Riley tuned out the pro-McAdoo chorus. He was, after leading tentatively in his first few weeks, becoming a man in charge. Following an embarrassing March 12 home loss to the laughingstock Chicago Bulls, Riley entered the locker room, locked the door, picked up the stat sheet (with BULLS 111 LAKERS 105 printed atop) and issued his first-ever browbeating. He could deal with Reggie Theus scoring 13. He could deal with Artis Gilmore scoring 25. “How the hell does Ronnie Lester—Ronnie fucking Lester!?—shoot seven-for-twelve on us?” he screamed. “What kind of defense is that?” The moment was more important than Riley likely realized. The coach who rolls the ball onto the court and watches isn’t a coach for very long. “That’s my job,” he said. “They were waiting for me to put my foot down.” The Rambis decision further proved who was the boss. Riley’s ideal rotation mixed finesse and toughness, speed and muscle. If players didn’t fit into his plans (Mike McGee, Jim Brewer), they never sniffed the rotation. If players were confused about their roles (Nixon), he talked to them. When he sensed McAdoo’s disappointment, he sat him down for a chat. “Pat was direct and professional,” said McAdoo. “That’s all you could ask for.”
“We all saw Pat develop that season,” said Rambis. “It was really impressive.”
During the team’s next practice, Riley had all the players line up against the wall. In front of everyone, in blunt language, Riley went man to man and teed off. “It was a come-to-Jesus meeting,” said Thibault. “He told people what he was happy about, what he was unhappy about, what their roles were. It was no holds barred and sort of painful, and from that moment, everyone knew who was in charge. Some of those guys only thought of him as the radio guy who worked as Paul’s assistant. Now he was coach.”
The Lakers appreciated Riley’s perspective. Having spent nine years as an NBA player, he knew whereof he spoke. Riley grasped the exhaustion that accompanied a third game in four nights. He understood what it felt like to be booed at home; to miss a crucial free throw; to be called out by the press. When reporters asked whether he considered himself to be a good coach, Riley shook his head. He was neither good nor awful—just learning. “I call him a philosopher because he can talk about things beyond the game that affect you,” said Wilkes. “He understands the travel and the rigors of the schedule and personal problems. All those things are not supposed to affect you, but they do. He is in touch with us.” Early on, Riley suggested Abdul-Jabbar focus more on defense and rebounding, less on scoring. The center spent the next six games sulking. The coach admitted it was a bad idea and scrapped the plan. In a late-season loss at Golden State, Riley called an unnecessary time-out, then lacked one when it was later needed. Afterward, when asked by reporters about the miscue, he pounded his fist into his chest. “The players get hammered when they make mistakes,” he said. “Sometimes I’m to blame for losses, too.”
By the time the regular season came to an end, the Lakers found themselves with a Western Conference–best 57-25 record. Their 114.6 points per game ranked second in the league, and their 2,356 assists ranked first. “When you played Los Angeles,” said Danny Schayes, the Utah forward, “you knew you were going to have to work your ass off.”
Paul Westhead? Who the hell was Paul Westhead? “Riley’s not getting near the credit he deserves after all this,” said Stan Albeck, the Spurs coach. “That situation was chaotic when he took over, a real zoo. Pat knows he’s got talented guys, and he’s letting them play the way they want to play.”
For Buss, the man who took immense heat for siding with a player over a coach, it was sweet vindication. The Forum was the place to be in Los Angeles. Celebrities of all ilk walked through the turnstiles, ranging from Joe Namath and Jane Fonda to Michael Douglas and Don Rickles. Every night was sold out, every game an event. Riley, a sharp dresser with thousand-dollar Giorgio Armani suits and custom-tailored shirts (players jokingly nicknamed him GQ), treated the sideline like a red carpet. “God, he was dreamy,” said Joan McLaughlin, the organization’s director of human resources. “He was always the one the girls were looking at.” Led by a visionary choreographer named Paula Abdul, the sexy Laker Girls danced and kicked away. The word Showtime was a definitive statement. A declaration. The Lakers were Showtime. Fast. Intense. Unyielding.
Having closed the season with three straight wins, Sports Illustrated celebrated Los Angeles’s dominance with a cover piece titled THEY’RE NOT JUST GOOD, THEY’RE PERFECT. Yet even though the Lakers emerged as heavy favorites to return to the finals, many around the league questioned their strength. Riley, after all, was a rookie coach. Abdul-Jabbar was old, the bench—even with McAdoo—somewhat thin. Though Rambis had exceeded all of Riley’s expectations, his statistical line (4.6 points, 5.4 rebounds, 1.2 blocks) was laughable. Mitch Kupchak, deemed the perfect Laker power forward, was wearing a thick cast on his leg while taking business classes at UCLA. “L.A. can’t win with a Kurt Rambis . . . at Mitch Kupchak’s forward spot,” said Cotton Fitzsimmons, the Kings’ coach. “All you do is leave them alone on defense and cheat over into the middle on Abdul-Jabbar. Then you can beat them in a half-court game, which is what you usually get in the playoffs, where teams really work hard to curtail the fast break.”
Fitzsimmons’s reasoning made sense. Playoff basketball is a departure from regular-season basketball. Running is curtailed. Defensive indifference vanishes. Weak links and soft spots—hidden over eighty-two games—are exposed like cold sores. And yet the Lakers had something going for themselves, something both clichéd and powerful. Unity. Heading into the 1981 first-round series against the Rockets, the majority of players had ignored their head coach and questioned their young point guard. There were jealousy issues, insecurities, bitterness. Now cohesiveness reigned.
On the night of April 23, four days before they were scheduled to open at home against the Phoenix Suns, the Lakers invited fans to observe a workout at the Forum. It was a fun, loose affair, with players tiptoeing toward the stands for autographs and light banter. A year earlier, many Lakers would have bristled at the very idea. But times had changed. Leading into the Suns opener, Riley held a meeting with his men to specifically discuss the previous season’s pratfall. The bruises remained. The impact hadn’t faded. “The players really remember how it felt last April 5,” Riley said. “It was a painful, painful experience. If they are sincere about turning that into a positive experience, and I think they are, it’s a hell of a strong force on our side.”
John MacLeod, the Suns’ veteran coach, had guided his team to a surprising 46-36 record. Though Phoenix lacked the Lakers’ overall skill, their roster boasted enough players to make things interesting. Guard Dennis Johnson was among the league’s best, as was Truck Robinson, the burly center who averaged 19.1 points and 9.7 rebounds. “The Lakers had much more in the tank than we did,” said Craig Dykema, the Suns forward. “We would have to come up with something special to have a chance.”
MacLeod’s “something special” was something disastrous. He made the decision that Alvan Adams, his All-Star forward, would cheat in and help center Rich Kelley whenever Abdul-Jabbar received the ball down low. “We’re not going to let Kareem beat us,” said MacLeod. “He’s beaten too many others.”
On the bright side, the Suns held Abdul-Jabbar to 11 points in Game 1.
On the down side, the Lakers won, 115–96.
Los Angeles rolled to a four-game sweep, then advanced to the Western Conference Finals to face San Antonio, a 48-34 team with the dynamic one-two scoring punch of George Gervin (32.3 points per game) and Mike Mitchell (21 points per game).
The Spurs, though, were not the Lakers’ sole concern. At the same time Riley and his players were preparing for a tough battle, Buss and his executives were preparing to complete a transaction that would change both the dynamic of the team and the scope of the NBA.
“Let’s just say,” said Cooper, “that if it happens, history is rewritten. History is totally rewritten.”
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sp; • • •
More than two years earlier, on February 15, 1980, Los Angeles and Cleveland had completed a trade that interested absolutely no one.
With their backcourt a tad thin and Westhead seeking another player who could help pressure opposing guards, the Lakers acquired Butch Lee, a 6-foot, 180-pound former Marquette star who had accomplished little since being selected tenth overall in the 1978 Draft. In return, Bill Sharman, the Lakers general manager, agreed to part with Don Ford, a workmanlike forward fancied by Ron Hrovat, the Cavs’ general manager. Ford enjoyed a solid four and a half years in Los Angeles but was no longer a part of the rotation. “The trade made sense,” said Lee. “Sometimes we all need new places to play.”
In order to surrender Ford, Sharman demanded a swapping of future picks. The Lakers would give up their first-round selection in the upcoming draft, but only if Cleveland agreed to part with their first pick in either 1981 or ’82. Hrovat wasn’t thrilled by the demand, but with a roster featuring two up-and-coming stars (Kenny Carr and Mike Mitchell), he presumed the selection would be a relatively late one. Without much arguing, he handed Sharman the ’82 pick. “Those things happen all the time,” said Lee. “As a player, just trying to survive, you barely think about what future choices will become.”
Now, however, the Lakers found themselves holding Willy Wonka’s golden ticket. The pick they sent away (twenty-second overall in the 1980 Draft) netted Cleveland Chad Kinch, a UNC Charlotte forward who averaged 2.9 points in forty-one career NBA games. Meanwhile, the Carr-and-Mitchell-led Cavs plummeted. Cleveland completed the 1982 season with a 15-67 mark, which, pending an upcoming coin flip, would hand the Lakers either the first or second overall selection in the draft. “The way Los Angeles wound up with all those studs is amazing,” said Frank Layden, the Utah coach. “I used to scratch my head, because it didn’t seem fair. They get Magic Johnson when they’re already great, then another top pick? Ridiculous. But you had to give credit where credit was due. Name another organization that worked the system any better.”
As the Lakers and Spurs readied for action, Buss had one eye on the series, the other on Ralph Sampson, the University of Virginia’s 7-foot-4 All-American center. Sampson had just completed a junior season during which he averaged 15.8 points and 11.4 rebounds per game, and experts were predicting his future as a towering NBA legend.
Sampson had until May 15 to declare himself eligible for the upcoming draft, and while he remained publicly mum, those close to him suggested a guaranteed future in Los Angeles might be enough to entice a jump. That’s why, on the evening of May 12, Buss invited Donald Sterling, owner of the San Diego Clippers, to his mansion for dinner.
The sad-sack Clips had recently compiled a 17-65 record, which meant San Diego and Los Angeles were the two contenders for the top pick. While they, too, wanted Sampson, the Clippers were a long way (basketball-wise) from Los Angeles. They played in an awful arena, dressed in awful uniforms, maintained an awful roster. Cleveland was basketball hell. San Diego was basketball hell with nice weather. “There’s no way I was coming out early to be a Clipper,” said Sampson. “Money wasn’t the issue. I didn’t want to spend my life losing game after game.” Earlier that season, when the Lakers had traveled east to play the Bullets, Abdul-Jabbar invited Sampson to the Hyatt Arlington at Key Bridge for breakfast. The two spent an hour together, talking pressure and skyhooks and all things basketball and life. “He was a giant of a man,” Sampson said. “People never understood him, but I felt like I did. He was gentle and warm. It would have been wonderful to have played alongside him.”
Buss desperately craved Sampson, and decided to take action well before the May 20, 1982, coin flip to make certain the number one selection would—no matter what—belong to his franchise. In a scene that could take place only in Los Angeles, Buss and Sterling were joined for a private dinner by (inexplicably) Gabe Kaplan, the mustached actor who had starred as Mr. Kotter in Welcome Back, Kotter.
Over steak and potatoes, the Laker owner told the Clipper owner he would do nearly anything to lock up Sampson. The Clipper owner told the Laker owner he, too, wanted Sampson—or lots of money, picks and players in exchange for the guaranteed right to draft him. “But, Don,” Buss said, “you know there’s no fucking way he’s leaving college to play for you.”
Kaplan suggested they flip a coin—if Buss wins, a deal is worked out; if Sterling wins, the Lakers help convince Sampson to become a Clipper. Buss nodded; Sterling frowned and rejected the plan. Kaplan said, just for fun, he’d flip the coin.
“You call it,” he said to Buss.
Buss yelled, “Heads!”
It came up tails.
“Hey, Don, you won,” Buss said. “You could have had it all.”
Buss offered $6 million for the guarantee of the pick. Sterling declined. Buss offered $6 million plus (should he have it) the number two pick in the upcoming draft. Sterling declined. Buss offered $6 million plus the number two pick in the upcoming draft and the team’s first-round pick in 1984. Sterling declined again. Buss suggested that he could, somehow, land the Clippers Moses Malone from Houston. Sterling was moderately intrigued, but he also wanted two Laker players—Norm Nixon and Michael Cooper. Buss said he’d have to think about it.
Sharman, who was in San Antonio at the time of the dialogue, was told of some of the packages Buss had put forth. He nearly choked on his tongue. Hell, they might not even need the Clippers to score the first selection. It was lunacy.
News of the Buss-Sterling dinner reached the front sports pages of Southern California newspapers. Here were the Lakers fighting to reach the NBA Championships, and four players suddenly had new concerns. For Cooper and Nixon, it was the idea of (Dear God, no . . .) becoming Clippers. For Rambis, it was the idea of Sampson taking his place at power forward. For Abdul-Jabbar, it was the idea of Sampson taking his place at center. Even though Buss outwardly spoke of the two seven-footers playing side by side, the concept was a preposterous one. Both men were tall, thin, lanky low-post scorers with similar games. Surely, Sampson’s arrival would hasten Abdul-Jabbar’s departure.
So how did the Lakers react to the gossip? They didn’t. Not one player offered a quotation (on or off the record) to the media about Sampson. Later on in his coaching career, Riley liked to use the phrase “peripheral opponents” to group the ceaseless distractions faced by professional athletes. Travel, wives, kids, parents, in-laws, groupies, speaking engagements, the press—all peripheral opponents. What the best of the best did, he said, was gather all the peripheral opponents, place them in a small cardboard box and slide it beneath the bed until the season ended. “We’re twelve-plus-two-plus-one,” Riley would say in reference to the twelve players, two bench coaches and one trainer. “That’s all who matters.”
One year earlier, the Lakers damned themselves to an early exit by focusing more on Westhead’s shortcomings and Johnson’s ego than the task at hand. This time, the team was hyper-focused. Sampson? Big whoop. There was a championship to win.
Though the Spurs were a potent team, Los Angeles played at a higher level. The Lakers opened at home with a 128–117 win, powered by Johnson’s 13-point, 14-assist, 16-rebound How to Do Absolutely Everything clinic. They won again two days later, 110–101, then traveled to San Antonio and dismantled the Spurs for a third-straight time, 118–108.
A couple of hours before the Game 3 tip-off, Sampson—turned off by all the drama and uncertainty—issued a recorded statement to the media, declaring his decision to return to Virginia for his senior season. Buss expressed his disappointment, and also took a stab at damage control. “The minute [Sterling] mentioned a player, I said I wanted to stop this conversation,” he said. “I love my players.”
The words were garbage—but well-intended garbage.
Did Sampson’s decision have an impact on the Los Angeles players? Hard to say. Abdul-Jabbar put forth his best effort of the series,
scoring a team-high 26 points while blanketing Spurs center George Johnson beneath a cloak of invisibility (0 points, 0 rebounds). Nixon added 22, repeatedly blowing past Johnny Moore, the opposing point guard. More than anything, the game spoke to the difference between a good team with one dominant star and a great team with several. Because Abdul-Jabbar clogged the middle, the Spurs offense was reduced to Gervin hucking off-balance shots from awkward angles. His 39 points looked wonderful on the stat sheet, but felt empty. “He came out with the attitude that he was going to win it or lose it,” Wilkes said.
He lost it.
Less than twenty-four hours later, Los Angeles finished off the Spurs, 128–123. It was the Lakers’ eleventh-straight victory, and twenty-third win in twenty-seven tries. The day belonged to Nixon, who scored 30 points in front of a silent HemisFair Arena crowd, and afterward his teammates lathered his head in the cheapest of dime-store champagnes—twist-off caps and all. Buss, smiling from ear to ear, promised Dom Perignon after the NBA championship was sealed. “That’s four more games,” he said.
In the corner of the room, sitting silently by his locker, one Laker was overcome by emotion. Such happiness—such incredible, overwhelming, all-encompassing happiness—coupled by such deep sorrow . . .
• • •
When one loses a child, it never leaves. It lingers and hangs there and looms like an awful dream. A person can momentarily forget, can be distracted by a quick joke or an engrossing movie. Yet, ultimately, it remains.
Jamaal Wilkes knows this all too well. In the fall of 1981, shortly before the start of training camp, his infant daughter, Arainni Julise Wilkes, died of complications. It was the second baby Jamaal Wilkes had lost (his first, with ex-wife Joycelyn, died of a heart ailment in 1977), and the pain was unlike any he had ever endured. Though he spoke little of the tragedy at the time, for the Wilkes family, it was more horrific than even the little he let on. In 1952, before Jamaal was born, his mother, Thelma Wilkes, had lost her first son, Leonard Bruce Wilkes, at thirteen months. “He was a picture of health,” Thelma Wilkes said. “He passed in his sleep; they called it crib death. I was four months’ pregnant with Jamaal. I prayed for another boy.”
Showtime: Magic, Kareem, Riley, and the Los Angeles Lakers Dynasty ofthe 1980s Page 23