The two teams spent the five-minute overtime period going back and forth. With thirty-five seconds left and the score deadlocked at 123, Magic Johnson stepped to the line for two. Scott and McGee, glued to the bench, covered their eyes in fear. Johnson, an 81 percent free-throw shooter, stared longingly at the rim before each shot—and missed both. Moments later, Bird sank a turnaround jumper over Johnson with sixteen seconds to go, and Boston led, 125–123.
The Lakers had one final opportunity. Cooper inbounded the ball, and Worthy was fouled by McHale as he missed an attempted layup. There were ten seconds remaining, and as he stepped to the free-throw line, Worthy was passed by Carr, who had been in the game for defensive purposes. The Boston benchwarmer offered a handshake, looked at his friend and said, “Don’t choke.”
At the moment, Worthy was the best player on the floor. He had hit twelve of his last thirteen shots, and scored nine of Los Angeles’s 10 overtime points. “There was no one better to be in that position,” said Rambis. “There’s a reason he’s known as ‘Big Game’ James. He’s clutch.”
Worthy took five dribbles, bent his knees, squared to the basket, released . . . and the ball hit off the front of the rim. Maxwell raised his arms in victory, crossed the lane and offered Worthy the international choke sign—hands around the neck. Worthy sank the second, but it wasn’t enough. The Celtics persevered for the 129–124 win.
Series: Altered.
“I don’t think any of us thought Worthy was a choker, any more than any other player is,” said Carr. “I would have said the same thing to Kareem, to Coop, to Magic. I mean, I had to say something. If he makes those two free throws, we’re in trouble.”
Afterward, Riley came unglued. He accused the Celtics of everything short of setting fire to the village. They were crooks. Criminals. Batterers. Assholes. “What Boston did was the equivalent of two gang warlords meeting the night before a rumble and deciding the weapons,” he said. “They both say bare fists, and one of them shows up with zip guns.” Riley specifically targeted McHale, a normally lovable sort. Unlike the stoic Bird, McHale was always laughing, joking, kidding. Less than a minute after hammering Rambis, he tried to apologize. The gesture was met with an indifferent shrug.
“We’re not going to lower ourselves to the level of a Kevin McHale and his tactics,” Riley said. “But I’ll tell you what we’re going to do. We’ll be ready for anything. What they did is they came into our territory, a neutral zone, and decided to use zip guns. Weapons that we didn’t plan on using, because this is a game of basketball. We understand the physical part.
“We want to win. They want to win. It takes something like what McHale did to change the whole mood of physical play. Now it’s Katie-bar-the-door, that’s all. McHale’s play changed the whole mood of the thing. That’s the mood it’s gonna be for the next three games. Now it’s an ugly situation.”
Riley was thirty-nine years old, a youngish man still figuring his way. Beginning that night, in a hallway in the bowels of the Forum, the Laker coach learned something he would never forget: Don’t give your opponent what it most desires.
When the Celtic players read Riley’s words, they figured the series was theirs. “We got in their heads,” said Carr. “That’s exactly what you want to do.”
“Before, the Lakers were just running across the street whenever they wanted,” said Maxwell. “Now they stop at the corner, push the button, wait for the light and look both ways.”
Six days later, the Lakers’ magical run came to an end. After splitting games 5 and 6, they dropped the decisive Game 7, 111–102, in familiar fashion. Boston out-rebounded Los Angeles, 52–33, and out-hustled them, too. “[The Celtics] muscled and fought and hammered their way to an NBA championship,” wrote Mike Littwin in the Los Angeles Times. Afterward, Boston’s fans stormed the Garden floor, knocking down baskets, grabbing jerseys, stealing Abdul-Jabbar’s trademark goggles off his forehead. “I can’t tell you how awful that was,” said Spriggs. “The lowest of lows.”
In a private moment, Riley admitted something to Nater. “I had a dream last night that we lost this game,” he told the backup center. “And my dreams almost always come true. I never felt good about this one.”
Because the game ended late, the team had to fly out the following morning. That night, while their bus drove from the Garden to the hotel, the Lakers were accosted by a hundred or so fans. They rocked the vehicle back and forth, hurled beer cans and rocks at the windows. “It was frightening,” Johnson said. “Our nerves were shot to begin with . . . and now everyone is freaking out because we were surrounded and we couldn’t go anywhere.”
The police broke up the mob, and the Lakers spent the night wallowing in disbelief. Johnson, more than anyone, took the loss to heart. He blamed himself for dribbling out the clock, for poor passes, for not doing more. All he had wanted was to send Bird to another defeat, to see the look on his rival’s face as he walked off the court a loser.
Instead, Johnson sat on his bed and cried.
CHAPTER 12
EARL
When an organization falls one game short in a championship series, it’s often more inclined to make drastic off-season changes than had it gone, say, 22-60. There’s something tauntingly painful about coming so close, then having to start all over again. Executives tend to believe if they simply add one more big piece, glory will ensue.
In the aftermath of the Boston heartbreak, Jerry West, the Lakers savvy general manager, refused to panic. On the one hand, the Celtics had exposed his team as somewhat soft and, to a certain degree, unable to play slow-down basketball for prolonged stretches. On the other hand, they had come t-h-i-s close to winning a third title in five years, and the roster remained loaded.
Therefore, instead of trying to package some players in a deal, West looked toward June 19, 1984, when all twenty-four teams would gather inside Madison Square Garden for the NBA Draft.
One of the league’s keen talent evaluators, West prepared for the event like few others. He was obsessive about getting it right, and insisted he and his crew of scouts and assistants go through every possible player once . . . twice . . . ten times. A couple of days before the draft, he would hand Josh Rosenfeld, the media relations director, a list with four or five player names. “If you know any of the local sportswriters or sports information directors, give them a call,” West would say. “Find out what you can about these guys.” Were there a one-armed point guard averaging 22 points per game for the University of Delaware, West wanted to know about him. Were there a 7-foot-10 sheepherder working on a farm in Djibouti, there damn well better be a scouting report. “Jerry treated all Laker employees wonderfully,” said Gene Tormohlen, a longtime scout with the organization. “But he rightly had high expectations. He was all about the team winning.”
Because the Lakers reached the finals, they owned the twenty-third spot in the draft, a place where no Akeem Olajuwons (the University of Houston center—picked first by the Rockets) or Michael Jordans (North Carolina guard—drafted third by Chicago) were generally found. There was, however, one name among the second-rate rubble that carried some weight inside the Forum offices, one name that leapt off of a page otherwise filled with uninspiring second-rate nobodies like Cory Blackwell, Tony Costner and Steve Burtt.
“Earl Jones,” said West, years later. “Earl fucking Jones.”
Yes, Earl fucking Jones*—easily the nation’s finest 7-foot, 190-pound senior Division II center. West had often told people, “If you’re gonna make a mistake in the draft, make sure it’s a big mistake,” and Jones was, without fail, big. As a freshman at Mount Hope High School in Mount Hope, West Virginia, Jones stood 6-foot-4. Three years later, he was 6-foot-10 and, as a senior at Spingarn High in Washington, DC, exactly 7 feet. “I like being tall,” he said. “Except when you have to duck.”
During his final prep season, there was talk around the league that Jones might le
ave directly for the NBA. He was a two-time high school All-American who led Mount Hope to 63 wins in 72 games over three seasons and famously lit up Patrick Ewing in a summer league battle. Why, when UCLA coach Larry Brown paid him a visit, one of the first things Jones said to him was, “Jones 29, Ewing 6.” It was a line he used often.
“I guess he was trying to impress me, which he didn’t have to do,” Brown said. “He was considered the best player in the nation.” Yet Jones was painfully quiet, emotionally stunted and academically invisible. At the end of his junior year, he had compiled sixty-three unexcused absences during the spring semester and failed most of his classes. (Hence, his transfer to Spingarn High.)
He was, however, dominant on the court—America’s elixir for every other shortcoming. On the morning after his spectacular debut for Spingarn against Chevrus High in Portland, Maine, the Portland Press Herald led with the (long, awful—yet telling) headline EARL JONES’ OVER-THE-HEAD, EXCUSE-ME-PLEASE SLAM DUNK IN THE FIRST HALF PRETTY MUCH SUMMED UP MONDAY NIGHT’S GAME. Professional scouts flocked to his engagements, watched him soar, but left with a near-unanimous take: oodles of talent, not physically or mentally ready for the NBA.
Though he was recruited by numerous Division I programs (his grades improved at Spingarn, and he reached the necessary SAT score while averaging 20.2 points, 17 rebounds and 7 blocked shots), Jones decided to attend the University of District of Columbia, a downtown commuter school lacking dorms and a centralized campus. The announcement, big enough to garner coverage in The New York Times, was greeted with bewilderment. The University of the District of Columbia? “I didn’t want a big school, with all that pressure,” he said. “They said if I came to UDC I could help put it on the map. Coach [Will] Jones said I could make the school better, the area better, make everything very exciting. I was into that.”
Will Jones was right. With Earl Jones manning the middle, UDC emerged as one of the finest Division II programs in the country, winning the 1982 national title and losing close games to Division I programs like Western Kentucky and Wichita State. “We wanted to play Georgetown and Maryland,” said Greg Carson, a Firebirds guard. “But they would have nothing to do with us.”
Yet despite averaging 21.7 points over four seasons, Jones was an enigma. Bob Ferry, the Washington Bullets general manager, watched him play and raved, “We’re talking about a number one draft pick here.” By languishing in Division II, however, he rarely went up against top-flight centers like Ewing, Olajuwon and Ralph Sampson. His weight was an issue, as was his attitude. Jones seemed to run at half speed, quarter speed and, occasionally, no speed. Many thought that, by facing only Division II hacks, his game had regressed. He once told the Washington Star’s Betty Cuniberti, “All I want to be is a pro and drive an Eldorado.” The quote generated a collective groan. Marty Blake, who operated the official NBA scouting service, offered this yin-and-yang evaluation: “This player could go anywhere in the draft. . . . He is the original mystery man. . . . He has not played up to his potential the past two seasons. . . . Despite his frame he can do everything . . . run. Pass, shoot, block shots, etc. . . . He handles the ball very well for a big man. . . . I do not know if he can gain weight.”
Technically speaking, the Lakers didn’t want Jones. There were dozens of players who rated higher—including George Singleton, a Furman forward who would fall to them in the third round. “I thought Earl Jones was a phony,” said Tormohlen. “One of those guys who tells you exactly what you want to hear.” Yet seven-footers didn’t show up every day, and with Abdul-Jabbar, almost thirty-eight, hinting this might be his final season and Mitch Kupchak’s knees (tattered) and Swen Nater’s departure (the Lakers refused to offer a no-cut contract, so he left for Italy), West made up his mind. When the 76ers used the twenty-second pick to take a Lamar University guard named Tom Sewell, the Lakers grabbed Jones.
Comedy ensued.
There had been some modestly funny draft moments through the recent years. In 1980, the Lakers used their sixth-round pick on a North Alabama guard named Otis Boddie, then proceeded to spell his name O-D-I-S in all media and official material. “I guess,” said Boddie, “they never bothered to double check.” Two seasons later, the team’s ninth-round selection was Rutgers’s Tim Byrne—a guard whose name, when called, baffled the experts. “That’s because I never played college ball,” said Byrne. “My neighbor was friends with Jerry Buss. I was picked as a gag.”
Jones, though, brought forth a new level of unintentional hilarity. For an organization licking its wounds after a nightmarish finals, his arrival was a breath of fresh air. Or nitrous oxide. He signed his $75,000 contract on August 15, and reported to the team’s rookie camp at Loyola Marymount four days later. The Lakers handed him uniform number 1, a figure that perfectly matched his physique.
“The guy had a ton of physical talent,” said Singleton. “But, well . . .”
“He couldn’t play,” said Lance Berwald, the team’s fifth-round pick out of North Dakota State. “Nice guy, no doubt. But very soft.”
“God, was he awful,” said Richard Haenisch, the seventh-round pick out of Chaminade. “He would get dizzy every time we ran up and down the court. Whenever people asked him to compare himself to someone, he’d say Ralph Sampson. Right—if Ralph Sampson were soft and stupid.”
Had the Lakers not wasted a first-round pick, Jones likely would have played a couple of summer league games before being sent home to Mount Hope to begin pursuing his career as the world’s tallest used-car salesman (an endeavor that, years later, he fulfilled). However, the public embarrassment of admitting such a mistake would trump the sight of Jones bumbling through practices with Johnson, Abdul-Jabbar, Worthy and the Lakers. So he stayed.
In Earl Jones, Los Angeles found a player who combined Mark Landsberger’s intellect with a desk lamp’s court sense and a three-year-old’s life sensibility. One day during camp, Dave Wohl, one of Riley’s assistant coaches, was asked to call Jones after he failed to show up for practice.
“Where are you?” Wohl asked when Jones picked up the phone.
“I overslept,” replied Jones.
“Well,” said Wohl, “grab a taxi and get over here.”
“A taxi?” said Jones. “That’s gonna cost me fifty dollars.”
“But, Earl,” replied Wohl, “it’s gonna cost you a one-hundred-dollar fine if you don’t show up.”
A lengthy pause followed—“Earl doing the math,” said Wohl. He never arrived.
Jones was unlike any other Laker—ever. His teeth were yellowed and rotting, and Riley demanded Josh Rosenfeld, the media relations director, take him to the dentist. “He had something on every tooth that needed repair,” Rosenfeld said. “I don’t think he’d ever gone before.” Because he was quiet, and spoke with a pronounced backwoods West Virginia twang, teammates thought him to be slow. Every so often, though, he would offer up a one-liner that had people rolling on the floor. Once, while sitting alongside Gary Vitti, the team’s trainer, Jones watched as West burst into an expletive-filled rant. “Jerry walks away, and everything’s quiet,” said Vitti. “And Earl just looked at me and says, ‘That Jerry West is fucking nuts.’”
Another time, the ever-eclectic Kurt Rambis entered the locker room, slipped out of his practice clothes and wrapped a towel around his waist. He picked his jockstrap off the floor, held it to his nose, glanced toward Jones and said, “This is my favorite part.” He inhaled deeply.
Jones waited until Rambis was out of earshot. “That white boy,” he said, shaking his head, “just ain’t got no sense.”
As fun and (unintentionally) funny as Jones was on a bench, he was at his absolute Dangerfield-esque best on the court. About to begin his sixth season, Johnson reported to camp in no mood to goof around with the rookie screwup. In Jones, he spotted everything he didn’t want in a teammate—so-so skill, no dedication, no understanding of the game. As a result, Johnson made Jo
nes a target.
Throughout the pre-season, not a day would go by without Johnson throwing a pass that—POP!—slammed—POP!—into—POP!—Jones’s head. There were passes on the break—POP!—and passes in the post—POP!—and passes between two defenders—POP! Johnson wasn’t, literally, launching basketballs at Jones’s noggin. No, he simply knew the kid lacked the vision to keep up. That, alone, infuriated Johnson. “We all got hit by Earvin’s passes from time to time, because they were really good and you had to be ready at all times,” said Worthy. “But Earl was always tiptoeing through the daisies, and Magic embarrassed him. Earl had zero passion for the game.”
Counting the number of basketball-induced welts on the side of Jones’s head became a competition for the Laker players. They would hoot with laughter every time—POP!—he was nailed. “It was funny, but you’d also feel sorry for Earl,” said Larry Spriggs. “He just couldn’t cut it.”
“No work ethic to speak of,” said West. “A complete waste of talent, and the most disappointing draft pick I’ve ever been involved in.”
Years later Jones—being Jones—disputed this assessment. Given a chance, he insisted, he could have been the next Wilt Chamberlain–Bill Russell–Jesus Christ hybrid. “When we stepped on the floor, well, put it this way—couldn’t nobody guard me,” he said. “Kareem couldn’t guard me—I was too fast for him. If I got the ball outside, I could take anybody. I mean it—anybody.”
Jones actually lasted much of the season with the Lakers (again, rare is the team that cuts its first-rounder), but spent most of the time stashed on the injured list with sesamoiditis—technically an inflammation under the big toe, but really a twelve-letter word that translated to “This kid can’t play and we have to do something with him.” He appeared in two games, missed his only field goal attempt and was dumped at season’s end. Though he brought little joy to West, Riley and Johnson (who, during training camp, made Jones fetch him the requisite glass of freshly squeezed orange juice and USA Today every morning), both Rosenfeld and Lon Rosen, the team’s director of promotions, considered him a gift from the Lord Almighty.
Showtime: Magic, Kareem, Riley, and the Los Angeles Lakers Dynasty ofthe 1980s Page 31