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

by Pearlman, Jeff

  Berkta had been around the sport for more than three decades, and he’d never seen a team practice as hard as the Lakers. Every scrimmage was a war, overloaded with testosterone and trash talk. Had they been in his shoes, many coaches would have stepped in, separated combatants and issued some empty warning about “keeping things professional.” Riley never did. He wanted his players scarred and battle-tested, wanted them tougher, harsher, meaner. If they sought to brawl against one another, imagine how they’d approach the Celtics in the finals. “He made us mean,” said Rambis. “That’s a talent.”

  Riley’s greatest gift was as a communicator. At the start of every season, the Laker families gathered for a large dinner at a player’s home. Riley would inevitably give a speech that, though heard by all, was directed toward the wives and girlfriends. In words that sounded both passionate and soothing, he explained how, for the next eight months, they would be required to handle all off-the-court issues. “Your men need to be focused only on basketball,” he’d say. “That’s how we become champions.” The apparent meaning behind the words: Let your husbands sleep as long as possible. Don’t expect them to change a diaper, mow a lawn, cook a meal, take you out for dinner. Don’t follow us on the road, because they’ll probably have sex with a groupie or two. Don’t ask too many questions. Actually, don’t ask any questions. Just support our plight, and you’ll wind up with some big bucks and a really pretty ring. Well, your husband will get the really pretty ring. But we’ll let you ride on a float in the parade. Probably.

  “I get that, in hindsight, it sounds weird, almost like a cult or something,” said Wanda Cooper, Michael’s wife. “And I can’t say we didn’t know—kind of—what went on on the road. But we knew we were needed, and we were all in it together. Pat made everyone feel important. He was very good at that.”

  • • •

  The Lakers and Celtics were destined to meet again.

  Everyone in Los Angeles knew it.

  Everyone in Boston knew it.

  Lakers-76ers had been done three times in recent years, and the world was over it.

  Celtics-Rockets (yawn) had been done once, in 1981, and it was pedestrian stuff.

  But Lakers-Celtics was everything the NBA could possibly want in a finals. The teams completed the season with the league’s two best records (Boston, at 63-19, won one more game than Los Angeles), and the Magic-Bird story line was one that refused to grow old. For both teams, the playoffs had been fairly easy—Boston cruised past the Cavaliers, Pistons and 76ers; the Lakers made mincemeat of Phoenix, Portland and Denver. Now the kid stuff was over.

  There were things that needed to be proved. The Celtics wanted to establish themselves as a dynasty, not merely one of the era’s better clubs but as the franchise of the decade. At age twenty-eight, Bird had just won his second-straight MVP award and was becoming an iconic ballplayer.

  The Lakers had their own issues. Though the 1984 Finals went seven games, the series was humiliating. It’s one thing to lose. It’s another to be taunted and mocked and pummeled. The lasting memory from that series wasn’t Bird hitting jumpers or Parish’s rebounding. It was M. L. Carr talking trash.

  This time, Worthy was intent on proving that the errant passes and missed key free throws were aberrations. Scott was intent on showing that he was, like Nixon, a prime-time performer. (The Sporting News’s Paul Attner derisively referred to him as a fringe player.) Abdul-Jabbar was intent on staving off Father Time. Mostly, there was Johnson—intent on erasing the most crushing span of his professional career.

  Immediately after the loss to Boston, a despondent Johnson escaped. He fled to the Bahamas, desperate for warm weather and blue waves and tasty coconut drinks with fancy umbrellas poking out from the glasses. All he wanted to do was forget the repeated blunders and gaffes that plagued the Lakers.

  As he entered the lobby of his hotel, Johnson was at peace. “That’s when I saw [Boston’s] Cedric Maxwell,” he said. “I came all this way to get away, and there he was, on his honeymoon.”

  Though he could shrug off the chance meeting, it stung. He spent the summer in a stupor, desperate for answers that never emerged. Was he really to blame? Would Nixon have made similar mistakes? Was he overrated? In over his head? More flash than substance? “I sat back when it was over,” he said, “and I thought, ‘Man, did we just lose one of the great playoff series of all time, or didn’t we?’ This was one of the greatest in history. Yet all you read was how bad I was.” When McHale laughingly referred to him as Tragic Johnson, the words tore through his body. When Laker fans glumly reminded him of how close they had come to glory, the sentiment brought tears to his eyes. (Interestingly, the hostility between Johnson and Bird had lessened. After the 1984 Finals, they filmed a pair of commercials together and spent the time between takes catching up. Though far from friends, a frosty relationship had evolved to mild acceptance.) Some wondered whether he was devoting too much time to women, too little time to the sport. By now, Johnson’s reputation as a hound was sealed. He was having sex nearly every day—often twice and three times a day. Teammates knew it, management knew it. “My car was in the shop one day,” said Rosen. “So while it was being fixed, Earvin let me drive his Mercedes. I was driving around, doing some errands, when suddenly something under the hood exploded. I called him up and said, ‘Earvin, I’ve got some bad news. Your car blew up.’” Johnson’s response: “Were you able to save the phone number that was in the glove compartment?”

  Said Rosen: “I said, ‘Earvin, listen to me. Your forty-thousand-dollar car is sitting in the middle of the street. It’s toast.’ But he said to forget the car, that he’d have somebody pick it up later. All he kept asking me was, ‘Did you save that number?’”

  The local media was relentless, questioning whether Johnson even deserved to be compared to the flawless Bird. A Los Angeles Times headline asked, EARVIN, WHAT HAPPENED TO MAGIC? A columnist for the Los Angeles Herald-Examiner called him “the tarnished superstar” and “the goat of the series,” while noting that “right there against his arch rival, Larry Bird, he failed.”

  Failed?

  “Those wounds from last June stayed open all summer,” Riley said. “It never leaves your mind completely. Magic is very sensitive to what people think about him, and in his own mind I think he heard those questions over and over again to the point where he began to rationalize and say, ‘Maybe I do have to concentrate more.’ I think the whole experience has made him grow up in a lot of ways.”

  Johnson enjoyed one of the best regular seasons of his career, averaging 18.3 points and 12.6 assists. Yet, for the first time, it didn’t matter. He had always taken pride in looking over a score sheet and seeing his impact on a game. He had always enjoyed watching highlights of his fanciest passes, of the no-look, behind-the-back beauties he delivered to Worthy and Scott and Cooper. “Whooooo, boy, did you see that?” he’d howl. Now, though, every evening was merely a stepping-stone toward his dream. Stats? Who cares? Highlights? Who cares? He craved a rematch with the Celtics, and only a rematch with the Celtics. Nothing else would heal the pain.

  When the Lakers decimated Denver, 153–109, in the fifth and final game of the Western Conference Finals, Johnson let loose a roar of gleeful delight. Earlier that evening, Boston eliminated Philadelphia, setting the clash in stone. “Can the Celtics slow down the Lakers, who averaged 131.2 points in compiling an 11-2 playoff record?” Sam Goldaper wrote in The New York Times. “Can the Lakers match up against the Celtic front line of Kevin McHale, Larry Bird and Robert Parish?”

  “There were a lot of questions to be answered,” said Cooper. “But as far as I was concerned, I knew one thing for certain. We were about to kick Boston’s ass.”

  • • •

  The VHS tapes rested atop a television in his office, each one labeled in black marker on crudely placed masking tape.

  BOSTON VS. LAKERS GAME 5

 
; BOSTON VS. LAKERS GAME 7

  GAME 2 LAKER-CELTIC GAME

  In the days leading up to Game 1 of the NBA Finals, Pat Riley watched them all. It was fun. It was awful. He felt the joy. He felt the pain. “I don’t think there’s any doubt that we gained strength from what happened to us last year,” he said. “But, hey, that was the past. I don’t think last year will have anything to do with the outcome of this one. This is the present. Let’s enjoy it for what it is.”

  The Lakers enjoyed it—for three minutes. That was how long, more or less, they were competitive in the series opener, a 148–114 Celtics rout at the Boston Garden on May 27 that came to be known as the Memorial Day Massacre. The 34-point margin of victory was the second-greatest in championship play history, behind only the Washington Bullets’ 117–82 defeat of the Seattle SuperSonics in 1978. The Celtics set multiple finals series records, including most total points, most points in a half (79), largest lead at halftime (30 points, 79–49) and field goal accuracy for a game (61 percent). “I’ve never seen a team—except ours at times—shoot from the perimeter like that,” Riley said. “They came out on all cylinders for this first game.” Scott Wedman, a forgettable reserve, made all eleven of his shots. (“Who the fuck is Scott Wedman?” Riley screamed in a film session the next day.) McHale scored 26 on 10-for-16 shooting. “In my mind, I couldn’t imagine any way we’d be able to beat Boston after that,” said Gary Vitti, the team’s trainer. “They were that superior.”

  Following the game, the Lakers slunk back into the locker room, shocked, crushed, hurt, humiliated. Generally, this was a moment for either Riley or Johnson to stand up and talk away the wounds. Instead, it was Abdul-Jabbar, jersey drenched in sweat, goggles wrapped atop his forehead, who cleared his throat. He had just completed one of the worst performances of his career—a 12-point, 3-rebound embarrassment that was greeted with ridicule by the crowd. Though he hadn’t told anyone, his head was once again pounding. “I want to apologize to all of you,” he said, staring toward the floor. “I had migraines and I played like garbage. But I won’t play like that anymore. We’re going to win this thing.

  “I promise,” he said, “we are going to win this thing.”

  His teammates were stunned.

  “It was like E. F. Hutton—no one said a word,” said Spriggs. “To hear that from Cap was very powerful. When he spoke, the words had great meaning.”

  If Celtic fans were already fitting themselves for Back-to-Back shamrock T-shirts, members of the team were decidedly less presumptuous. Yes, it was a glorious win. But the Lakers were too good to meekly vanish into the night. “It’s definitely time to back off [trash talking],” Maxwell said. “It’s not like backgammon or cribbage, where if you beat someone bad enough, you get two wins.”

  The second game was scheduled for three days later, and as the Lakers boarded the bus to take them from the Marriott Copley Place to the Garden, players couldn’t believe what they were witnessing. Abdul-Jabbar entered the vehicle followed by Ferdinand Lewis Alcindor Sr.—his father. Under Riley’s strict rules, no relatives were permitted to ride with the team. Ever. Yet when the coach saw Alcindor, he greeted him with a warm handshake. “Kareem’s father was a metro cop in New York,” said Vitti. “He went into the tunnel, on the train tracks, chasing an armed man. Alone, he went in there. I don’t know about you, but that takes balls. For the rats, I wouldn’t go in there—let alone after an armed suspect. Not a word was spoken. Not one word on that. Kareem’s father didn’t say a word; just his presence said something.”

  When the Lakers arrived at the arena, Riley skipped his usual pre-game strategy session for simpler sentiment. Inspired by Abdul-Jabbar, the coach talked about his own dad, Leon Francis Riley, and how the final words he’d ever spoken to his son still resonated. It was on June 26, 1970—Pat’s wedding day. As Leon was leaving the reception, he turned to his son. “He told me that, at some point, you’ve got to plant your feet, stand your ground and kick somebody’s ass,” Riley said to his players. “He was right.” (Leon died less than three months later.)

  “When he spoke of fathers and voices,” Cooper said, “the score was already five to nothing for us before the start. That was appropriate. It was subtle. It was dramatic. It was true.”

  Having endured Boston Garden’s 105-degree visitors’ locker room the previous June, Vitti special-ordered two portable cooling units, called MovinCool, which the Los Angeles Raiders had used on the sidelines during particularly hot games. “George Anderson, the Raiders trainer, gave me the number for these guys, and it turned out they were huge Laker fans,” said Vitti. “They agreed to bring their product to Boston in exchange for two tickets.” With unbridled glee, Vitti plugged the MovinCools into the socket, then watched as a blown circuit took out half the building’s power. “Boston-piece-of-shit-Garden,” said Vitti. “Shithole probably had fuses instead of circuit breakers. The building complained that we were using too much power, and I told them to go to hell. That felt great. And, for the first time in forever, our locker room was cool and comfortable.”

  In one of the most striking turnarounds of the season, Abdul-Jabbar—DOA three days earlier—tallied 30 points, 17 rebounds, 8 assists and 3 blocks in a 109–102 Los Angeles win. For the first time in years, Abdul-Jabbar was the team’s emotional centerpiece. He was tired of the trash talk and fed up with Parish’s physicality. From the bench, Spriggs, McGee and Kupchak couldn’t believe what they were witnessing. “You see him swinging the left skyhook and the right skyhook, and he kept going wider and wider with it,” said Spriggs. “That’s how intense he was. It wasn’t just in the paint. It was truly like art. We were pointing to him on the floor and he was screaming back, saying, ‘See, I told you!’ He was just so excited. He was like, ‘Yeah! Yeah!’ Seeing all those emotions coming from Cap, it was a treat. Because Earvin was usually the spokesperson. To see that from Cap . . . He said he was gonna do it and he did it.”

  After the game ended, Rosenfeld brought Abdul-Jabbar back from the locker room to conduct an on-court interview. As he waited, fans taunted him with shouts of “Lew! Lew!”—his former name. “It was the one thing that pissed him off,” said Rosenfeld. “He hated that.” Moments earlier, Rosenfeld had been handed a wet towel by Rambis. Overcome by the moment, he threw it at the fans. “Just emotion,” he said. “It wasn’t at anyone in particular.”

  When Rosenfeld returned to the locker room, he was high-fived by Johnson, Cooper and Worthy. “Nice going!” Cooper said. “You’ve earned your playoff share.”

  “What’d I do?” Rosenfeld asked.

  “When you threw the towel, you hit Robert Parish’s wife in the face,” Cooper said. “M. L. Carr was here, all pissed. Nice fucking job, man. Nice going.”

  The Celtics were incensed. So was Riley, who hated off-the-court distractions interfering with his game planning. “How are you going to manage this?” he asked.

  Rosenfeld promptly wrote an apologetic letter to Parish, and planned on having it handed to the Boston center. However, when Rosenfeld found himself at the Celtics’ workout before Game 3 at the Forum, he decided to take care of it himself. When Parish entered the building, Rosenfeld quietly tapped his shoulder and said, “Robert, can I talk to you for a minute?” Because TV cameras had gathered around, the two walked ten rows into the stands where they could be alone. “Look, Robert,” he said, “I wrote you this letter because I want to apologize to you. I didn’t know that was your wife, and it was totally out of character for me to do.” For three or four minutes, Rosenfeld blathered on about how awful he felt, how he’d gladly speak directly to Nancy, how it was the lowest point of his career. His voice cracked. His hands were shaking. Parish, nicknamed Chief after the uncommunicative Native American in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, said nothing.

  “Are you mad at me?” Rosenfeld asked.

  Parish, who had yet to utter a word, smiled. “Not at all,” he said. “I’ve been telli
ng that bitch to keep her mouth shut for ten years, and you’re the first guy to finally get her to do it.”

  They shook hands.

  • • •

  The Lakers dominated Game 3, 136–111, but the Celtics tied the series when Bird scored eight straight fourth-quarter points, then later passed to Dennis Johnson for the winning jumper in a 107–105 Game 4 squeaker. For a spell, it appeared that one of the great series in NBA history was being trumped by an even better one a year later. These were two equal teams, going back and forth like perfectly matched pugilists in the center of a ring. K. C. Jones, Boston’s coach, rightly compared the organizations to middleweights Marvin Hagler and Tommy Hearns, who had recently staged one of the most memorable fights in boxing history.

  This was, it seemed, anyone’s series to take.

  And then it wasn’t.

  David Stern, the NBA commissioner, warned both teams that they needed to cut back on the sharp elbows and sharper words, but only Boston seemed to comply. Riley unleashed his two goons—Rambis and Mitch Kupchak—on the Celtics, insisting they could change the series without scoring a single point. In a 120–111 Game 5 win, the two combined for 38 minutes, 11 points, 13 rebounds and 3 fouls. Kupchak was now a sad copy of his old self—bad knee, no mobility, couldn’t jump over a quarter. But he was stubbornly physical. “It was about setting a tone,” said Rambis. “That was our job.”

  “No fear, no backing down,” said Kupchak. “Just hard nosed.”

  Wrote Thomas Bonk in the Los Angeles Times: