Moments after he was finished talking, Dunleavy was told by a ball boy that Jerry Buss needed to see him immediately. The coach was befuddled—was he about to be dismissed? “I wasn’t overly concerned, because if he fired me I’d have said, ‘This is a fucking mistake,’” Dunleavy said. “I knew we were heading the right way. I just knew it in my heart.” Dunleavy knocked on Buss’s office door, walked in and sat before his massive desk. Though far from a physically imposing figure, Buss carried himself with confidence. He wasn’t intimidating, but he was powerful. “You know, Mike, when you had the first day of training camp five weeks ago, I watched practice and I thought, ‘Boy, we’ve hired one really smart coach,’” Buss said. “We felt really good about it then. Really, really good about it.
“Well, we’re struggling. And do you want to know how I feel about it right now?”
“No,” Dunleavy said, “but I’m sure you’re gonna tell me.”
“I feel,” Buss said, “like we hired one really smart coach. And I just want you to know that we believe in you. You shouldn’t change anything of your philosophy because of the bad start.”
Dunleavy shook Buss’s hand and bounded back to the locker room. He couldn’t control his players’ sex lives and he couldn’t help whether fans thought him to be in over his head. He could, however, skillfully coach a basketball team. The Lakers beat the Rockets on the afternoon of Worthy’s arrest, lost at Dallas a day later, then won 8 in a row and 12 of 14.
Said Johnson: “When we were 2-5, I thought he made some of his best moves because he said, ‘Look, we’ve got a good team, we’re going to be all right. Nobody get down. We’re not going to start pointing fingers and it’s going to come for us.’ He dealt with everybody on an individual basis.”
This was not the vintage club of the mid-1980s, with stars lined up to dominate. The Lakers were good, but no longer great. Los Angeles had two studs (Johnson and Worthy), four above-average players (Scott, Green, Perkins, Divac) and, otherwise, a bunch of scrappers and grinders. There were multiple highs (Johnson scoring his 16,000th career point, a 16-game winning streak midway through the season, an agreement to represent the NBA in the 1991 McDonald’s Open tournament in Paris), but a looming reality that Portland had passed them by. On January 2, a day before the Lakers and Blazers were to play at Portland’s Memorial Coliseum, Johnson conceded the division. His team was 7½ games behind the 27-4 Blazers. “Any time you go 27-4 and do it on the road the way they have, you have to take them seriously,” Johnson said. “They’re for real. And I think they’re going to be that way all season. . . . I think they’re going to wind up with the best record in basketball.”
Though Los Angeles beat the Blazers, 108–104, they concluded the season five games back with a 58-24 record. Yet anyone who viewed the record as an indictment of Dunleavy’s coaching was painfully naïve. What Dunleavy decided early on was that the Lakers—the formerly running, gunning Lakers—needed to excel via defense. He demanded accountability on the other end of the ball, and would pull players for sloppy shifts and lazy approaches. As a result, Los Angeles held opponents to 99.6 points per game—second-best in the NBA. The team lacked a competent backup point guard, and Divac, who averaged 11.2 points as the starting center, was bloated and out of shape. (Johnson made a sport out of demeaning his teammate, so much so that Divac considered returning to play in Europe at season’s end.) Scott had the second-lowest shooting percentage of his career (47 percent), and Worthy the lowest (49 percent). Green was benched in favor of Perkins and suffered through dreadful stretches of low confidence. Terry Teagle, acquired via trade from Golden State to provide firepower as the first guard off the bench, proved a poor man’s Brad Holland. “We were not a great team anymore,” said Worthy. “We were still good. But not the same.”
Come playoff time, however, the Lakers found themselves reenergized. They opened with a best-of-five series against Houston, a team convinced its destiny was to upend a hobbled dynasty. The Rockets won a franchise-record 52 games, at one point taking 29 of 34. With Hakeem Olajuwon (he was no longer “Akeem”) in the middle and Vernon Maxwell and Kenny Smith in the backcourt, Houstonians considered it the best club in the franchise’s twenty-four-year existence. “Last year we went against the Lakers with a hope and a prayer,” said Maxwell. “This year it’s different.”
Los Angeles and Houston engaged in a riveting opening game—one that featured back-and-forth scoring, magnificent showings from Olajuwon (22 points, 16 rebounds) and Johnson (17 points, 10 assists) and the ejection of Teagle after he slugged a Rockets forward named Dave Jamerson. With 28.8 seconds remaining in the fourth quarter, Maxwell swooped in for a fast-break layup, only to have Divac stick his hand through the net and pop the ball out. Wrote Frank Brady of the San Diego Union-Tribune: “This maneuver is not permissible in basketball—even in Prijepolje, Yugoslavia.” The goaltending offense cut the Los Angeles lead to 91–90. Johnson worked the clock, casually dribbling up the court, taking his time, watching the seconds tick away. With six seconds left, he kicked out to Scott, who dribbled, shot and hit a three-point shot—just after the shot clock expired. No basket, Houston possession with three and a half seconds remaining.
The game’s three referees, Bruce Alexander, Jack Madden and Dick Bavetta, huddled together. The Forum went silent for a minute until the three striped men emerged with a ruling—the shot was good. Don Chaney, the Rockets’ coach, stood at mid-court, screaming for anyone to listen. “I thought it was ridiculous,” he said later—and he was right. The call was an awful one.
The Rockets wound up losing the game, 94–92, and the series. Los Angeles swept Houston, then advanced to play the surprising Golden State Warriors. Coach Don Nelson’s team featured three of the sport’s top young stars (Tim Hardaway, Chris Mullin, Mitch Richmond), and often employed a five-guard lineup whose tallest player, Sarunas Marciulionis, stood 6-foot-5. “It doesn’t get much stranger than that,” said Dunleavy. “Nothing [Nelson] does would surprise me.”
The Lakers took the series in five games, exploiting the size advantage by often using Perkins (6-foot-9), Divac (7-foot-1), Worthy (6-foot-9) and Johnson (6-foot-9) in a rotating game of Back the Midgets Down and Pound Them Inside. Dunleavy’s master stroke came in the decisive Game 5, when he ordered Elden Campbell, the 6-foot-11 rookie out of Clemson, to blanket Marciulionis. A funny kid, Campbell was tall and athletic, but often distracted. At one point during the regular season, he was spotted in the locker room, ninety minutes before a game, dining on sour cream potato chips and Hawaiian Punch with a book tucked beneath his chair, titled The Thinking Man’s Guide to Nutrition.
“I believed in Elden,” said Dunleavy. “He ran with a waddle, so people interpreted that as lazy. But he could play. Against the Warriors I said, ‘Elden, you’re like a fucking praying mantis. This guy’s whole game is getting people up in the air and jumping into them and getting fouled and finishing. When he’s out on the perimeter I want you to just stand there with your hand up. And when he starts putting the ball on the floor, I never want you to jump in the air until he has absolutely jumped in the air. Don’t go for any fakes. You’ll catch up to him.’”
Marciulionis shot 0 for 5. The Lakers won, 124–119.
The victory set up a matchup many had anticipated, and everyone was hoping for. The Portland Trail Blazers—universal pick as basketball’s best team—advanced to the Western Conference Finals after a five-game struggle against the Utah Jazz. Though the Blazers were playing only so-so basketball (they’d lost three of four road playoff games), they were itching to meet the Lakers, who remained the barometer by which other franchises were judged. Portland had upended Los Angeles in three of five meetings during the regular season, and a computer simulation of the series, via Basketball—The Pro Game from Lance Haffner Games, had Portland prevailing in six. In Las Vegas they were listed as 9-to-5 favorites. “We match up well against Los Angeles, because we are deep,” said Cliff Robinson, a reserve forwar
d. “We are able to go with different lineups and still hold an advantage.”
For the first time in more than a decade, the Lakers were prohibitive underdogs. The players, however, did not see it that way. Johnson promised his teammates that they were destined to reach yet another championship series, and they believed him. The teams split the opening games at Portland, then traveled to the Forum, where the Lakers walloped the Blazers in Game 3, 106–92. The difference was Divac, who spent the first two contests being barreled over by the enormous Kevin Duckworth. Within a six-minute span to start the third quarter, Los Angeles’s center scored 10 points, blocked 3 shots and had a steal in an 18–7 charge. He finished with 16 points and 7 rebounds, while holding Duckworth to 5 points, 5 fouls and 5 turnovers. “How much is a duck worth?” wrote Zander Hollander. “Not much.”
Johnson had spent much of the past two years riding Divac like a disobedient child. He believed the center had a chance to emerge as one of the game’s best, but needed to have the blasé Euro nonsense slapped from his system. Whenever Divac resorted to pretty twinkletoe maneuvers, Johnson let him have it. “Vlade, cut that fucking shit out!” he once screamed. “Play like a motherfucking man!”
“He was just so competitive,” said Divac. “He had to win at everything. I didn’t mind the insults, because it was all to make me better.”
Two days later, on a Sunday afternoon, the Lakers took command of a suddenly one-sided series, sprinting past Portland, 116–95, in a Showtime revival that had Jack Nicholson and Dyan Cannon dancing along the court. The Lakers shot 51 percent from the field, forced 19 turnovers and ran at every given opportunity. Johnson looked twenty again, scoring 22 points and adding 9 rebounds and 9 assists. His team led 32–23 after one quarter, and never turned back. “A lot of people say that [Showtime is dead],” he said afterward. “But it’s not. It just took us this long to get to it.”
Portland rebounded to win the fifth game, 95–84, but—for the Lakers—the problem wasn’t the loss so much as the injury. During the first quarter of Game 5, Worthy sprained his left ankle, and though he returned for part of the third quarter, neither two retapings nor an electronic nerve stimulator helped regain his maneuverability.
Now, heading into Game 6 at the Forum, a serious question mark lingered. Without a healthy Worthy, the Lakers would have to depend more on Green (who battled inconsistency all season) and Thompson (seldom used and in rapid decline). This was the opening Portland needed. “The playoffs—that’s what it’s all about, challenge,” said Terry Porter. “If [Worthy] can crawl, I believe he’s going to be on the floor.”
Though he did walk onto the court for the opening tip, Worthy was largely useless, shooting 3 for 12 in thirty-eight minutes. Appearing in his team-record 181st playoff game, however, Johnson put forth one of the greatest all-around efforts of his career. Over forty-seven minutes of play, Johnson (25 points, 8 assists, 11 rebounds) did everything everywhere every way. With 1:48 remaining in the game, he fed Divac for a layup, then hit two free throws, to put Los Angeles ahead, 89–85. Portland fought back to cut the lead to one, but Divac (having received another gorgeous feed from Johnson) hit two free throws after being fouled on a miss. The score was 91–88. Forty-three seconds were left.
The Blazers played with rightful desperation. Porter hit a jumper over a lunging Perkins, and with 12.5 seconds remaining, Divac’s attempted layup was blocked. The twenty-four-second clock expired, and Portland—down 91–90—had one last chance.
Following a time-out, the Blazers inbounded the ball at half-court to Porter, who flipped it back to Drexler, the team’s top scorer. Drexler dribbled toward the paint, found himself covered and passed back to Porter, who stood eighteen feet from the basket. He squared up and, with 5.8 seconds left, fired a jumper over Green’s outstretched arms. The basketball hit the rim, bounced up into the air, then was grabbed by Johnson beneath the boards.
In the most intelligent play many had ever seen, the Laker guard immediately heaved the ball over his head and down the court, placing enough spin on it so—instead of quickly rolling out of bounds—it bounced . . . bounced . . . bounced . . . bounced . . . bounced to the baseline. By the time the ball was dead, there was but one-one hundredth of a second on the clock. The game was done. So were the Blazers.
“I knew they were going to foul me,” Johnson said, “so I threw the ball out.”
The Los Angeles Lakers were returning to the finals.
The NBA’s marketing dream had come true.
• • •
Heading into the NBA’s Eastern and Western Conference Finals, there were four championship series possibilities:
The Detroit Pistons could face the Portland Trail Blazers.
The Detroit Pistons could face the Los Angeles Lakers.
The Chicago Bulls could face the Portland Trail Blazers.
The Chicago Bulls could face the Los Angeles Lakers.
From a strictly marketing standpoint, none of the options particularly bothered the league. If, worst-case scenario, the Pistons and Blazers met again, there was always the redemption vs. dynasty story line to peddle, re: the two teams returning for a rematch. The Pistons and Lakers offered up Isiah vs. Magic—friends whose relationship had grown strained; and the Bulls and Blazers gave the world Michael Jordan and Clyde Drexler—the best shooting guards around.
Of all the pairings, however, none elicited public relations goose bumps quite like Chicago vs. Los Angeles.
Or, to put it more succinctly, Michael Jordan vs. Magic Johnson.
“Oh, boy. Oh, boy, oh, boy, oh, boy, oh, boy,” read the staff editorial in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch: “Magic and Michael. Michael and Magic. The heart and soul of the Los Angeles Lakers versus the bread and butter of the Chicago Bulls. The Most Valuable Player versus the Most Unbelievable Player. The best playing at their best against the best.”
At the time, Jordan was twenty-seven and, though marveled at, also increasingly dismissed as a me-me-me player who could accumulate points in droves (he averaged 31.5 points during the regular season, good for his fifth-straight scoring title) but not carry a team to a title. In his first six NBA seasons, Jordan’s Bulls had never reached the finals. He was the greatest athlete pitchman who ever lived, the face and voice of Nike, McDonald’s, Spalding and dozens of other products. But a winner? No one was entirely sure.
Throughout the requisite pre-series analysis, lazy prognosticators pretended basketball was a game played solely by elite superstars. Everything came down to Magic vs. Michael and Michael vs. Magic. In the three days between the completion of the Western Finals and the opening of the NBA Finals, one couldn’t watch television or listen to the radio for more than six minutes without catching the two men being referenced. “Michael and Magic, Magic and Michael,” wrote Mark Heisler in the Los Angeles Times. “You hear it so often, you wonder if Michael Jordan and Magic Johnson have been joined at the hip, or if NBC has turned them into a two-headed promotion for the NBA finals.”
When the Lakers opened the series in Chicago by winning, 93–91 on a three-pointer from Perkins with fourteen seconds remaining, all the commercial prayers appeared to be answered. Johnson was splendid, totaling 19 points, 10 rebounds and 11 assists, while Jordan—with a game-high 36 points (plus 12 assists and 8 rebounds)—was his expected ungodly self. “This was the way basketball is supposed to be played,” Johnson said afterward. “This was just a great game to be in.”
“We won the first game,” said Scott, who scored 9 points, “and we said, ‘Hey, we can beat these guys.’”
Surely, we were looking at a six- or seven-game series.
Surely, Magic and Michael would put on epic performances.
Surely . . .
Pfft.
Lost in the increasingly obnoxious glow of the Michael-Magic nonsense was the disheartening fact that the Bulls, who had finished 61-21, were a far superior team.
> The Lakers played brilliantly in Game 1 . . . and still struggled to pull out a victory. The Bulls felt like the franchise of now—Jordan was magnificent, forward Scottie Pippen was a blooming star, Bill Cartwright was a solid center and Horace Grant, B. J. Armstrong, John Paxson, Craig Hodges and Will Perdue were all useful contributors. Though coach Phil Jackson received much credit for the franchise’s success, the Bulls were powered by the thinking of a little-known sixty-nine-year-old assistant named Tex Winter, who introduced something called the Triangle Offense. For the first time in memory, the Lakers weren’t concerning themselves with an opponent’s set plays, because the Triangle was all about spacing the floor and reacting to defenses. With a do-everything star like Jordan at the forefront, the Bulls were devastatingly efficient. “Tex Winter is a genius,” said Jerry Krause, Chicago’s general manager. “He’s forgotten more basketball than most guys ever knew. People used to sit at his feet and study.”
The Bulls rebounded three days later by routing the Lakers, 107–86, at Chicago Stadium, then pulled out Game 3 in overtime at the Forum, 104–96. Were it merely a case of Jordan being too young, too athletic, too spectacular (all of which he was), the Laker players probably could have accepted what seemed to be their fate. But what made their task all the more daunting was that Worthy never fully recovered from the left ankle sprain he suffered against Portland. Though he started the first four games against Chicago, he was damaged. “There was the thought that I would miss the series, but it was never an option for me,” Worthy said. “I’d been hurt before, so I knew how to play through pain. But it was hard, because I couldn’t really play the way I wanted.”
“I thought we were better than the Bulls—I really did,” said Irving Thomas, a reserve forward. “But when you can’t match up the way you want to, and you’re going against a very determined Michael Jordan, it’s pretty impossible.”
Because Worthy was relying on a single leg, he couldn’t guard Jordan one-on-one—as was Dunleavy’s plan. Consequently, the Lakers’ defensive strategy crumbled. Even worse, with Worthy a reduced threat, the Bulls barely concerned themselves with him as a scorer. Jackson had his defense relentlessly hound Johnson, daring other Lakers to be the heroes. The result: Johnson—the team’s leading scorer with 18.6 points per game—shot just 43 percent from the field, and only Divac (18.2 points, 8.8 rebounds) played particularly well. “James Worthy was our stopper,” said Dunleavy. “James Worthy was our press breaker. I mean, Byron Scott—I love him. He’s a good defender, a great shooter. But Byron couldn’t take a piss with his left hand. He was all right. So once James went out, they just started playing full court on Magic, turning him all the time, throwing fresh bodies—Jordan, Pippen, whoever they wanted it to be—at him. They just wore Magic down. We had some other injuries, but the key was James not being himself. We never recovered.”
Showtime: Magic, Kareem, Riley, and the Los Angeles Lakers Dynasty ofthe 1980s Page 51