“We were good teammates,” said Worthy. “I was quiet, but I was also stubborn and strong-headed. I had to learn that Magic was in charge, and what he said went. That was great. I mean, he deserved that. But it took adjusting.”
This was the major dilemma facing Riley as the Lakers attempted to regain their footing and recapture their championship. He was a coach whose entire philosophy was predicated upon single-minded focus. There could be no distractions. Had two marginal players been in conflict, Riley would have banished one, if not both. But with Johnson and Worthy, he had to hope professionalism would reign. Which it did. “First and foremost, it was about winning,” Worthy said. “About another ring.”
Although the Worthy-Aguirre swap fell through, the Lakers returned a significantly different roster for the 1986–87 team. Lucas was gone, as were two other bruising forwards—Larry Spriggs (allowed to walk as a free agent) and Mitch Kupchak (retired to the front office). Having long ago tired of his one-dimensional game, West finally jettisoned Mike McGee, sending him to Atlanta for the rights to Billy Thompson, the Louisville forward the Hawks had just selected with the draft’s nineteenth pick.
The strangest pickup came on October 13, when the Lakers agreed to terms with Wes Matthews, a free-agent point guard who started forty-six games for San Antonio the previous season.
Beginning with Norm Nixon’s departure, West longed for a suitable ball handler to back up Johnson. Ronnie Lester, the former University of Iowa star, had been underwhelming, as had Eddie Jordan, the Rutgers product brought back briefly in 1984.
When Laker players first heard of Matthews’ arrival, there were more than a few arched eyebrows. Since being drafted by the Bullets out of Wisconsin in the first round in 1980, he bounced from one franchise to another: Washington to Atlanta to San Diego to Atlanta to Philadelphia to Chicago to San Antonio. The thinking among executives was always the same—great talent, iffy makeup. Matthews was a tough kid from Bridgeport, Connecticut, who (basketball cliché alert) was rescued from the streets by after-school programs at the North End Boys Club and Father Panik Village. Though he now traveled from one city to another in first-class accommodations, he remained the in-your-grille 6-foot-1 runt who refused to back down. Matthews talked garbage and spewed venom and worried not about the repercussions. “Whenever I’d go in to negotiate with a general manager, the first thing I’d be asked was whether Wes would keep his nose clean and be a good boy off the court,” said Robert Ezor, his agent. “It wasn’t like Wes was out killing people. He just lacked control.”
Most of his new teammates best remembered Matthews from the previous season’s first-round playoff series. The Lakers had swept past the Spurs in three games, winning by an average of 31 points. Late in the third game, with his team once again far behind, Matthews jogged past the Los Angeles bench. “You make your reservations for Club Med yet?” Johnson shouted.
“Yeah, maybe,” replied Matthews, who scored 30 points on 13-for-21 shooting, “but I got mine!”
Without skipping a beat, Johnson smiled. “That was the game plan all along,” he yelled. “You stupid motherfucker . . .”
All of the Lakers—players and coaches—erupted into laughter.
West, who wrestled with the Lakers’ perpetual lack of toughness, liked Matthews’ snarl. (Which was good, because Matthews hated West. “Motherfucker was too arrogant,” he said. “I understood why—great player, legend. But arrogant as fuck.”) Then the new point guard reported to camp and confused everyone. “He was insane,” said Gary Vitti, the trainer. “Nowadays you’d diagnose him as ADD or ADHD. But, really, he was just crazy. I remember we would be practicing, and we’d be in a half-court set and Pat would be talking to the team. Wes couldn’t concentrate that long, so—right in the middle of what Pat was saying—he’d turn around, dribble the ball all the way down, dribble back, then come back. He needed those thirty seconds to reset.”
“Wes was wacky,” said Josh Rosenfeld, the media relations director. “I remember, once the season started, we were playing the Knicks at Madison Square Garden and he asked me for tickets to the game. I said, ‘Um, Wes, we’re already in the second quarter.’ He’d forgotten his mom was coming. Or something like that. It was always something.”
On the road, Matthews ate all his meals at either McDonald’s, Burger King or Wendy’s. Teammates nicknamed him Wild Wild Wes. “He’d stay out all night,” said one player, “then come straggling into practice and run, do the full practice, then go out again.”
Though he was the craziest of the new Lakers, Matthews wasn’t the only recent arrival with a touch of quirkiness. In his effort to create the perfect roster, West was willing to mix and match, add and subtract, risk and reward. By deporting McGee to Atlanta, he brought in Thompson, a 6-foot-7, 210-pound specimen from Camden, New Jersey. On paper, the Louisville rookie was everything one could desire: “Man, was he a great, great, great, great, great, great athlete,” said Matthews. “Unlike anyone I’d ever seen.
“But,” added Matthews, “Billy Thompson was not playing with a full deck.”
There’s an old adage in Los Angeles: When Wes Matthews says you’re not playing with a full deck, you’ve got problems. During his four years at Louisville, Thompson was known for his prodigious talent as well as a reputation for dabbling in cocaine. By the time he joined the Lakers, he had sworn off all drugs and accepted Jesus Christ as his savior. On the bright side, Thompson was living a clean life. On the downside, even Jesus Christ couldn’t help his organizational skills. With the possible exception of Earl Jones, no player drove Riley to drink like Billy Thompson. He was late to practices and late to games and late to workouts and late to appearances and late to the bus. During a December practice in Richfield, Ohio, he famously reached into his gym bag and pulled out two left sneakers. “Man,” he said, grinning sheepishly, “can you believe this?” In April, he forgot to set his watch ahead an hour for the spring solstice and arrived forty-five minutes late to the arena. “We told everyone, ‘Spring forward and fall back,” an exasperated Riley said. “And he fell back. . . .”
“My favorite Billy moment might be one of my all-time favorite Laker moments,” said Kurt Rambis. “Pat is talking to the team and Billy is looking all over, eyes in the air, not paying any attention. Suddenly he unleashes a huge sneeze and his front teeth go flying out. [Thompson’s teeth had been dislodged while at Louisville, and a bridge was placed inside his mouth.]
“The whole team is cracking up. Billy’s cracking up. But Riley is standing there, stern. He wasn’t happy.”
Another time, while the Lakers were waiting to board a plane, Thompson engaged in a lengthy conversation with a man at the airport. “They were talking God and the Bible, and they really hit it off,” said John Black, an assistant to Josh Rosenfeld at the time. “So Billy offered the guy his tickets for the next night’s game, and told him he’d leave them at will-call. Well, come that night, Billy—of course—forgot the guy’s name. So he puts the tickets in an envelope and writes GUY AT THE AIRPORT on it.”
Unlike Matthews, an adept ball handler who could ably guide the team, Thompson immediately branded himself as useless. For all his physical talent, he never understood the NBA game. He lollygagged, was a lousy defender and struggled to grasp the pick and roll. “He could have been great,” said Mike Smrek, the new backup center. “But he was living in another universe. I remember one time we were sitting on the bus, getting ready to go to a game. It’s ‘Where’s Billy? Where’s Billy?’ They’re calling his room—no answer. They’re banging on his door—no Billy, no Billy. Finally, they get the manager to open the door, because they’re worried, and there’s Billy sitting on the bed. He’s just sitting there going, ‘Oh.’ Then you’d think he’d have sprinted to the bus. Nope. He just kind of walked there slowly.
“That,” said Smrek, “was Billy Thompson.”
• • •
Even with an insulted Worthy and a new co
rps of space cadets, the Lakers were, as always, the Western Conference’s top dog. The core was largely the same, though the philosophy was not. At long last, Riley decided it was time for the Lakers to radically reduce Abdul-Jabbar’s role as the offensive centerpiece.
Approaching his fortieth birthday and beginning his eighteenth season, the center was now a very good—but no longer great—NBA player. He was slow and a bit frail, and on defense stood out as an increasingly painful liability. Whereas once he was abused strictly by A-listers like Moses Malone and Akeem Olajuwon, now the Jack Sikmas and Mike Gminskis were having their way, too. Riley wanted to limit Abdul-Jabbar’s minutes, but the team failed to acquire a suitable backup. A deal for Chicago’s Jawann Oldham fell through and Smrek, who had been released by the Bulls, was mountainous (7-foot, 250 pounds) but raw. So, against his wishes, Riley would again be forced to keep Abdul-Jabbar on the court long after the red EMPTY light started to flash on the dashboard. Magic Johnson was in command, and Abdul-Jabbar was but a fading sidekick.
“You know when I learned about Magic’s power, and that he was the man much more than Kareem?” said Brickowski, new to the organization. “I signed with the team and arrived in Chicago for a practice before a pre-season game against the Bulls. Everyone welcomes me, Pat introduces me, he brings us in for a huddle, everyone puts their hands in and Pat says, ‘We’ll do this and we’ll do that, and we’ll be out in two hours and fifteen minutes.’ And Magic goes, ‘OK, an hour and fifteen and we’ll be done.’ And Pat says, ‘No . . . no . . . two hours and fifteen minutes.’ And Magic says, ‘No, no, no—I thought you said, because we played back-to-back games and we’re tired, it’ll just be an hour and fifteen minutes.’ Well, there are three seconds of silence and Pat says, ‘We’re sharp—one hour and fifteen minutes.’ Magic walks away, smiles at me and says, ‘That’s what I thought you said.’”
The Lakers opened the season by going 12-2 in November, at one point peeling off nine straight victories. Johnson was off to the best start of his career, averaging 20.5 points and 11.5 assists. Any hostilities with Worthy were placed to the side, as he and Byron Scott continued to fill the offensive void left by a decaying Abdul-Jabbar. “Those guys were like a machine,” Brickowski said of Johnson, Worthy and Scott. “Fast, quick, strong and deadly. I’d never been on a team with players like it.”
After years of hearing fans and media types suggest that Rambis should be replaced, Riley finally acted. Though A. C. Green remained unpolished, the coach liked his athleticism and hustle. In his first four starts, he averaged 15.7 points and 9 rebounds—numbers Rambis could not match. “A.C. is probably more effective as a starter,” Riley said. “He gets into a rhythm and seems to get stronger while everyone else gets tired.” Green also benefited from the presence of Thompson, whose nonstop Bible thumping served to distract players from the never-ending virgin jokes. “Billy was crazy,” Matthews said. “Crazy trumps no sex.”
Never one to complain publicly, Rambis took his demotion hard—as did his legion of followers. Through the years, as he progressed from fringe player to starter to championship contributor, Rambis noticed that a growing number of fans arrived at the Forum wearing black horn-rim glasses, fake mustaches and gold T-shirts with 31 (his uniform number) scribbled across the front. “I initially thought they were mocking me,” Rambis said. “I mean, it wasn’t like I enjoyed wearing those ugly glasses. When I wore normal glasses, they broke, so I found indestructible ones. These guys show up, and they’re clearly making fun. So I arrange a meeting inside the Forum Club, in order to ask them to stop. And when I walked through the door, you would have thought I was Jesus Christ or Elvis. I mean, they were like, ‘Oh, we love to watch you play! You’re great!’ So, I was like, uh . . . oh . . . um . . . never mind.”
Though their hero was now coming off the bench, members of Rambis Youth (as the group was known) continued to begrudgingly watch the NBA’s most extraordinary show. On December 12, Riley’s squad traveled to Boston to resume the rivalry. Having taken out the Houston Rockets in six games in the previous season’s finals, the Celtics stood, once again, as the league’s defending champions. But they were weakened. Bill Walton, the highly regarded center now in his second season in the green and white, was out with inflammation of the right ankle, and Larry Bird and Robert Parish were playing through injuries. The Celtics were in the midst of a 48-game home winning streak, but even Red Auerbach, the cigar-chomping team president, seemed to know it could be ending. “We’re not one hundred percent,” he noted glumly.
On the day before the game, Bird and Johnson were asked about each other. It was, by now, a Boston-Los Angeles media ritual. Neither man usually said much; Bird would grunt, Johnson would laugh it off—then they’d play.
This time, though, the mood felt slightly different. Time and experience and championships and All-Star Games and a couple of shared commercial shoots had melted much of the frost. The two still weren’t making dinner plans. But Bird admitted he liked Johnson. Johnson admitted he liked Bird. A couple of years earlier, they would have barely glanced at each other on the court. “Now, it’s like, with that look,” Johnson said. “Never words, but a look. Yeaahh. I think that, before, the media separated us so much—Magic vs. Bird—and we as individuals created that inner rivalry, too. It’s not that we hated each other, but there was a dislike. I didn’t want him to win, and he didn’t want me to win.” To the shock of many (and dismay of Riley), Johnson even attended one of the Celtics-Rockets finals games . . . and rooted for Boston. “Honestly, I think Earvin always wanted Larry’s approval,” said Michael Cooper. “I don’t know why, except that he’s one who needs love.”
So did Johnson take it easy on the Celtics? Hardly. Los Angeles returned from an eight-point fourth-quarter deficit to shock the Boston Garden with a 117–110 win. Johnson scored 31 to lead his team, but the statistic was a small part of the story. With Boston’s defense focusing heavily on his motions, Johnson repeatedly drove the lane before hitting Abdul-Jabbar with an array of passes. The center scored 14 of his 26 points in the final ten minutes, while Cooper shut Bird down, blanketing him to the tune of 6 fourth-quarter points. “We were very bad in the fourth quarter,” said K. C. Jones, Boston’s coach. “And they were very great.”
The Lakers were a juggernaut. Less than a month after their nine-game winning streak was snapped, they went eight more contests without a loss. This string included two defeats of the Rockets (sans Abdul-Jabbar, Johnson scored 38 in a 103–96 victory, then—five days later—put in another 30 for the 134–111 win), a 26-point walloping of the Philadelphia 76ers (Johnson went for 28) and a gleeful 155–118 decimation of Phoenix.
The blowout of the Suns gave Riley particular satisfaction. Not only did his team tie an NBA record with 89 first-half points, they refused to take any abuse. A hapless team limping toward 36 wins, Phoenix compensated for minimal skill with flagrant cheap shots. With four minutes, forty-one seconds remaining in the fourth quarter, Grant Gondrezick, a rookie guard from Pepperdine, hit Brickowski in the throat with an elbow. The Brick (as he was nicknamed by teammates) fired back with fists. As referees stepped in to break up the brawl, Matthews began screaming unintelligible blatherings at Al Bianchi, a Suns assistant coach. Bianchi was a fifty-four-year-old man who probably weighed 180 pounds. He was wearing a suit and a tie, and appeared as threatening as a bottle of Yoo-hoo. Yet Matthews charged forward, as did Bianchi, who took several swings at the guard. Both were ejected, and William Bedford, the Sun’s 7-foot-1 center, carried Bianchi off the court. “I don’t give a damn if he’s 5-foot-2 or 7-foot-2, I’m not taking that shit from anybody,” Bianchi said. “Particularly that helium head.”
Huh?
“Yeah, airhead,” Bianchi added. “You know what airheads are.”
When told of the comments, Matthews scowled. “When he wants to meet in the parking lot, that’s fine with me,” he said. “But he’s too old. I got brains and he don’t. He’s
an old man and I’m still young.”
Afterward, Riley was thrilled. Brickowski and Matthews had provided an out-of-nowhere spark. Through the years, the coach had seen many powerful teams turn complacent. It happens easily—one win becomes two, two wins become four. Your legs get tired, your concentration wanes, you see an easy game coming up and play lazily. “It’s unavoidable,” said Matthews. “It’s a very long season. It’s very hard to go all-out all the time.”
Matthews’ words were spoken on the evening of January 2. One month later, they rang particularly true. On the night of February 2, the Lakers fell at home to the Mavericks, 103–99. It was Los Angeles’s third loss in five contests. The game wasn’t particularly awful or embarrassing—Dallas out-rebounded Los Angeles, 51–33, and Abdul-Jabbar looked slow and stiff, yet the Lakers still had the ball and a chance to win, with twelve seconds left. The issue was intensity. Or lack thereof. Johnson scored 18, Worthy 15 and Scott 21, but the performance was sluggish. “I was actually pretty surprised,” said Riley. “There was no energy there. You would have thought we would have kicked it in, but we looked lethargic. You would have thought that we were playing our fourth game in five nights.”
In the following morning’s San Diego Union-Tribune, writer Barry Bloom suggested that the Lakers—34-11 and once again running away with the Pacific Division—were in trouble. In a piece headlined ONCE-UNSINKABLE LAKERS’ SHIP NOW APPEARS TO BE FILLED WITH HOLES, he wrote:
The Lakers . . . are a team with gaping holes. . . . They are short one big man who is desperately needed to help the club off the boards. They are a very ordinary team when taken out of their fastbreak offense. They are an even more ordinary team when Magic Johnson has an ordinary night. Last night, with the top team in the Midwest Division playing its fourth game in five nights, all three elements led to a crucial Lakers loss.
What went unwritten by Bloom and unspoken by others was that Johnson—in the midst of a season that even Bird called “worthy of the MVP trophy”—was enduring one of the lowest spans of his eight-year career. On the court, he continued to glow, continued to smile, continued to make miracle passes. Even with Abdul-Jabbar playing poorly and with a waif-thin bench, Johnson was averaging 23.3 points and carrying the ball club. But he was, internally, devastated. On January 23, his older half sister, Mary, had died from leukemia, leaving behind four children to be raised by Johnson’s mother and father in Lansing, Michigan.
Showtime: Magic, Kareem, Riley, and the Los Angeles Lakers Dynasty ofthe 1980s Page 37