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

by Pearlman, Jeff

  On the day the story appeared, Nixon made certain to cross the locker room and reassure Johnson that the words were taken out of context. “Listen, listen—I hope you don’t let this article go and affect your game,” he said. “Because you should know me better than that. You know what I would say and what I wouldn’t say.”

  Littwin, in fact, had interviewed Nixon more than a month before the article ran—a common journalistic practice, but one that infuriated the Lakers. Buss, generally loathe to criticize the media, offered a blistering critique of the Times, insisting the paper had set out to cause controversy just in time for the playoffs.* Nixon concurred. “[Littwin] took everything I said and twisted it around,” he said. “He talked to me while Magic was out, and asked me about the difference in playing without him. I told him the truth—I was handling the ball more, which was probably what I did best. But it wasn’t a slight against Earvin at all. I went to Magic and told him that, but he was younger than I was, and I don’t know if he handled it the right way, mentally. I think it bothered him, and then the perception was there that Nixon can’t play with Johnson. And once a perception exists, it’s awfully hard to change that. It turns into fact. Unfair and unfortunate, but true.”

  For the first time in his professional career, Johnson turned standoffish. He resented Nixon, and resented Cooper for trying to broker an understanding between the two. Johnson loved Chones, and was shocked, too, to read what he perceived to be the veteran rebounder’s anti-Magic take in the Littwin story.

  “The whole thing was a mess,” said Nixon. “Not a good way to start the playoffs.”

  The best-of-three series opened in Los Angeles on April 1, and the Lakers were humiliated. Johnson and Nixon started together and performed admirably, teaming up for 48 points. Yet if the players had been agitated by Westhead’s offense through the regular season, they were now—in the playoffs—infuriated. Houston’s game plan was basic: Methodically bring the ball up the court and, when the time was right, dump it down low to Malone. “It was smart,” said Landsberger. “Because Kareem couldn’t handle Moses. He was just too physical for him . . . a monster on the boards.” Malone ended the game with 38 points and 23 rebounds, and left Westhead looking for anyone other than an exhausted Abdul-Jabbar to defend. Landsberger? Chones? Brewer? “They didn’t know how to guard him,” said Billy Paultz, who scored 15 for Houston. “And if you couldn’t figure out a way to at least neutralize Moses, you weren’t going to beat us.”

  What enraged the Lakers was Westhead’s decision to counter Houston’s offensive approach by mimicking it. Johnson and Nixon were itching to attack the Rockets’ mediocre backcourt, yet their coach demanded a patient, calm, milk-the-clock-and-ultimately-get-the-ball-to-Kareem methodology. This could work against so-so centers like Kansas City’s Sam Lacey and Denver’s Kim Hughes. But Malone was George Foreman to Abdul-Jabbar’s Ted Gullick. He beat up and pounded him. By the second half, Abdul-Jabbar was spent. Which led to, in the minds of Houston’s players, the singular turning point of the series.

  With the Rockets leading 102–91 midway through the fourth quarter, Abdul-Jabbar received the ball on the block and turned to shoot. As the Laker extended his arm and reached over Malone, the ball left his hand . . . floating . . . floating . . . floating . . .

  Swat!

  From seemingly nowhere, Bill Willoughby, a reserve forward, came off his man, floated high into the air and rejected the attempt. Superman had bled. “You could have heard a pin drop,” said Robert Reid, a Rockets guard. “And the body language from those guys—just deflated. Nobody touched Kareem’s shot—ever. But Bill didn’t just jump. He leapt.”

  In twelve years in the NBA, Abdul-Jabbar had rarely been blocked. “I wasn’t even guarding him,” said Willoughby, a journeyman forward best known for going directly from Dwight Morrow High School (NJ) to the NBA. “I came from the corner, and I didn’t actually run and jump—I went up on two feet and swatted it.

  “I begged my coach [Del Harris] to let me guard him the whole series. I was 6-foot-9, and he was 7-foot-3. But I’m telling you, I could have gotten to his hook shot every time. Because I knew exactly what he was going to do. When the hook was coming, all you had to do was leave your man and jump really high. Because if you were guarding him, he held you down with his strong left hand. If you weren’t on top of him, you were free to go after it.”

  The Lakers made a final run, but the momentum of Willoughby’s unforgettable play was too much. (The following night at practice, Johnson advised Abdul-Jabbar to “break” Willoughby’s arm the next time he went for a block.) A stunned Forum crowd watched as the Rockets won, 111–107, leaving the Lakers a game away from elimination. “We didn’t play as hard as they did,” said Johnson afterward. “It was a surprise to me—a surprise and a disappointment. We can’t be distracted by a lot of other things now. We have to go out and play.” That night, a despondent Johnson stayed up until five o’clock in the morning. “I try to give everybody the ball, keep everyone happy, but I guess it’s never enough,” he said. “I never heard of this kind of situation on a winning team. Everybody can’t get the pub.”

  “Pettiness killed us,” said Brewer. “We didn’t think Houston could stay with us, and we got petty with each other. That’s the kiss of death.”

  One night later, the Lakers traveled to Houston and beat the Rockets, 111–106, but the victory was uninspired. Los Angeles blew an early 18–5 lead, allowed Murphy to freely drive through the lane for 29 points and seemed indecisive and awkward on offense. Was this Johnson’s team or Nixon’s team or Abdul-Jabbar’s team? Should they listen to Westhead and crawl the ball up the court, or ignore him and run, à la Jack McKinney. Before the game, Johnson admitted the franchise was a mess. He had tried reassuring his teammates on the bus ride to the arena that his concerns were solely about winning (“I’m not trying to come in here and do all this with the publicity and stuff,” he said. “It’s just something that happened”), yet the words were met with cold stares. “Things are different,” he said an hour before the game. “I can’t say it’s jealousy because I might be wrong. I just feel kind of upset, kind of down. This is the first time I’ve been involved in something like this.” In an awkward moment for all involved, Westhead called Johnson and Nixon in front of the entire team and begged them to work things out. “This is a bad time for all this,” he said. “We’re trying to win.”

  On April 5, a strange season came to a pathetic end. The Rockets returned to Los Angeles and beat the detached Lakers, 89–86. With ten seconds remaining and Houston up only one, Johnson drove the lane, pulled up and released a jumper from eight feet away that traveled four feet before nestling gently in Malone’s outstretched arms. When the Rocket center hit two free throws, the fates of both teams were sealed. The Lakers walked off the court to stunned silence, then spent the next twenty minutes trying to explain their epic failure. The Rockets, meanwhile, would advance to the NBA Finals before losing to Boston.

  “There’s no way,” said Chones, “it should have happened.”

  Afterward, Johnson sat by his locker and stared blankly into space. The most difficult and hurtful year of his life had ended in the most difficult and hurtful of ways. His team had lost, and he was the one—come crunch time—who failed. Johnson compiled 9 assists and 12 rebounds, but shot a dreadful 2 for 14 from the field.

  “I blew it,” he said, shaking his head. “I just blew it.”

  Two days later, when the locker room was cleared and the press turned its attention back to the Dodgers and the Angels, Buss and Johnson met in Palm Springs for a six-hour lunch. The owner was disconsolate—“The best way to put it,” he said, “is that it was like my whole being just shifted into neutral and stayed there. There were no ups or downs. . . . I was kind of like a drone, like a hum on the radio that just goes on and on.” Over sandwiches and drinks, the two discussed everything from Nixon’s comments to Abdul-Jabbar’s shot select
ion; from Cooper’s feisty defense to changes that needed to be made. Buss had estimated that, by falling in the first round, his team dropped $3 million in revenue. He wasn’t happy.

  “One thing I’d think about,” Johnson said, “is coaching.”

  “How so?” Buss asked.

  “I like Paul,” the star replied. “But something here isn’t working.”

  CHAPTER 7

  PICTURE IMPERFECT

  In the first week of October 1981, before members of the Lakers had yet to report to training camp, Larry Keith, the Sports Illustrated basketball editor, contacted Bruce Jolesch, Los Angeles’s public relations director, about arranging a photo shoot of some players for the magazine’s upcoming NBA Preview issue.

  “That shouldn’t be a problem,” Jolesch said.

  A couple of days later, Lane Stewart, a thirty-seven-year-old Manhattanite, reached out. Although he had shot a noteworthy SI cover portrait of Indiana State’s Larry Bird three years earlier, Stewart’s sports knowledge extended little beyond Babe Ruth and that really tall Wilt guy. He rarely watched basketball, certainly never picked up a newspaper to check on the latest transactions. “I was sort of notorious at the magazine,” he said. “They knew I didn’t give a damn about sports and I made no bones about it. But I loved working with athletes, because it was a joy to be around successful, fortunate people.”

  Stewart had been filled in on the Lakers, and was told the picture—potentially a cover—had to convey the idea of basketball becoming an increasingly complex game, what with more sophisticated offensive and defensive schemes. He was also tipped off to Paul Westhead’s background as a Shakespearean scholar with a love for teaching. “My concept was a classroom, and the coach is the teacher and the players are the students,” Stewart said. “I told that to whoever was in charge, and there was never an objection or a problem with it.”

  As the Laker players reported to the College of the Desert for the start of camp, they were more united than ever in their disdain for Westhead. Johnson and Nixon worked to patch things up during the summer and, for the most part, they had—even traveling with Buss to Las Vegas for a weekend of women, whiskey and high-stakes poker (all funded by the boss). When it came to their coach, both players knew this couldn’t end well. “There was something ironic in his system supposedly being really complex and intricate,” said Nixon. “Because, if we’re being honest, it was painfully simple. You run to spots. That’s it. You run to spots. This wasn’t personal—I think we all liked Paul as a person. But, basketball-wise, it was very flawed.”

  Yet the Lakers were nothing if not outwardly professional. Over a six-day span, Stewart came to the Ocotillo Lodge and, inside one of the hotel’s ballrooms, created his own classroom. He bought lumber to construct a floor, rented worn desks and chairs from a Hollywood props outfit, sprayed walls with off-white paint, threw in a blackboard and some chalk. “I remember Westhead being real congenial about it,” said Stewart. “But not just him. Everyone really got into it.”

  On the morning of the shoot, six Lakers—Nixon, Johnson, Cooper, Abdul-Jabbar, Wilkes and Mitch Kupchak, the newly acquired forward—joined Westhead for a twenty-five-minute session. “Kareem came in wearing these bright red shoes, and his feet were so big we couldn’t run out and find him white or blue ones in a size 18,” said Andrew Bernstein, a photographer who assisted on the assignment. “Lane was mad, but he just shot the picture. He didn’t complain.”

  Neither did the players, even though three of the men (Nixon, Johnson and Cooper) longed for Westhead to find a new job with the Siberia Snowhawks, Wilkes thought the coach had probably lost his way, Abdul-Jabbar expressed no real opinion on the matter and Kupchak was just happy to be out of Washington, DC, and away from the floundering Bullets. Though they refused to openly gripe on the scene, Nixon and Johnson detested the picture (which wound up appearing inside the magazine—not on the cover), in that it made Westhead (dressed as a schoolmaster) look smarter and more competent than he actually was. He had been described as a Shakespearean scholar at least a hundred times since taking over the team—and it became really annoying. “That photograph was an awful idea,” said one Laker official who requested anonymity. “It reinforced the negative feelings about Paul, and made some guys even angrier than they had been. It was a huge—and I mean huge—error in judgment.”

  In the aftermath of the Houston playoff debacle, the organization devoted its off-season to committing one uncharacteristic misstep after another. First, in the weeks leading up to the June 8 NBA Draft, Mike Thibault, an assistant coach who also headed much of the team’s scouting, submitted his recommendations to Bill Sharman and Jerry West. The Lakers possessed the nineteenth pick, which meant the elite of the elite (DePaul’s Mark Aguirre, Indiana’s Isiah Thomas, Maryland’s Buck Williams and North Carolina State’s Al Wood) would be long gone. Thibault, however, was enamored with an overlooked Clemson University forward named Larry Nance. A 6-foot-10, 205-pound pogo stick, Nance featured the type of strength-explosiveness that brought to mind a young David Thompson. Yet he was raw and—hailing from the small town of Anderson, South Carolina—shy and deferential. He had averaged only 11.5 points and 6.7 rebounds per game in four collegiate seasons. “I thought Larry Nance could become the new prototype for forwards in basketball,” said Thibault. “Here was a guy who was long and athletic and could maybe be a guy who plays against wing players even though he was mainly a four. He could run all day, and he was just a fabulous athlete. He was someone who could affect a game not just with height, but length.” West, who had gradually assumed many of Sharman’s duties, was in agreement. He, too, imagined Nance flying down the court, receiving one alley-oop after another from Johnson and Nixon. The Lakers flew him out to Los Angeles for a workout and dinner. He was a perfect fit. “Damn, I loved Larry Nance,” said West. “He was a special player.”

  Under Buss, however, the head coach was given final say on player personnel. And while Westhead could appreciate the scouting reports on Nance, he had been assured by Buss that the team was set to acquire Kupchak, a 6-foot-9, 230-pound bruiser. “Dr. Buss wasn’t one to get overly involved, but he came to me the week before the draft and said, ‘What are we looking at here?’” said Westhead. “The draft was a very casual arrangement then. It wasn’t like they had a staff with rooms and videos and meetings. I told him there were two ways we could go—forward or guard. He insisted Kupchak was a definite. So . . .”

  Despite the protestations of Sharman, West and Thibault, after the New Jersey Nets plucked Indiana forward Ray Tolbert in the eighteenth slot, the Lakers announced the selection of Mike (Geeter) McGee, a 6-foot-5, 190-pound shooting guard out of the University of Michigan “That was not a very happy night for me,” said West. “Not happy at all.”

  Westhead loved McGee, the first player in history to lead the Wolverines in scoring for four consecutive seasons. He envisioned him charging off the Lakers’ bench to substitute for Cooper or Nixon and igniting instant offense. “McGee was just too good to pass up,” Westhead said at the time. “He’s probably the most exciting player to come out of the draft this year. He’ll have people standing on their seats to see if he’ll ever stop running.”

  One problem: Mike McGee—nice kid, great physical skills—was one of the most one-dimensional players the Lakers had ever drafted. He could shoot and shoot and shoot. But he rarely passed, rarely rebounded and played a unique brand of nonexistent defense. “I liked Mike,” said Alan Hardy, a Michigan teammate. “But he could become very individualistic on the floor. There were times when he’d forget there were four other guys.”

  “I dreamed about playing at Michigan since I was a little boy,” said Tim McCormick, a freshman center during McGee’s senior year. “Before my first game I ran out onto court for warm-ups—the band is playing, my family is in the stands. Mike came up to me said, ‘I’m a senior, I’m going for all-time Big Ten scoring record. If you get the ball, don’t
dare shoot.’”

  After McGee’s selection, the Phoenix Suns, Los Angeles’s Pacific Division rival, jumped on Nance. He went on to appear in three All-Star Games, make the NBA’s All-Defensive team three times and, just for kicks, win the league’s inaugural Slam Dunk Contest in 1984. McGee, meanwhile, lasted four and a half undistinguished seasons in Los Angeles. “That one makes me moan,” said West. “Still.”

  One and a half weeks after the McGee blunder, the Lakers officially offered Kupchak a seven-year contract worth an outlandish $800,000 annually. Because Kupchak was a restricted free agent, the Bullets could either match the deal or negotiate a trade. Westhead had been a fan dating back to Kupchak’s days at the University of North Carolina, where he was a two-time second-team All-American, as well as a member of the gold medal–winning 1976 U.S. men’s Olympic basketball team. Kupchak was, at first inspection, a prototypical 1970s NBA bruiser—big, white, goonish. Yet he merged those characteristics with a deft touch around the rim. “He was just a winner,” said Bob Ferry, the Bullets general manager. “Mitch took the game very seriously. He’d dive for every loose ball, guard whoever you needed him to. He was athletic and active and lively. I had a lot of players in Washington, but Mitch was probably my favorite.” Like Westhead, Kupchak was known as something of an eccentric. He ate the majority of his meals at Denny’s and IHOP, swore by the culinary masterpiece that was 7-Eleven’s frozen burrito and insisted the telephone answering machine was the greatest invention known to man. After the Bullets beat the SuperSonics to take the 1978 NBA title, the players and coaches were invited to the White House to meet President Jimmy Carter. A memo went out, reminding all guests to wear jackets and ties. Kupchak arrived in jeans and sneakers—sans socks.