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

by Pearlman, Jeff

  • • •

  There was just one problem—the kid couldn’t play.

  OK, maybe that’s an exaggeration. Scott immediately impressed his teammates with the most extensive long-distance range the club had seen since Jerry West’s heyday. Scott’s shooting touch was awe-inspiring, from release to arc to the inevitable soft swish through the twine.

  Shooting, however, was only one element of NBA success. His footwork was dreadful, and he was barely capable of going left with the ball. Any expectations of Scott sliding into the starting lineup were quickly put to rest. For now, he was a bench player.

  When Los Angeles opened at home against the Kansas City Kings on October 28, it was almost like watching a bunch of actors performing a Lakers tribute skit. Johnson and Abdul-Jabbar looked the same, but . . . was that—wait—Mike McGee starting at the off-guard? Is Swen Nater playing the post? And who the hell are Calvin Garrett and Larry Spriggs (answer, respectively: a free-agent pickup from Houston, and a rookie forward out of Howard University). Los Angeles won, 117–107 behind 25 points apiece from Abdul-Jabbar and Wilkes, then took a 120–115 decision at Utah to start 2-0.

  Generally speaking, teams like the Lakers have very few “big” games early in the season. A PR department might generate hype; players might talk smack; a coach might break out clichés about “tonight being a statement on dignity and pride.” But when a franchise reaches three of four championship series, November contests rarely matter.

  On the morning of November 2, the Lakers woke up for a game that mattered. Players and coaches boarded a bus for the two-hour ride to San Diego, where the Clippers—and Norm Nixon—awaited.

  For the most part, games against the Clippers were as predictably scripted as a Rocky sequel. The first quarter might be close, then—by midway through the second—Los Angeles would pull away and win by 15–20 points. When the clashes were held in Los Angeles, 30 percent of the attendees vanished by the fourth quarter. When the clashes were held in San Diego, Laker fans outnumbered Clipper fans by a significant margin.

  For the first time in, oh, ever, there was genuine intrigue. Having recovered from their initial sadness over Nixon’s departure, many of the Lakers were now merely angry. Even though they had lost in the 1983 Finals, Los Angeles seemed to be a dynasty in the making, a team that could regularly represent the West for a decade. “I thought Norm blew it for us with his selfishness,” said Cooper. “I really did. I felt bad for Norm, because nobody in their fucking mind wanted to be a Clipper. But I also thought he was really stupid. It’s the classic curse of getting what you ask for. He’d complained a lot when he was with us. Well, congratulations. You’re a fucking San Diego Clipper.”

  A sellout crowd of 11,629 packed the San Diego Sports Arena, and Nixon needed no extra motivation. Ever since the trade, he had been living in Room 239 of the Sports Arena Travel Lodge—a far cry from his Beverly Hills abode. Where were the Laker Girls? Dancing Barry? The courtside celebrities?

  As players from both teams mingled during shootaround, McAdoo pulled out a crumpled-up piece of paper and handed it to Nixon. It was a copy of a Los Angeles Times story that explained how the Lakers would be better sans their old point guard. Translation: To hell with you.

  “We wanted to beat his ass,” said McAdoo. “Once the whistle blows, it’s on.”

  Cooper and Johnson hugged Nixon before the game, then spent the rest of the night trying to catch him. In thirty-eight minutes of play, Nixon was a white, red and blue blur. San Diego took a 32–18 lead in the first quarter, with Nixon scoring 15 of the points. “He came out with both barrels loaded,” Cooper said. “And he let us have it with both of them.”

  When the game ended, the scoreboard read CLIPPERS 110, LAKERS 106. Nixon scored a game-high 25 points, coupled with 12 assists. (Scott, meanwhile, had 8 quiet points off the bench.) He was giddy. “Tonight, I can think about winning my first game against my old team,” he said. “But you can savor nothing in this league. There just isn’t enough time.” He was mobbed by teammates, all of who seemed to sense a new era in San Diego Clippers basketball. Coupled with forward Terry Cummings and center Bill Walton, Nixon expected to help his organization challenge for the Pacific Division. “Anything is possible,” Walton said. “With Norm, anything is possible.”

  The Clippers would go on to finish 30-52.

  • • •

  The Lakers, meanwhile, continued their sustained excellence. Even though Johnson missed fifteen games with a dislocated finger, and even though McGee never fully emerged as Nixon’s replacement at two guard (he started 45 games, averaged 9.8 points and infuriated teammates with his dreadful shot selection), and even though Mitch Kupchak’s long-awaited return from his knee injury was anticlimatic (he averaged 3.1 points in 29 games), and even though Nater joined the ranks of forgettable Abdul-Jabbar caddies (he averaged 4.5 points and 3.8 rebounds in 69 games and retired at season’s end), and even though Scott dazzled no one with his 10.6 points per game, and even though Lakers players led the NBA with 103 total missed games due to illness or injury (Wilkes faced the worst of it, contracting an intestinal infection in February), there was a mounting sense that something big was about to happen.

  For the first time in fifteen years, the Lakers and Boston Celtics were truly destined to play for the NBA championship.

  Once again, Los Angeles was the class of the West, running away with the Pacific Division and posting the conference’s best record (54-28). In the East, meanwhile, Boston had pieced together one of the great campaigns in modern NBA history. Much like the 76ers a season earlier, the Celtics (62-20) often seemed downright invincible. They featured six players who averaged double figures in scoring, arguably the second-best point guard in the NBA (Dennis Johnson, acquired from Phoenix before the season began) and, in Robert Parish and Kevin McHale, a pair of long, rangy frontcourt stars who could pester Abdul-Jabbar.

  There was also some kid from Indiana. Went by the name of Bird.

  “Fucking Larry Bird,” said Cooper.

  That is how most Laker players viewed Boston’s all-everything forward. He wasn’t merely Larry Bird. He was fucking Larry Bird or, quite often, motherfucking Larry Bird. Ever since arriving in the league along with Johnson in 1979, Bird had confused, befuddled and antagonized opposing forwards, all of whom—at one time or another—judged the gawky, white non-jumper to be vastly overrated. There was a pattern to those who guarded Bird. First, a player would assume his athleticism and talent would overwhelm the Celtic star. Second, Bird would get the ball early in a game, juke once or twice, then—swish. Two points. Then swish again. And again. And again. And again. Third, Bird would talk to you. About your sorry-ass defense. About the ten shots you missed. About your team being down by 15. Fourth, Bird would slap the ball away from you. Or force you into taking an unbalanced leaner. Fifth, you’d glance at the post-game stat sheet and read:

  BIRD: 32 points

  YOU: 8 points

  “He did everything it took to beat you,” said Rambis. “That was the only important thing to Larry—beating you. And if he made you look pathetic, all the better.”

  “Larry attacked you from so many different angles,” said Johnson. “And with Larry, you had to guard him five and ten feet past the (three-point) line. Five feet past the line was nothing for Larry. One time, I was hurt. I was on the bench. Larry comes by during warm-ups and says, ‘Don’t worry, Earvin. I’m gonna put on a show for you.’ I think he scored forty that night and I think he only missed two shots. He’d get that walk goin’ and that blond hair floppin’ and you knew you were gonna be in for a long, long night.”

  Rambis detested Bird. Cooper loathed him. Worthy abhorred him. Were you an opposing player, there was nothing to like about Larry Bird. Not his game, not his socks (frumpy and white), not his choice of beer (Budweiser), not his slow Indiana drawl. Absolutely nothing. Of all the Lakers, though, the one who had the mos
t hostile feelings was Johnson. He and Bird had famously paralleled each other, first languishing as disgruntled teammates (but not friends) on a U.S. amateur team that played in the World Invitational Tournament in the summer of 1978,* then—of course—serving as the key figures in the historic 1979 Michigan State-Indiana State NCAA title game. That matchup served to forever link the two as blood rivals, not unlike Joe Frazier and Muhammad Ali or Chris Evert and Martina Navratilova. Because he was quiet and standoffish, Bird usually responded to Magic questions with a shrug and a quick word. “My thing was when you compete, you’re really not friends,” Bird said. “You wanna keep an edge. Earvin is an outgoing guy. He loves everybody, he wants to high-five. And he’s got that big smile. My goal was to try and take three of them teeth home with me.” Bird was neither complimentary nor critical. Simply matter-of-fact. “I don’t go out to dinner with him,” he once said, in a rare expressive moment. “I just know him on the basketball floor, and that’s it. If he thinks he’s going to drive the lane and I’m going to lay down, he’s crazy. I’ve got a job to do.” Johnson, on the other hand, couldn’t say enough kind things about his rival. Bird was the best, Bird was amazing, Bird was awesome, Bird was the king of the game. Inside, though, he maintained a jealousy for Bird that existed with no other. While they played on opposite coasts, Johnson tracked Bird. He read every detail of his line in the daily newspaper box score, had teammates hush up when his name or image appeared on the latest sportscast. When Bird soundly beat him out for the 1979–80 Rookie of the Year award, Johnson was shocked. When the Celtics won the 1981 title over Houston, he couldn’t speak. Bird, a forward, and Johnson, a guard, rarely guarded each other on the court, but to the public they were Cain and Abel (who was who depended on one’s rooting interest). “Put fifty basketball minds in a room and ask them to pick a player to start their team,” said David Stern, the NBA’s commissioner. “Twenty-five will pick Magic, twenty-five will pick Larry.”

  “They’ll say it’s not a one-on-one game, and they’ll point out that they’re not even guarding each other, and you can’t blame them for doing that,” said Pete Newell, a basketball legend who worked as a consultant for the Golden State Warriors. “But if you were Raquel Welch and you lived across the street from Marilyn Monroe, you’d make damn sure you looked good every time you went out the front door.”

  Johnson desperately wanted to directly steal a championship from Bird—to make his case as the game’s best, to jab a stake in his rival’s heart. Bird desperately wanted to directly steal a championship from Magic—to earn a payback from Michigan State-Indiana State, to jab a stake in his rival’s heart. “They’re simply two of the all-time greats,” said K. C. Jones, Boston’s coach. “They’re so alike, but they’re so different. Earvin’s black, so that those who want can identify with him, and Bird’s white for those who want to identify with him. Earvin’s a great passer, rebounder and scorer. Larry’s all that and he can shoot better than any big man I’ve ever seen. Magic’s strength is pushing the ball up the floor. When he’s in control, there’s nobody like him. They’ve got such creative imagination on the court. People sit there and marvel at what they can do.”

  The Celtics strode through the playoffs, struggling against the Knicks in a seven-game semifinal series, but making quick work of Washington in the first round and Milwaukee in the Eastern Conference Finals. The Lakers, meanwhile, downed the Kings, Mavericks and Suns to reach their fourth championship series in Johnson’s five years.

  When Los Angeles ousted Phoenix with a 99–97 Game 6 win, the sense of accomplishment in the locker room was, collectively, less than usual. In the past, taking the West was a huge deal. This time, however, a blood rivalry loomed. The conference crown would mean nothing without destroying Boston. For younger fans, the thought was primarily about Johnson one-upping Bird. But for Laker loyalists who had been around since the team’s arrival from Minneapolis in 1960, the series carried unique significance.

  At the time, the rafters inside the Boston Garden dangled fourteen NBA championship banners—seven of which were earned against the Lakers. The first triumph came in 1959, when the Celtics swept Minneapolis in a humiliating four games. The remaining six all occurred when the Lakers were a California team, with star-packed rosters and dreamy expectations. The disdain for Boston grew with each setback—from mild to strong to intense to fierce to unrivaled. In 1962, there was Laker guard Frank Selvy missing an open fifteen-footer with seconds remaining in Game 7. In 1966, there was an eight-and-a-half-minute span in Game 7 during which Los Angeles failed to score a single point—and lost by two. In 1969, the last time the teams clashed for the crown, Jack Kent Cooke was so certain of a Lakers’ Game 7 victory that he had balloons hanging from the Forum rafters, waiting to drop. He hired the USC marching band to play “Happy Days Are Here Again” during the inevitable post-game celebration. “I suppose you’re going to ask me about those damn balloons,” Cooke said years later. “I sent them all to a children’s hospital where the kids had a great time with them. Certainly a better time than I did.”

  “I’m a nostalgia buff,” Riley said. “The ghosts of Sam Jones, Jerry West, Bill Russell, Elgin Baylor and all the rest from the past will be hanging from the rafters, looking over a new generation.”

  The Lakers entered the finals rightly worried about Bird, but believing Cooper, the league’s finest perimeter defender, could handle him. A greater concern was the Celtic mystique or, as Cooper said, “all that bullshit Red Auerbach did.” A revered NBA figure who had coached Boston for sixteen years before becoming the team’s general manager in 1966, Auerbach took sadistic pleasure in making sure Boston Garden served as a hell trap for visiting teams. First opened in 1928, the building was now drafty and poorly maintained, with brownish water often oozing from the taps and shower knobs that were rusted and decayed. When the Lakers came to Boston during the summer, the visiting locker room always felt as if it were 120 degrees. On cold winter days, it’d drop to 20. “All the things you heard about Red Auerbach—most of them were true,” said Lon Rosen, the Lakers director of promotions. “The locker room smelled, it was dirty, disgusting. He’d have people call the players’ hotel rooms in the middle of the night so they didn’t sleep well before games. He was an incredible basketball mind, but very childish.”

  “Actually, not everything you heard was right,” said M. L. Carr, the longtime Celtic guard. “I don’t think he turned the heat on when it was really hot out. He just turned the cold water off.”

  Though Riley tried to sound indifferent toward Auerbach, he viewed the man as one would a cockroach. There was a right way to do things and a wrong way to do things, and Riley believed the Celtics were in the wrong. When the Lakers had traveled to Boston earlier in the season, Riley spotted a container of water on a courtside table during shootaround. “The Celtics left it there for us,” said Dave Wohl, a Lakers assistant. “To drink.” Riley ordered that the container be emptied, scrubbed out, and refilled. “Who knows,” he said, “what the Celtics might have put in there to make us sick.”

  Because the Celtics finished with the NBA’s best record, Los Angeles traveled to Boston for the first two games. Having just wrapped up the Suns series, the Lakers flew directly from Phoenix. Upon landing at Logan Airport on May 26, the players groggily walked off the plane. The Western Conference Finals had been bruising, with the scratch marks and black-and-blue welts to show. “It’s hard to regain your energy in the NBA,” said Wohl. “Takes time.”

  So how did the Lakers spend their first hour in Boston? By standing alongside the luggage conveyer belt, waiting for forty-five minutes. When the purple-and-gold bags finally emerged, half were unzipped. “The message was clear,” Johnson said. “It was just Boston’s way of letting us know we shouldn’t get comfortable here.”

  The airport was overrun by Celtic fans decked out in green-and-white apparel. As Johnson picked up his bag, he was approached by a teenager in a green shirt. The Lak
er guard expected an autograph request. “Hey, Magic,” the kid said, “Larry is going to make you disappear!”

  “This little old man comes up to me, all kinda hunched over, and he gets right up in me and says—hissing—‘Larry is going to kill you,’” Johnson said. “So now we get our bags and get on the bus and our bus driver is wearing a Celtics cap. And I’m thinking, ‘Are we going to make it to the hotel all right?’ Then we go to check into the hotel and everyone at the hotel—everyone!—is wearing Larry’s jersey and Celtic jerseys and mean-muggin’ us. Just being real nasty. And the lady behind the counter goes—hissing—‘Here’s your key!’ Just staring at me.”

  The Lakers smiled and laughed it all off. Players knew, however, what this was, in no small part, about. Every single fan who approached in the airport and the hotel lobby was white. Not 95 percent, not 99 percent—100 percent. McAdoo, the only Laker to have played for the Celtics, devoted considerable time to relaying to his mates stories about the awful way the city and organization treated minorities. “When I arrived in Boston, it was well known as a place that destroyed black careers,” he said. “That organization wasn’t disliked only by me. It was a graveyard for blacks.”

  • • •

  The Lakers spent the night before Game 1 inside the Copley Marriott, a beautiful facility with twenty-four-hour room service, a crystal blue swimming pool and king-size beds in every room. Riley insisted his players register under faux names, so that Auerbach and Co. couldn’t engage in the usual hijinks.

  On the bright side, it worked beautifully—no one called.

  On the dark side, the Boston Globe had listed the team’s whereabouts inside its sports section. The hotel’s fire alarm system went off—three times.