Then, to kick off the first official practice inside the College of the Desert’s gymnasium, Westhead made what must be considered one of the great blunders of his coaching career. He introduced (egad) “The System.”
“This is a new year and a new team,” he said, “and we’re going to do things differently. We’re going to put in a new offense, and you’ll need to trust me. Because I know what I’m doing.”
Throughout the 1979–80 season, the Lakers were, in many regards, a strategic ode to McKinney’s basketball intellect. They inbounded the ball quickly, pushed the pace, filled the lanes and excelled via organized chaos. “We ran past you, ran over you,” said Nixon. “Just ran and ran and ran you to death. It was great.”
Now that he was in charge, and empowered with a brand-new four-year, $1.1 million contract, Westhead wanted to incorporate his own ideas. No longer, he explained to the speechless players, would there be the same freelance, go-with-your-gut offensive opportunities. The Lakers would continue to run, but always with a certain level of controlled stagnation. Thought replaced instinct. Programmed evaluation trumped rapid-fire response. More than twenty newly diagrammed plays were added, most designed to get the ball to Abdul-Jabbar in the post. Nixon, the shooting guard under McKinney’s vision, would handle the ball more often, moving Johnson to a nebulous point-forward-power position.
World champion Los Angeles Lakers—meet La Salle College.
“It’s highly structured,” Westhead explained at the time. “Every player has an exact assignment and there can be no deviation from position. What’s unique is that it’s highly systematic and extremely demanding.”
As the players listened to their coach in those opening days, they nodded and smiled and grinned. Westhead was a genuinely nice man. He had scored big locker room points for the way he took command of the Haywood situation, and nobody could have done a better job in the aftermath of McKinney’s accident. The players even appreciated the goofy sincerity of his nonstop Shakespearean references. Once, toward the end of a close game in the 1979–80 season, Westhead looked at Johnson in the huddle and, quoting from Macbeth, uttered, “If it were done when ’tis done, then ’twere well it were done quickly.”
Johnson listened, said nothing, paused, then smiled and asked, “You want me to get it into the big fella?”
“Right on,” said Westhead.
During the playoff series against Seattle, Westhead was asked by the press what Johnson had told him during a time-out. “What did he say?” Westhead said. “‘A horse! A horse! My kingdom for a horse!’”
“You had to like Paul the person,” said Michael Cooper. “There wasn’t a jerk bone in his body.”
And yet . . .
“Something,” said Nixon, “wasn’t right.”
If there was one man (besides Abdul-Jabbar) who stood to gain from Westhead’s changes, it was probably Nixon, who fancied himself a team-leading, game-changing ball handler, not a shooting guard waiting for a pass. Though he had certainly enjoyed winning a championship in 1980, Nixon never fully accepted his role as Johnson’s caddy. He still bristled over an occurrence from the previous year, when the Lakers were boarding the bus for a shootaround in Philadelphia. At 10:55 A.M., every member of the team was ready to go, save Nixon, who was often a minute or two late. “Let’s drive away! Let’s drive away!” Johnson shouted. “Why are we always waiting for Norm?” When Nixon finally climbed the steps, a teammate howled, “Rookie’s trying to get you fired.”
“Well,” said Nixon, “he’s young and dumb and don’t know any better.”
Now, a season removed, Westhead seemed willing to break up the point guard duties and let Nixon receive more plum assignments.
“Maybe that’s true,” Nixon said. “But it was very clear that Paul’s system wasn’t going to work for us. It was too restrictive. You ran to the spots and that was it. He immediately started to have problems with all of us because we all knew how to play. We weren’t guys willing to just run to a spot and stand there and watch someone else play. We were all used to being involved.
“For example, Paul wanted me to run down the right-hand side of the court every time. That’s just not realistic. ‘Run to this exact spot and stand there’ might—might—work in college, but not in the NBA. It was very frustrating.”
Added another member of the team, who requested anonymity: “Paul went from doing a great job of coaching that first year to a lousy job the second. From that first meeting, when he explained the change, everyone just went, ‘Huh? What are you talking about? What are you doing? We just won a championship.’ We were disjointed from day one. It was like, as soon as they took the interim tag off, something happened to Paul where the power went to his head. I mean, he tried to run a shared point guard system with Magic and Norm, and it was destined to be a disaster. I love Norm, but it wasn’t even close—Magic was the best point guard on the planet. And now, because Paul wanted to exercise his power, we have this point guard battle that became really, really, really awkward.”
The Lakers opened the 1980–81 season by fighting back from a 19-point deficit to pull out a thrilling 99–98 road win over Seattle, then returned home and thumped the Houston Rockets, 114–103. On that night, two noteworthy occurrences took place: First, Abdul-Jabbar was accidentally poked in the right eye by Houston’s Rudy Tomjanovich, resulting in a corneal abrasion that would lead to two missed games and a permanent return to the signature goggles he had last worn two years earlier. Second, Larry O’Brien, the NBA’s commissioner, presented the players with their championship rings—a reminder of what was and what, the returnees felt, could not possibly be again under the current system.
Even with Abdul-Jabbar’s injury, Los Angeles won its first five games. But they were . . . off. The Kansas City Kings took the Lakers to overtime before falling, 112–107,* and the Phoenix Suns—featuring an unspectacular roster—led in the fourth quarter, then folded, 116–109. To most of the media and fans, all appeared to be business as usual. Wins were wins, right? “But it wasn’t that way,” said Alan Hardy, a rookie forward. “There were real problems that needed to be addressed.”
Through mid-November, the Lakers settled into a pattern. They would win two or three, then lose one. There’d be splendid moments (Johnson scored 33 points in thirty-two minutes against Utah on October 25; three days later, the Lakers pummeled the Clippers by 30) and head-scratching lulls (San Antonio’s immortally ordinary Dave Corzine shone with 16 points in a 108–102 Spurs triumph on October 26).
The first outward sign of a problem came on the night of November 12, when the Lakers traveled to Houston, played three strong, up-tempo quarters against the Rockets—then started listening to Westhead’s instructions. Los Angeles led by a whopping 19 points when the coach told his guards to walk the ball up the court, use as much time as possible and, with eight seconds remaining on the shot clock, dump it into Abdul-Jabbar. It was the basketball equivalent of a prevent defense, and the results were awful. Houston was a thin team. The one thing Coach Del Harris had going for him was Moses Malone, the 6-foot-10, 215-pound center who doubled as Abdul-Jabbar’s personal slab of Kryptonite. Malone was stronger, more rugged and a harder defensive worker than Abdul-Jabbar. “Nobody had a chance against Moses down inside,” said Major Jones, a Houston forward. “The Lakers were much more talented than we were, so to neutralize that, Moses decided he had to put his will on Kareem.” In the final four and a half minutes of the game, Abdul-Jabbar repeatedly received the ball inside. With Malone’s stomach and fists glued to his jersey, the Laker star missed his last four shots, including a skyhook in the lane with fourteen seconds remaining. Houston won, 107–104. “Painfully predictable,” said Jim Chones. “So painful. We did the same thing all the time.”
When the game ended, the Lakers players retreated to the Summit’s visiting locker room, where they launched a kick-off to an inevitable mutiny. Unless you were a rookie w
ho knew no better or the content-to-be-the-centerpiece Abdul-Jabbar, you weren’t happy. “We just stopping moving,” said Johnson, a glum look crossing his face. “We ran a lot of plays that didn’t involve a lot of movement.”
Johnson assumed the Houston defeat was his team’s bottoming out. He was wrong. Six days later, in the second quarter of a game against the visiting Kings, Johnson made a cut against Kansas City’s Hawkeye Whitney, heard a loud pop and crumpled. As soon as he reached the court, Kerlan, the team doctor, knew this was bad. Johnson suffered a cartilage tear in his left knee.
Prognosis: Out for at least three weeks.
Reality: He would miss 101 days.*
“I don’t think you can understand how bad that was,” said Butch Carter, a rookie guard. “Magic wasn’t just a great player who did everything on the court. He was our glue. Before we went to camp, he took all the rookies out for dinner. As rookies, every day he fed me and Alan Hardy. Every single day, he had a woman come over and cook dinner, and he’d always call us over to his apartment.
“Magic was special. During training camp, we had to run a mile on the second day of practice. I was a second-round draft pick with a non-guaranteed contract, he was the Finals MVP—and I could not catch his ass. There was no reason he had to finish first in that run, but he needed to. That’s not just leadership, that’s greatness.”
When Paul Westhead realized his team would be without its leader for an extended period of time, he dreaded the idea of returning full power to Norm Nixon. Suddenly, without warning or preparation, the keys to the Lakers would be in the hands of a player who was neither trusted nor particularly liked by the organization’s higher-ups. “Norm was difficult,” said Westhead. “Talented, quick, fast—but feisty and stubborn.”
Those are actually kind words, compared to the sentiment floating through the Forum’s executive offices. Although fans and journalists often grouped Los Angeles with monolithic, multimillion-dollar franchises like the New York Yankees and the Dallas Cowboys, the comparison was wrongheaded. Along with Buss, the key decision makers were Lou Baumeister, the president of California Sports (the company that owned and operated the Lakers, Kings and Forum); Frank Mariani, Buss’s longtime business partner; Bill Sharman, the general manager; Jerry West, the ex-coach-turned-special-consultant; and Chick Hearn, the beloved broadcaster who also served as the assistant GM. Inside the Forum, the men mixed and mingled with a dozen (or so) other employees, ranging from Mary Lou Liebich, the basketball secretary, to Claire Rothman, the vice president of booking, to Bruce Jolesch, the public relations director. “It really was like a family,” said Rothman. “We did everything together. I can’t imagine a closer at-work relationship.”
Though disagreements arose, the majority of decision makers were united in both their love for Johnson and their misgivings for Nixon. “Norm had an agenda,” said Steve Springer, who covered the team for the Orange County Register. “I enjoyed Norm, but there always seemed to be something brewing.”
Like Abdul-Jabbar, Nixon spent much of life battling against the glacier-size chip resting atop his shoulder. He grew up in the projects of Macon, Georgia, raised with his two older brothers by a divorced mother. Although he excelled in football and basketball at Southwest Macon High, Nixon was overshadowed by Joe Everett, a talented guard who, many assumed, would be the one to go on to NBA fame. (Everett played at nearby Mercer College, then faded away.) “Norm was really good,” said Walter Daniels, a prep teammate who, in 1979, was the Lakers’ third-round draft pick out of Georgia. “But he sorta flew below the radar with Joe around.”
Don Richardson, Southwest’s coach, excelled in development. During practices he implemented weighted jackets, palm gloves and blinders. The team perfected a suffocating 2-1-2 full-court trap, and ran opposing schools to exhaustion. “Most coaches give a team thirty seconds to run one suicide,” Nixon said. “Don Richardson made us do two in fifty-five. The basketball work ethic and IQ on my team was incredible.”
Nixon aspired to play collegiately in the Southeastern Conference, but in 1973 the participating colleges were still wary of bringing in too many black athletes. Instead, he accepted a scholarship to Duquesne. “It was Pittsburgh, which was a strange thing for me,” he said. “But they seemed to really want me.”
On March 4, 1975, Duquesne faced Cincinnati in a chance to qualify for the NCAA Tournament. With no time remaining, and the Dukes down by one, Nixon walked to the free-throw line for two shots. He looked over at John Cinicola, the head coach, and winked. “It was as if to say, ‘Relax, Coach, it’s in the bag,’” said Cinicola. “Then he missed, and we went home. But two years later, against Villanova in the Eastern 8 final, Norm winks again, makes both shots, we go on to play VMI in Raleigh.” After four varsity seasons, Nixon left with the single season and career records for most field goals and assists.
Playing for a perennially subpar school, Nixon was overlooked for national honors. He wasn’t invited to audition for the Pan Am Games or 1976 Olympic team, and was often referred to as a “sleeper” who could surprise people. Even when the Lakers selected him with their third first-round pick in 1977, Nixon was dissatisfied. Why had he slipped until the twenty-second and final slot of the round? And why had the Lakers taken two other players—North Carolina State forward Kenny Carr and Maryland guard Brad Davis—before him? “I got drafted by the pros and they called me the no-name guard,” he said. “People wanted to know who this guy from Duquesne was.”
Nixon arrived for his first training camp seduced by the warm weather but frustrated (and driven) by the perceived lack of respect. The Lakers had gone 53-29 the previous season, and Coach Jerry West showed little regard for the small kid (6-foot-2, 170 pounds) from the small school. Davis, an inch taller and the product of a major collegiate program, was the early favorite to slide into the vacant point guard spot. That lasted for four days. “Norm was so much better than Brad, it was laughable,” said Adrian Dantley, a forward on the team. “Jerry never got on Brad. Not once. Instead he made Norm his whipping boy, always getting on him about how to use the pick and roll to score, how to find the open man. It was ridiculous.”
Nixon started 81 games, averaging 13.7 points and 6.8 assists, but the experience was awful. West didn’t so much ride Nixon as he mentally tortured him. Compliments never came. Insults soared. Nixon was a wimp. Nixon was inept. Nixon couldn’t handle the spotlight. Nixon—dashingly handsome, with a wardrobe straight off the pages of GQ—was a pretty boy. Nixon wasn’t committed to the game. Nixon was a whiner. A maligner. “Their relationship was very antagonistic,” said Ron Carter, a Laker guard. “We all had nicknames, and Norm’s was Big—it was sarcastic, because he was the smallest guy on the team, but it was serious in that he had a huge ego and he was our leader. As a coach, Jerry wanted to be the leader, and he and Norm bumped heads daily. Norm would say smart things to Jerry to get under his skin. And Jerry Buss eventually gave Norm a guaranteed contract. The moment he signed that, Jerry West lost all leverage, because Norm was making his money and he didn’t care where he played.
“It wasn’t unusual for Jerry to call a time-out, call a play and have Norm change it as we’re walking onto the court. Norm lived to contradict him.”
West was the sort of coach who wasn’t afraid to put on shorts and a T-shirt during practice, and he and Nixon teed off in a series of physical matchups. “Best moments I saw Norm play,” said Lou Hudson, a Laker guard, “were against Jerry.”
In a January 20, 1978, game against the Bullets, Nixon tossed a wicked behind-the-back pass that soared past Dantley and into the stands. West flew into a fit. He jumped off the bench, sent Hudson into the game and berated Nixon. “Next time you try something like that,” he screamed, “you fucking better be fucking sure you fucking complete it!”
During another contest, this one against the Nuggets, Nixon was trapped with seven seconds remaining, and passed the ball to Abdul-Jabbar. The center shot
up a brick, and Denver gathered the rebound and scored. West somehow missed the play and assumed his point guard was at fault. Afterward, West stormed into the locker room, glared at Nixon and screamed, “Damn it! Damn it! Who in the hell took that shot?”
“I did,” said Abdul-Jabbar.
West paused. “Norm,” he screamed, “how could you pass him the ball with seven seconds left?”
“Norm probably never realized this, but he was one of my favorite guys,” said West. “He was very talented and very competitive. But he was wild, and he made some stupid mistakes. I was harder on him than anyone else because I knew what was there. Even to this day, I’m not so sure Norm Nixon doesn’t think of me as the anti-Christ.”
The Lakers cut Davis early in his second year, thereby making it clear the ball belonged to Nixon. He averaged 17.1 points and 9 assists in 1978–79, and were there a better NBA point guard, nobody on the Los Angeles roster could think of one.
By the time Johnson came along, Nixon considered himself to be a full-fledged NBA star. Yet as the rookie burst onto the scene, the incumbent faded into the background. He played excellently in 1979–80, averaging a career-high 17.6 points while shooting 52 percent from the field. Los Angeles, though, was all about Magic! Magic! Magic! Magic! This didn’t sit well with the team’s exiled shooting guard. “It was bullshit on Norm’s part,” said Michael Cooper. “Just bullshit. Yeah, it had been his team for a number of years, and he’d run the show really well. But you have a guy telling you, ‘Listen, I want to get you twenty-five to thirty shots per night. That’s what I want to do for you.’ Shit, yeah! I mean, who wouldn’t want that? But Norm didn’t want to give up the ball. Shit, let Magic do his thing. Magic’s coming down, kicking it to you. But Norm, he wanted the basketball.
Showtime: Magic, Kareem, Riley, and the Los Angeles Lakers Dynasty ofthe 1980s Page 14