24
New Lazenby post at hoopshype.com http://blogs.hoopshype.com/blogs/lazenby/2010/01/24/gasol-an-all-star/
Roland Lazenby is the author of “Jerry West, the Life and Legend of a Basketball Icon”, set to be released by Random House/ESPN in February.
22
OK, it’s just a fantasy. But did you see Jordan’s reaction when Jay Leno asked him in a televised interview the other night (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5osJ8-NttnU&feature=player_embedded#) if he could still dunk?
“Can I still dunk?” Jordan asked in disbelief. “Are you stupid?”
I saw my suspicion confirmed in that moment. Jordan has been burning to show people that he can still play. He’s mentioned it in recent interviews. It’s on his mind.
Tell him he can’t do something and he’s gonna prove he can.
He lives for stuff just like that. All that junk about Jordan no longer able to cup the ball because he damaged his hand with a cigar cutter? Mentioning that amounts to merely dangling a red hankie in front of the ultimate Bull.
He wanted to make it clear to Leno’s NBC audience that he could still palm the ball.
“I’m old. I’m not lame,” he protested. “I can still jump. I can still palm a basketball. Yeah, I can still dunk. Are you kidding me?”
“You’re getting testy,” Leno interjected as the audience howled.
“Yeah. I am testy,” Jordan said. “That’s a dumb question.”
He has threatened recently, as he nears his 47th birthday, to shock the world by returning to pro basketball.
Jordan knows that even at his advanced age, he’s still better than 99 percent of the grocery clerks getting paid to play in today’s NBA. Shit, Vince Carter’s out there, isn’t he? Hell, MJ can do that.
OK, it’s true. He’d be back a week and regret it like hell. Every time he turned the ball over, he’d hear a chorus about how he’s ruining his legacy. He’s heard it all before. Let’s remember. This is a guy who has “retired” twice before.
People are going to talk.
Screw all that. Life is for living. Wilt Chamberlain could have come back and played at age 50. He never did. Look where it got him. Jordan has already proved that there’s an NBA life past 35. Why not do the same for 45?
Yes, I know. Forty-five is the last hurrah. It really does go down hill quickly from there.
But what about Pudge Heffilfinger? Old Pudge is lionized as the first professional football player, the first guy to make money for playing the game. Pudge played till he was 60.
C’mon, Mike. You gonna be outdone by a guy named Pudge?
Let’s say for a truly weird second that MJ does decide to play again. What’s the best team for him to do it?
That’s easy. The Lakers
They got Phil. They got the Triangle offense. They got Kobe.
It all just might add up to another ring.
Besides, MJ learned his lesson with the Washington Wizards. You can’t scale heights with mental midgets.
Come back with what you know well. He revealed to me in an interview last year that he watches Kobe and the Lakers closely, is intrigued by them. They mirror the NBA life he once lived with Jackson and the Bulls in the 1990s while winning six titles.
He told me he admires Kobe, admires his work ethic. And Jordan is close to the Lakers guard.
When I later mentioned my conversation with MJ to Kobe, his eyes and ears perked up like a kid at Christmas. MJ was talkin’ about me?
OK, so what have I been smoking to even bring up something like this? It’s just fantasy musings? So what?
Crazier things have happened in this effed-up world.
Yes, there would be all kinds of questions.
Would MJ try to do too much? Puh-leeze. Of course, he would. It wouldn’t be any fun if he didn’t.
Would Kobe defer too much? Yeah, right.
But the questions, the intrigue, that’s all part of the huge blast it would be.
And the audience?
Every Baby Boomer on the planet would tune in to watch the geezer sky walking again.
And there’s the issue of Jackson. Getting him to make the overture to MJ would be key.
(C’mon, Phil, get off that high-ass throne of yours and open the door to pure fantasy. Hollywood would love ya for it. Your closest associates always worry about keeping you from getting bored with the whole process. So what do you have to lose? You got your 10 rings.)
MJ joining the Lakers? That would break every fun meter ever made.
Yes, I repeat again, I know this is just strange, weird smoke rings. Pure fantasy.
But I have only one request from MJ.
Please? Please, baby, please. Please, please, please.
Give in to those urges.
I know they’re killing you.
Screw bad judgment.
Screw the better angels of your nature sitting on your shoulder telling you not to do it.
Screw pride.
Screw the fact that Phil left you hangin’ in the lurch back there in ‘98.
Throw care to the wind.
Better yet, MJ. Here’s what I have to say about it.
You can’t do it.
Nah, nah, nah, nah, nah-nah.
You’re too old, brother. Can’t dunk. Can’t play.
YOU CANNOT DO IT.
There, that just might work.
Roland Lazenby is the author of Jerry West, The Life And Legend Of A Basketball Icon, set to be released by Random House/ESPN in February.
21
17
It seems these are the days to fathom big numbers in pro basketball, with the NBA’s big guns, first the Celtics and then the Lakers, winning titles in recent years.
Beyond Lakers coach Phil Jackson’s success, there’s another set of numbers to ponder in L.A. — the stunning points that 75-year-old Lakers owner Jerry Buss has put on the board with his serial dating of 18-year-old girls… No, just kidding, and jumping ahead of the story there. Well, sort of.
This season marks the 30th anniversary of the self-made Buss acquiring the Lakers and the Great Western Forum from Jack Kent Cooke in a deal so stunning that Sports Illustrated hired accountants to investigate how Buss arranged the financing. After scratching their heads for weeks, the accountants conceded defeat. They never did figure out his fancy tricks.
Buss immediately recognized that he better listen to then-Lakers GM Bill Sharman, who advised that Cooke’s organization draft an unorthodox guard named Magic Johnson.
Magic propelled the Lakers to the league championship in the first season of ownership by Buss, who promptly told the television audience that he had worked so long and hard to win the championship. It sounded ludicrous, but Buss was talking about his years amassing the wealth and know-how to acquire the team.
He always said he bought the club just because he couldn’t get the tickets he wanted. Buss immediately understood that he should listen to Sharman, a Hall of Famer as both a player and a coach.
To this day, the low-key Sharman’s influence within the Lakers remains a key factor, despite the fact that he’s well into his 80s. Each season he writes a report on the team and its personnel that is to be read only by Buss.
“Sharman has always had considerable influence,” team consultant Tex Winter confided last year.
That may help explain the numbers that Buss has put up in three decades of ownership. His Lakers teams have won nine titles and appeared in the league championship series another six occasions, In his 30 years of ownership his teams have played for the big cheese 15 times, numbers not even close to being matched in the modern NBA, or any other modern pro sport.
Buss once said his negotiations to buy the Lakers allowed him admire the immense toughness of Cooke, the irascible owner in the ‘60s and ‘70s.
Beyond his financial genius, Buss himself has made stunning displays of a similar toughness over the years, most notably in 1996 when he and then-GM Jerry West were putting together mammoth deals to acquire Shaquille O’Neal and Kobe Bryant.
Buss has long ceased to have even an office in the Lakers’ complex. West confided that his own influence and his relationship with the owner began to wane once Buss no longer came into the team offices on a regular basis.
As for the hard bark on Buss, team fans were reminded of that toughness again this past off-season as Buss dealt harshly with players’ agents in the wake of the team’s championship.
Already miffed at agent David Lee over dealings related to center Andrew Bynum, Buss promptly rebuffed Lee’s tactics to negotiate a new deal for promising young forward Trevor Ariza and signed Ron Artest instead.
Then, Buss pulled an offer to Lakers forward Lamar Odom off the table when Odom’s agent pondered it a few days too long. After much consternation by Lakers fans, Odom and the team finally reached a deal but not before everyone was reminded that Buss, known for his gambler’s mind-set, plays no games with money.
You could argue that his financial brilliance has built the foundation for the Lakers’ success. It certainly stands in stark contrast to the financial management of another of the league’s flagship franchise, the New York Knicks.
As Jerry West explained, Buss’s moving the team into the deal at the Staples Center “has been a license to print money.”
That has certainly helped the organization mint its championship rings.
As for those teen-aged girls, Buss has long dated hundreds of them, usually only once or twice each, and then collected their photos in albums. He has not been above boasting about his conquests to some media and associates, which has led California newspaper columnist Scot Ostler to offer that the owner is clearly a case of “arrested development.”
Buss and his elderly friends gather in his owner’s box at Lakers games with their young dates, a sight that’s increasingly hard for Jeanie Buss, the owner’s daughter and Phil Jackson’s girlfriend, to stomach.
One Lakers insider contends that only in Los Angeles could a team owner get away with such antics and basically get a free pass by the media.
Jeanie Buss is known for her competence in running the team, yet the power balance between her and rival brother Jim Buss remains murky.
At least one key insider contends that Jackson’s presence and success are the factors that hold the team together these days. If his tenure ends, the ensuing chaos might well bring an end to the remarkable run.
Then again, Buss has made a career of beating the odds. Now doesn’t seem the time to bet against him.
Roland Lazenby is the author of Jerry West, the Life and Legend of a Basketball Icon, to be released in February by Random House/ESPN.
15
In the wake of the Los Angeles Lakers winning the 2009 NBA title, much has been made of the 10 championships that Phil Jackson’s teams have won in his 18 seasons as a head coach. If you include the two other times Jackson’s teams reached the championship round and lost, that makes 12 times in 18 campaigns that he has competed for the top prize.
Those teams coached by Jackson and his longtime mentor and assistant coach, Tex Winter, also lost once in the conference finals. In the calculus of college coaching, that would mean that teams coached by Winter and Jackson made it to the “Final Four” 13 out of 18 years.
Then there are his other totals. Coming into this season, he had coached 1,476 regular-season games and won 1,041, a daunting .705 winning percentage. He’s coached another 303 playoff games and won 209 of them (just at 70 percent). His 1996 team owns the all-time high of 72 wins in a season. Not bad.
As for his role as part of coaching’s odd couple, the 88-year-old Winter has never gotten the sort of respect he’s deserved from the snobbish and persnickety Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame, and these days he’s in a senior facility in Oregon after suffering a stroke this past spring. But the fiery Winter took Jackson from a guy who didn’t know a basic flex offense and forged him into the superior coach who has mastered Winter’s triangle system and dominated the game.
It’s hard to believe that it was just 22 years ago that Chicago Bulls GM Jerry Krause insisted on hiring an assistant coach that nobody wanted and then directed Winter to teach him how to be a great one. “I wanted Tex to be the coach’s coach,” Krause explained.
In an interview with Lindy’s Sports last season before his stroke, Winter recalled that Jackson, who looked and acted nothing like an NBA coach, was soon put to work doing advance scouting for the Bulls. He returned from the road with scouting reports that were brilliant in their detail.
The quality of Jackson’s work quickly made Winter realize that what Krause was saying was true: Jackson was truly exceptional. Then, first as Winter began tutoring Jackson and later as they coached together over the ensuing seasons, Winter was nothing short of stunned by the power and scope of Jackson’s memory. He seemed to have a total recall of every game he had ever played, scouted, or coached, Winter said. That mental power, and his tremendous competitiveness, made for Jackson’s great success as a coach (that and the fact that the Chicago Bulls and Lakers rosters he coached included Michael Jordan, Shaquille O’Neal, Kobe Bryant and Scottie Pippen, among others), Winter said. Jackson’s memory allowed him powerful access to an array of options every time he coached a game, explained Winter, who became known as the sidekick who would fuss with and challenge Jackson during the course of many of those games.
“I don’t think there was anything that he couldn’t recall,” Winter said. “Phil remembers just about everything about every game.”
That mental power also allowed him to challenge and engage players like Jordan and Bryant on a different level. “With Phil, there are always mind games,” Jordan once marveled.
THE HARD LOOK BACK
Despite Jerry Krause’s role in advancing Jackson’s career, the two men share a bitter past. “I haven’t spoken to Phil since the last day he was with us in 1998,” recalled Krause, who was eventually let go by the Bulls and later went to work as a baseball scout. He and Jackson had engaged in a well-publicized break-up as the Bulls were winning their sixth championship that season.
Their differences are enough to make you wonder how Krause and Jackson ever came to work together, but that in itself is the bittersweet heart of this story. Krause had knocked around the games of baseball and basketball for years as a scout, taking bad flights, eating bad food, hanging out at practice, always looking for the hidden truth. Even before that, when he was a student assistant charting plays at Bradley University, Krause caught his first glimpse of Winter, then the coach of college basketball’s top-ranked team at Kansas State.
Krause was intrigued by the Winter’s unusual triangle offense and his intelligence and integrity. “I liked what Tex did. I thought, ‘Boy, if he ever got good players that offense would be something.’” Over the years, Krause kept an eye on Winter and his teams. When Winter became coach at Northwestern, “we became better friends,” Krause said.
Winter recalled that he spent a lot of time with a projector, going over film, showing Krause a lot about the triangle. “I wanted to learn about it,” Krause said. He also had hopes of becoming an NBA general manager someday and he offered promises that as soon as he did, he would hire Winter. “I want you with me,” Krause told Winter. “I want you to teach the big people and to coach the coaches.”
“I always said, ‘I’m gonna hire him as an assistant coach, and I’m not gonna worry who the head coach is going to be,” Krause recalled.
In 1985, Krause’s labor came to fruition. He was hired as GM of the Bulls as Jordan was entering his second season. Sure enough, one of the first calls he made was to Winter. First, Krause hired Stan Albeck as head coach. But Albeck didn’t want to listen to Winter and didn’t want to use the offense. Krause also wanted him to hire a goofy young assistant named Phil Jackson. Krause had discovered Jackson, a lanky big guy at the University of North Dakota, while scouting small college ball. Krause had quickly come to believe that Jackson had a bright future. But Albeck absolutely refused to hire Jackson, who was viewed as something of an oddball back in the 1980s.
Krause fired Albeck and promoted a bright young coach, Doug Collins. Krause wanted Collins to hire Jackson, but the new coach was reluctant. “I went around some things with Doug, but I finally got Phil on his staff,” Krause said.
Once there, Jackson soon began working with Winter and learning from him. But like Albeck, Collins didn’t want to listen to Winter. He even barred Winter from Bulls practices at one point. Finally, Krause grew fed up, fired Collins and hired Jackson as his head coach.
At last, Krause had the two people he had dreamed of putting in charge. It was the beginning of a beautiful relationship. “Phil was the first person to understand how good Tex was,” Krause said. “I give Phil a lot of credit. Phil is the best brain picker I have ever known. Phil has picked Tex’s mind for years. I’m a great brain picker myself. I’ve picked Tex’s mind for years. But Phil is by far the best I’ve ever seen because he took a genius and picked his brain. I hired Phil because he was a brilliant defensive coach. When Phil said he wanted to use Tex’s triangle, I said, ‘That’s great.’”
The two would become the core of a great coaching staff that included Johnny Bach, Jimmy Rodgers, Frank Hamblen and Jimmy Cleamons (Cleamons and Hamblen remain with Jackson today in Los Angeles). “I do believe the coaching staff we had in Chicago is the best staff in the history of the game,” Krause said. “They were a tremendous complement to Phil.”
Jackson and his staff proved the perfect match for Jordan and the assemblage of talent. However, Krause’s strong personality wore on Jackson season after season.
Winter became a moderating factor between the two. He said Jackson spent several years bending over backward to please Krause, but by late 1995, Jackson had grown weary and began to rebel. That rebellion grew into open warfare by 1996. Some accuse Jackson of using Jordan’s and Pippen’s dislike of Krause to motivate the team and drive the Bulls along a bitter road to their last three championships.
Krause soon found himself caught up in the web of Jackson’s mind games and the coach’s ability to use the media to achieve his goals. “He’s always operated that way,” Krause said of Jackson. “Believe me, he’s stirred the pot with me a number of times. That’s the way he does things. I know the act, believe me.”
Observers watched Krause’s own hubris feed into the end game when the team and coaching staff broke apart after the sixth title. Krause’s vision of Jackson and Winter had been special, then it turned into his nightmare.
Jackson “rode off into the sunset;” that was how the media termed the parting.
In his late 60s and still living in the Chicago area, Krause offered a matter-of-fact view of his days with Jackson. “I’ve got tapes of every game that was played in that era,” he says. “I’ve never looked at ‘em.”
Jackson was voted into the Hall of Fame in 2007, which served to remind Krause of his frustration at not getting the Hall to recognize Winter as an all-time great coach. Winter is one of the game’s ultimate “geniuses,” he says. Krause himself was on the selection committee for the Hall several years ago and resigned in protest over the issue. “I did everything I could do,” Krause said, adding that the politics of selection has made Winter’s recognition an impossibility. “It ain’t gonna happen.”
He has grown to accept that reality as he has everything else that came to pass. In an interview last year, Krause said he has moved back to baseball found enjoyment there.
Just don’t expect any warm reunions of that Bulls club, one of pro basketball’s greatest , he said. “It’s past history. It’s done. Phil is a great coach. For a long time, he was very easy to work with. Then he was not so easy. That’s life. Things change. Phil is Phil. I’m proud I hired him.”
With the hiring of top Lakers assistant Kurt Rambis as the head coach in Minnesota, obvious questions have arisen about the future of the 64-year-old Jackson, who has had both hips replaced in recent seasons.
Jackson is fulfilling the last year of his contract (which pays him $12 million per season), but he is said to keep a heavy heart over Winter’s condition. Jackson’s intelligence has long intimidated all of those around him, players and assistant coaches alike, except for Winter, who while working as a Lakers special assistant in recent seasons could still vehemently challenge Jackson. Winter was pleased when ounger assistant Brian Shaw would show some willingness to stand up to Jackson and actually differ with him. As one inside observer of the Lakers explained, those challenges are important to Jackson, especially now that Winter is incapacitated.
“They keep him from getting bored.”
Roland Lazenby is the author of Jerry West, The Life And Legend Of A Basketball Icon, a biography set to be released this winter by Random House/ESPN.
28
With training camp and media day opening tomorrow (Tuesday, Nov. 29), a few questions for and about the Lakers and the upcoming season come to mind:
1. Can Ron Artest keep it real?
Anyone following Ron Artest the last few months has to wonder if he is all there or if, like Shaquille O’Neal, he is all about marketing. That is, about generating buzz by what he says and does. Artest has certainly said and done some strange things. Stories filtering out of Houston say that in one of his last Playoff games there he took the last bus to the game, the bus the media and staffers ride and which players never ride unless they are LATE, wearing nothing but his underwear. Is he plain loony and if so, will he be able to fit into the Laker team chemistry? On the other hand, there are signs that he may just be shrewdly playing the media. The good news for the Lakers is that Artest has also said if the Lakers do not repeat, the players and fans can blame him. Can he keep that focus?
2. Will Andrew Bynum stay healthy and contribute?
Bynum is frustrating to the Lakers. There are moments, brief flashes so far for the most part, where he reveals signs of potential greatness. Those flashes can take one’s breath away because of the vision of what could be. Then they disappear and Bynum is making the foolish mistakes of a young, unseasoned player or, worse, getting hurt. There is little doubt that being mentored by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar has been good for him, but he has to step up now. He’s getting the contract big bucks – now he has to show that he deserves them. Can he do it?
3. Is Fisher still a factor at 35?
Every Laker fan loves Derek Fisher. He is the Southern California version of the “little Engine That Could.” He just keeps plugging away. Yes, at times he looks like his feet are in deep, thick mud against quicker point guards. And yet at key moments, especially during the Playoffs, he comes up big. It will be a sad day the day he has to step aside. The good thing is that he is egoless and could come off the bench without complaint if he has, in fact, lost another step.
4. Can the back-up point guards provide productive minutes?
The Fish that ate San Antonio lost some effectiveness late in the regular season last year because Phil Jackson was forced to overplay him because of injuries and some bench weaknesses. Like Bynum, the two Laker back-up point guards, Jordan Farmar and Shannon Brown, have shown some signs of being keepers. Farmar has changed his jersey number to number one, as symbolic a move as there is. In the past, he has balanced out some good moments with poor decision-making and weak defense. Has he matured? Is he ready? If he isn’t, he will be challenged as he was during the Playoffs last season by newcomer Shannon Brown who earned a permanent moment in replay heaven with a rocking slam dunk over Denver’s Chris Anderson in the Playoffs in May.
5. Will the players keep listening to Phil?
There were moments last season – the darkest and most depressing times – when the Lakers seemed to have shut coach Phil Jackson out. These were games when they played foolishly and without energy, basically giving away games. Every team has some of those games in the long 82-game season and the Lakers’ ability to rebound and win a championship suggests that it was nothing more than temporary bits of boredom or fatigue. Most coaches run into a stone wall after a while, where players get tired of their message. Jackson, along with Gregg Popovich and Jerry Sloan, has been one of a small handful who have yet to experience players rejecting their message. But Phil is getting up there in age, is missing his trusty aide Tex Winters, and is satisfied with thinking one year at a time with regard to his own status as the Lakers coach. In addition, Phil considered just coaching home games in order to avoid the rigors of the travel schedule – until GM Mitch Kupchak vetoed that idea. All this suggests Phil’s time as the coach may be winding down. The most important thing is for the Lakers to keep listening to Phil’s message. Will they?
6. Will Pau’s summer “vacation” tire him out?
Pau Gasol, the MVP of this summer’s Eurobasket tournament and a member of the team from Spain, which won its first Eurobasket title after six runner-up results, could be exhausted. The best thing for Gasol would be if Bynum is healthy and active, which would limit Pau’s minutes, at least in the early going. Pau did all right last season coming off the Olympics. Can he do it two years in a row?
7. Has The Machine been repaired?
Sasha Vujacic, aka The Machine, had an abysmal season last year and Jackson urged him to cut his hair as a way of regenerating himself for this season. Last season his long hair and a hair band that Sasha wore attracted a lot of attention. Phil, ever the sensitive Zen master paying attention to small details, appears to be making the hair cut a symbolic move for a change. The Lakers definitely need a three-ball threat off the bench. Will Sasha fill that role?
8. Can Adam Morrison make a contribution?
In the event that The Machine is still under repair, Adam Morrison could step forward and take that three-ball specialist spot. Like J.J. Redick, Morrison can shoot. The problem is that he is coming off a year-long injury and on top of that is dealing with what has to be some loss of confidence. Morrison has no pressure here. So can he step up?
9. Can Luke Walton continue to excel in a cameo role?
Laker haters and even some Laker fans like to snicker about Walton, a slow, can’t-jump, can’t shoot small forward for the Lakers. Why is he even on this team? Maybe it’s his genes, but Walton has a superb basketball IQ. He improves the Lakers’ triangle offense when he is in the game and manages to get key rebounds. The real question is: on a team this deep, can he even get some playing time?
10. Can Kobe keep this team together?
No one doubts Kobe’s preparation and motivation, the fiercest since Michael Jordan was still playing. Kobe knows by now that this is a team game and he needs his teammates to know he trusts them. He did that last season and they came through. This year, the delicate task of getting Ron Artest to fit into the mix falls largely on Kobe’s shoulders. He also needs to coax more out of Bynum and perhaps help rebuild Morrison’s confidence. Can he do it?
If the answer is “Yes” to six or more of these questions, opposing teams will have to watch out.
3
When I was a kid, I never quite understood what the saying “what goes around comes around” meant exactly. Things happen in circles, I decided, still not sure what that meant. When I got a little older, my perspective changed. I upgraded my opinion to “Things happen in cycles.” Later – as I matured a little more – the saying came to have religious overtones. It was the proverbial equivalent of “an eye for an eye.” In other words, do something bad and something bad will happen to you. Or, as the Buddhists put it, karma!
I remembered this saying after recent events in Minnesota. After all, take a look at this. In the 1984 NBA Finals that pitted finals perennials the Celtics and the Lakers, in Game 4 Celtic power forward Kevin McHale clothes-lined Kurt Rambis as he was going in for an easy bucket. Rambis landed hard on his back and neck. As ugly a play as you’ll see, but those were pre-flagrant days. The benches emptied, but there were no fights – or suspensions. Rambis went after McHale but tumbled into the courtside cameramen. Celtic star Larry Bird helped Rambis up. The Lakers, who were favored to win, were so shaken that their nemesis took another final from them. (You can see it at www.youtube.com/watch?v=X7r6vXeOfyQ.)
So 25 years later – this coming around business can take time, you see – McHale, now the coach of the Minnesota Timberwolves after being demoted from a front office job, is unceremoniously pushed out the door. And weeks later is replaced by Rambis, who gets a nice 4-year deal. It’s not like Rambis had been waiting for 25 years; the Lakers beat those same Celtics in two other Finals match-ups a few years later. But there does seem to be something, well, karmic about this.
I wasn’t the only one to notice that, of course. But that turning continued today when Bill Laimbeer was named one of the assistants to Rambis. Yes, Bill Laimbeer, the former center of the Detroit Pistons. One of the Bad Boys. Perhaps the ugliest, meanest, least-liked of the Bad Boys. The same Bad Boys who pushed the Lakers to 7 games in 1987 before losing (on some questionable referee calls, it should be noted, for the conspiracy theorists). A year later, they dethroned the Lakers, who were without Magic Johnson and Byron Scott. Laimbeer pushed around Kareem Abdul-Jabbar in Jabbar’s last games as a pro. (Rambo’s last year as a Laker, too, it should be noted.)
Laimbeer, you may recall, retired as coach of the defending WNBA champion Detroit Shock just a game or two into the WNBA season this summer. Coincidentally, his old team, the NBA Detroit Pistons, were looking for a new coach. Fans in Detroit wrote to the papers and called in to radio sports talk shows urging that Laimbeer be given a shot as the coach of the Pistons. The Pistons’ front office head honcho, Joe Dumars, a teammate of Laimbeer’s from those Bad Boy days, quietly went his way, finally opting for the relatively unknown (outside NBA coaching circles anyway), John Kuester, an assistant with the Cleveland Cavaliers.
A colleague in Detroit calls that the right move, noting that when Laimbeer was a commentator for the Pistons, he rarely talked to players before or after games, and the few times he did venture into the locker room, he was largely ignored. Not a guy with people skills, you might say. My colleague goes so far as to say Laimbeer was actively disliked and would have been a terrible choice as Pistons head coach.
Bill Laimbeer as an assistant to Kurt Rambis? This coming around karma thing has me worried. What next? Robert Parish as an assistant? Isiah Thomas as a consultant? Tommy Heinsohn as the Wolves TV Commentator?
20
In today’s media-saturated world, reporters need a big story everyday. That means a lot of stories are hot air about what might have been or what should have been. Yada yada yada. Last season, for example, the Lakers started 14-1 and stories started popping up — TV and radio people started talking about them winning 70 games. They talked about Cleveland, too. The year before, the spotlight focused on the Boston Celtics. None of those teams won 70 – or even came close. But the media sure talked about it, even early in the season. Too early in the season.
So I’ll get in that game, too. The Lakers should have won 70 games and didn’t. The 1971-1972 Lakers, I mean. That was the team that starred Gail Goodrich and Jerry West, who both averaged 25+ points a game. That was the team that went on a 33-game winning streak and then brought home the first championship trophy since the team had moved to California. Elgin Baylor retired five games into the season (for a look at a very young Chick Hearn the day the team announced Baylor’s retirement, look at 1972 Lakers on YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-PYxhdpdNEI), and the team jelled after Jim McMillan stepped into Elgin’s spot.
Those Lakers flat out dominated other teams: they averaged 121.0 ppg to opponents’ 108.7 ppg. And their schedule was not the wimpy schedule of today: the Lakers played six sets of back-to-back-to-back games(!) that had one travel date in the mix. They lost two of three in the first set at the end of October and then went 15-0 in the rest. Yeah, let’s see one of today’s teams do that. (Blasphemous thought: could the 72-10 Chicago Bulls have won 72 playing 6 sets of back-to-back-to-back games?)
The Lakers came into Cleveland on March 22, 1972 for their last road game of the season with a 67-12 record and an 8-game winning streak. The night before, they had beat the Chicago Bulls by five points. A close game by their standards that summer. But they were bummed out. They had just heard that key back-up swingman Keith Erickson had had knee surgery earlier in the day and would be out eight weeks, taking him out of the Playoffs. Still, a win would tie them with the 1966-1967 Philadelphia 76ers for best regular season record in the NBA with 68 wins.
I was a freshman in college then, home for spring break (which was in Crestline, Ohio then, smack dab in the middle of the state of Ohio) and my father had somehow – well, maybe that’s not the right word for a Cav team that had won only 22 games up to that point – had somehow managed to get sixth-row seats behind one basket. The Lakers trotted onto the court just to our left and I recall looking up at Wilt Chamberlain and thinking “he must be the tallest man in the world!”
Sports coverage has changed dramatically since then. I know this because Wilt walked into the center circle when it was time for the jump and looked down at the Cav center, Rick Roberson, a 6’9” former Laker back-up power forward/center, Wilt’s back-up, in fact, a first-round draft pick two years earlier (15th overall) out of the University of Cincinnati, whom the Cavs had taken in the expansion draft. Wilt laughed – or pretended to laugh. He stepped out of the center circle and tried to push Goodrich, who was generously listed as 6’1” in the guidebook but was called “Stumpy” by teammates who knew better, into the center circle. The crowd loved it. (Who today remembers Wilt’s sense of humor?) Interestingly, neither the Cleveland Plain Dealer nor the Los Angeles Times mentioned Chamberlain’s clowning around. Today that would be an ESPN multiple replay. It would be on YouTube.
Ironically, or maybe because of that public humiliation, Roberson largely outplayed Wilt that night. He finished with a career high (and team high) 29 points that night. He added 14 boards. Wilt wasn’t embarrassed. He had 23 points and 19 boards (but missed six free throws).
The Lakers came out sluggish and the Cavs ran out to an 18-point second quarter lead at 45-27. The 10,819 fans in the sold out Cleveland Arena were loving it. But Goodrich and West, who both tossed in 31 points that night, brought the Lakers back. The game stood 60-all at half-time.
The Lakers outscored the Cavs 22-6 at one point, but could never take the lead. Late in the game Johnny Johnson and Robert “Bingo” Smith took over for the Cavs. Who? Johnson finished with 28, but it was Smith who is etched into my memory. Bingo sported a huge afro that jumped up and down seemingly on its on as he trotted up and down the court. A 6’5” swingman out of the University of Tulsa, Bingo had a solid 11-year career, 9 of those with the Cavs, though he never averaged more than 15.2 ppg for a season. He was a bit like Walt Frazier – not just with the do, but also in the way he seemed to move slowly, almost lazily yet was right there all the time. The Cleveland public address announcer loved him, too.
“Bingo!” he screamed into the mike with every big shot Smith made – and late in the game, they were all big. Bingo finished with 27 points, but the reverberation of the announcer calling his name made me feel like he had 30 or 40 – or more.
“Bingo!”
“Bingo!”
Still, the game was close. The Lakers tied it at 96 and then pulled to within two at 122-120 with 39 seconds left. But Walt Wesley hit a jumper – it was a total team effort for the Cavs – with 14 seconds left to seal the Lakers’ fate.
Laker coach Bill Sharman, not usually a complainer, blamed the refs for several goaltending calls on Wilt that he thought had been bona fide blocks. “It’s a shame,” Sharman said, “to play 80 games and have a shot at the record and not get it, perhaps, because of those calls.” He wanted that record.
“I knew we had a chance when we didn’t fold when they hit us with a hot streak in the third quarter,” Cav coach Bill Fitch (Phil Jackson’s old college coach) told the Cleveland Plain Dealer afterwards.
I had grown up a Laker fan and during the hour and half drive home and in my sleep that night all I could hear or think of was “Bingo!” I’m not clear how I found out I was a Laker fan, but in my mind I have re-created the scene. My father called my brother and me into the dining room in our house in Welch, West Virginia, where I grew up (until the season of that Cav game). We always sat there when he had something important to tell us. I was probably six or seven years old, sometime during West”s rookie season in 1960-1961. “Jerry West is one of the best basketball players in the United States,” I hear him telling us in my scenario. “He is from West Virginia and played at West Virginia University. Now he is with the Los Angeles Lakers. So we are Laker fans.” It almost surely didn’t happen that way, but memory plays curious tricks on the mind. I went home depressed.
The Lakers went home and two days later tied the NBA regular season winning record with a two-point win over Phoenix. Two days after that, they routed Seattle to set a regular season record of 69 wins and 13 losses that would stand for 24 years.
Because I had been home for spring break, I felt the game had occurred earlier in the season. I was stunned when I recently looked at old records and realized it was the Lakers’ last road game and third-to-last game. In fact, it was their last loss. And then the weight of what happened hit me: the Lakers could have won 70 games! Should have won 70! After all, the Cavs were an expansion team. The Cavs had never beaten the Lakers until that point.
The Lakers play 17 of their first 21 games at home next season. Already – before pre-season practice starts! – some people in the media have been predicting a fast start. And though not a game has been played yet, after the Lakers re-signed Lamar Odom, some even started talking about a 70-win season. A warning though: last year’s Lakers were swept – swept! – by the Charlotte Bobcats. There’s always a pebble in the road, like those 1972 Cavs, that can make even the strongest of teams slip and stumble on their way to 70 wins.
