him, we’ll win a championship.’ That’s exactly what I said.”
The Lakers followed up the triumph over the Kings with four wins in their next five games. Perhaps the most memorable showing came on November 6 at the Forum, when the Lakers held STOP LLOYD FREE NIGHT in anticipation of the Clippers’ dynamic shooting guard. In the lead-up to the clash, Los Angeles announced that, should Free be held below his 30.5 points per game average, every fan in attendance would receive a free ticket to a subsequent game.
Deep into the third quarter, Free was stuck at 19 points, and the Clippers were down by 18. “Being the dummy that I am, I announced to the crowd, ‘Lloyd Free only has 19 points!’” said Larry McKay, the Forum public address announcer. “Free looked over toward the scorer’s bench and glared right at me.” He wound up scoring 29, and as the buzzer sounded on Los Angeles’s 127–112 triumph, the crowd of 12,817 let out an appreciative roar. It didn’t hurt that the Lakers were, once again, brilliant, with seven players scoring in double figures. “The talent on our team was phenomenal,” said Holland, the rookie guard. “But it all started with Magic. He just didn’t care about scoring a point. Did. Not. Care. It was all about winning for him. And because he felt that way, we all felt that way.”
Los Angeles suffered one of its worst defeats of the year a night later, falling 126–109 to the Golden State Warriors in Oakland. The setback was ugly, but McKinney didn’t fret. His players were tired, and their legs were sagging. Still, at 9-4, the Lakers were in the thick of the Pacific Division race, just one and a half games back of Portland. Sports Illustrated’s upcoming issue would feature Johnson on the cover, beneath the word MAGIC. The Sporting News praised the Lakers as the “prototype of a well-run team.”
“We had it all going on,” said Nixon. “You wanted to watch fun, exciting, all-out basketball at its absolute best? That was our team under Jack McKinney. We were taking the world by storm.”
After the Golden State game, the Lakers flew home, arriving at Los Angeles International Airport well after midnight. Looking forward to his first day off of the young season, McKinney planned on sleeping in and being lazy. Then, at nine thirty the following morning, the phone rang.
Paul Westhead was on the line.
He wanted to play tennis.
CHAPTER 5
CRASH
Paul Westhead waited.
And waited.
And waited.
And waited.
He waited some more. And some more. And some more.
Then, a little more.
Jack McKinney was supposed to have arrived at the tennis court adjacent to his Palos Verdes condominium at ten o’clock that morning. “It was another beautiful sunny day in Southern California,” said Westhead, the team’s assistant coach. “It was only a fifty-yard walk from my place. I wasn’t overly worried.” But ten turned into ten thirty, and ten thirty turned into eleven.
“I still wasn’t all that concerned,” Westhead said. “I assumed he went into the office for some business. That wouldn’t have been unusual for an NBA coach in the thick of a season.”
Eleven thirty. Nothing.
Noon. Nothing.
Twelve thirty. Nothing.
At one P.M., the phone rang. It was Claire McKinney. “Paul,” she asked, “have you seen my husband?”
Now he was worried.
Claire had returned from the nearby church meeting to an empty house. Jack wasn’t in the kitchen. Or the bathroom. “He wasn’t on the bottom of the pool,” she said. “Believe me, I looked.” Claire reached out to the local police precinct, but nothing involving a Jack McKinney had been reported. She was told to contact the local hospitals. “We were new to L.A.,” she said. “I didn’t know any hospitals.”
Claire opened the telephone book and came upon Little Company of Mary Hospital in nearby Torrance. She called, and spoke with a receptionist who asked that she describe her husband.
There was a deafening silence.
“You should come in right now,” the woman said. “And please drive carefully, dear.”
Upon arriving, Claire was ushered into a private office by a nun. “Would you like a cup of coffee?” she was asked.
“No, thank you,” Claire said. “I’d like to know what you have to tell me.”
A John Doe had been brought in that morning. There was a bad accident, and . . .
“Can I see him?” Claire asked.
The nun led her into a room. There was a man in the bed, unconscious, forehead swollen, the skin surrounding his eyes painted black and blue. “That,” Claire said, “is my husband.”
A few hours later, Bob Steiner, the team’s public relations director, was about to leave for a round of golf with Bill Sharman, the gener
al manager, when his phone rang. It was Buss. “Jack McKinney’s in the hospital. . . .”
“Bill and I went in to see him,” Steiner said, “and we couldn’t believe what we were looking at.”
Westhead arrived at his friend’s bedside shortly thereafter. When he first heard the words bicycle accident, Westhead pictured bent spokes, a scraped knee, perhaps a broken elbow or leg. The reality was one million times worse.
While riding to the tennis courts, McKinney approached the intersection of Whitley Collins Drive and Stonecrest Road. He tapped the brakes to slow down on a slight incline. Yet, for a reason forever unknown, the gears locked, the tires froze and the bike jerked to a halt. McKinney soared over the silver handlebars and crashed, headfirst, into the concrete—“his body skidding along the street like a tossed stone along the surface of a pond,” Sports Illustrated’s Richard O’Connor wrote.
There was but a single witness, a man named Robert N. S. Clark, who offered this recollection to police:
I drew up to the stop sign on the corner. A man came down the hill [toward the intersection] on his bicycle. He was not speeding, as I remember. He seemed to be going at a moderate speed, then he slowed down even more and looked at the corner.
My impression was that he put his brakes on and something happened then . . . his bicycle went out from under him, and all of a sudden he fell forward . . . and slid on his belly for about 15 to 18 feet.
[McKinney] was practically unconscious—he could move but he seemed to be out. He had a loud, raucous breathing, like when someone’s snoring. Then blood started coming out of his mouth slowly.
The first ambulance attendant to reach the accident site glanced at the unconscious man, turned toward a coworker and said, glumly, “No way. There’s just no way this guy’s going to make it.”
Westhead will never forget the scene at the hospital. McKinney suffered a severe concussion and a fractured cheekbone along with a fractured elbow and countless bruises. “Jack has a broken arm or shoulder, so he’s in a sling,” he recalled. “His face is really chopped up, because he hit the street really hard. He has contusions all over his face, bandages everywhere. And he’s not saying anything. It wasn’t like, ‘Hey, tomorrow he’ll be fine.’ It was very serious.” (When her husband woke from his three-day coma, Claire leaned over his bed, kissed him on the forehead and handed him an article from the Los Angeles Times. “Is this me they are talking about?” he asked. “Is this really me?”)
The last thing Westhead cared about was the basketball. Here was his dear friend, the man who had brought him along to the NBA, listless and lifeless. And yet, he had no choice but to think about basketball. The Lakers employed one assistant coach, and a matchup against the Denver Nuggets was scheduled at the Forum in roughly twenty-four hours. The next morning, Westhead arrived at the gymnasium on the campus of Loyola Marymount University, where the team held its game-day shootarounds. He wasn’t sure what to say or, for that matter, what to do. Many players first learned of the accident when they entered the gym. Those who read the Los Angeles Times that morning found but a four-paragraph mention of the accident. It failed to make the front page of the main or sports sections:
LAKERS COACH M’KINNEY HURT IN CYCLE FALL
Laker coach Jack McKinney suffered a serious head injury Thursday when he took a spill while riding a bicycle near his home. McKinney, 44, was taken to the Little Company of Mary Hospital in Torrance where his condition was described as “guarded but stable.”
A hospital spokesman said, “He suffered a severe head injury. He is in guarded but stable condition. He is responsive but not totally conscious. He also suffered a fractured elbow.”
No other vehicle was involved in the accident which took place while McKinney was riding the bike for exercise near his home on the Palos Verdes peninsula.
Deputy Martin Weirich of the Lomita Sheriff’s station said a witness told authorities that the bicycle McKinney was riding appeared to break and McKinney fell off, sliding down the street.
“I was the accidental head coach,” said Westhead. “The substitute teacher. I entered the gym and I was, literally, the only person there at first. Then people start to arrive, and it’s me, the trainer and the players. There was never anyone saying, ‘Here’s what we want you to do.’ I was lucky that this was just a shootaround. I didn’t have to coach just yet.”
When practice ended, Westhead ran into Sharman. The general manager offered an empathetic pat on the back, and these words: “You’re doing it. Because it’s either you or the janitor. Take your pick.”
That night, with Jack McKinney in a medically induced coma, the television in room 203 of Little Company of Mary Hospital was turned to the Nuggets-Lakers on Channel 9. For an inexperienced professional coach leading a shaken group of players, Denver was an ideal opponent. The Nuggets were not only playing their third game in three nights, but they were awful, having lost their first seven contests by such margins as 29 (to the Bucks), 16 (Trail Blazers), 28 (the Bucks again) and 23 (Kings). “I just don’t think we were ready to play when the season opened,” Donnie Walsh, the Nuggets head coach, explained.
That night, the Nuggets were ready. They led the vastly superior Lakers throughout, and were up 107–105 with two seconds remaining in the fourth when Johnson spotted a wide-open Jamaal Wilkes. He shot a twenty-foot jumper that caught all net, forcing overtime. Johnson’s two free throws with less than ten seconds left in the extra period iced an emotional 126–122 triumph.
Afterward, Westhead and his players took ten minutes to meet in the locker room. They talked about marching forward; about being strong; about the upcoming schedule and the following day’s practice. Mostly, they talked about McKinney, and playing on his behalf.
“It should be very clear that this is Jack McKinney’s team,” Westhead later said, “and I am just running out the string until he returns. I have no intention of changing anything. There will be variations, but they will be variations, not changes. I will accentuate what we’ve been building on, which is the running game, but it’s not new.
“Even if we go 71-0 the rest of the season, it’s still Jack McKinney’s team.”
• • •
Paul Westhead was right. The Lakers were Jack McKinney’s team. They utilized his up-tempo style of offense, his aggressive brand of defense. Los Angeles was fun to watch and difficult to play, and as the wins mounted and the show drew rave reviews, the NBA had itself an official marquee franchise.
Granted, across the land, riveting story lines were everywhere. In Boston, Larry Bird, Johnson’s rookie rival, was reviving the Celtics while scoring 21.3 points per game and putting a nail in the “white guys can’t really play” narrative. In Philadelphia, Julius Erving was soaring through midair, carrying the 76ers toward a deep playoff run. The Seattle SuperSonics, defending NBA champions, were riding Gus Williams, Dennis Johnson and Jack Sikma in another impressive championship quest.
The Lakers, though, were the story. Initially, the articles centered around an organization trying to overcome the loss of a coach. Gradually, however, McKinney’s name began to fade away; updates on his condition appeared in full articles, then short briefs, then nowhere at all. The team won five of its first six under Westhead, and all anyone wanted to talk about was Magic . . . Magic . . . Magic. Wrote Bruce Newman in Sports Illustrated: “If [Johnson] is as good as his first month in the league seems to promise, at the ripe old age of 20 he just might be capable of helping the Lakers win the 1980 NBA title . . . Anyone who has seen Johnson play can tell you that despite all his raw skills, it is the sheer force of his personality that accounts for his particular genius.”
After first begging Jerry West to return to the sidelines (“There was no fucking way in hell,” West said), Buss named Westhead the coach for the remainder of the season. The forty-year-old former college professor handled things beautifully. He maintained a steady rotation, comm
unicated openly with players, repeatedly credited McKinney and insisted the job was his to hold, not keep. “I think he has done a great job, considering the way this was dropped on him,” Abdul-Jabbar said. “Jack was a little bit more of a disciplinarian than Paul, but they both understand people pretty well, and that’s very important.”
On November 16, more than a week after McKinney’s accident, Buss finally allowed Westhead to hire his assistant of choice. The owner had been pushing for Elgin Baylor, the former Laker All-Star who lived locally. Westhead, however, wanted a recently retired journeyman named Pat Riley.
Buss hemmed and hawed when Westhead initially pushed forth the idea. The former Laker player, who had averaged 7.4 points over a ten-year career, was performing quite capably in his third season as Chick Hearn’s on-air broadcasting sidekick. Furthermore, as far as coaching material went, Riley impressed no one. “He really had the potential to have a long, great career in the booth,” said Keith Erickson, who replaced Riley when he shifted to the bench. “Chick could be very difficult to work with. He was a wonderful man, but demanding. Pat had the right temperament.”
Since handing in his sneakers after the 1976 season, Riley had done very little of note. He grew his hair long, wandered the beaches of Southern California, played volleyball, contemplated life and death and his place in the world. Once, in a particularly depressing moment, Riley showed up for a Laker game at the Forum and, despite flashing his 1972 championship ring, was denied entrance to the press lounge. “Sorry,” the doorman told him. “No ex-players.”
Riley finally landed the radio and TV gig when Lynn Shackelford left and Hearn required a number two. He was unexpectedly good—quick with keen insight, willing to stay quiet when the egomaniacal Hearn went on a tangent, sympathetic to players but willing to criticize. Westhead and Riley were relative strangers, but their offices were across from each other inside the Forum, and casual banter morphed into mutual respect.
Showtime: Magic, Kareem, Riley, and the Los Angeles Lakers Dynasty ofthe 1980s Page 10