To celebrate that time when all the ghosts were finally sent packing in Boston Garden, I’m posting this excerpt from The Show, my oral history of the Lakers published by McGraw-Hill.

BREAKTHROUGH

Unfortunately, the Lakers couldn’t get out of town after the 1984 Finals, a series that had brought the franchise an eighth championship defeat at the hands of the Celtics without a single victory. They had to spend one more night in their hotel, trapped inside of Boston with the Celtic blues again. Needless to say, it was a sleepless night. Owner Jerry Buss chain-smoked. Michael Cooper spent the time in deep and miserable mourning sequestered in his room with his wife, Wanda. Coach Pat Riley quickly put away the white tuxedo he had planned to wear for the championship celebration and began thinking about next year.

Joined by his friends Isiah Thomas and Mark Aguirre, Magic Johnson talked the night away. About music. Cars. Old times. Anything but the series. Occasionally the conversation would drift that way, but they’d steer it away. He had not played well, and the loss was too tender a subject.

Isiah Thomas: “We talked until the morning came, but we never talked about the game much. For that one night I think I was his escape from reality.”

Early the next day Kareem had agreed to appear on the CBS morning news.

Josh Rosenfeld, former Lakers PR man: “When we showed up at the studio, Cedric Maxwell was there. The producer’s idea was to have Cedric and Kareem on together. We were there about 10 minutes, and Cedric was sitting across from Kareem. Cedric had said a lot of things during the series. Kareem asked the producer, ‘Is he on first, or am I on first?’ She said, ‘Oh, no, we want the two of you on together.’ Kareem got up and very politely said, ‘Thank you for inviting me. I can’t do that.’ This poor girl, the producer, she was frantic. She was in tears. She followed us out to the limo and said, ‘We can reformat the show. You can go on after Maxwell.’ Kareem said, ‘No, I’m not in the mood anymore, but thank you.’ Then he explained to me, ‘Maxwell accused Worthy of choking. I can’t be seen on national TV with him. It would be offensive to my teammates.’”

The Lakers’ humiliation would remain for months. Johnson returned to California, where he was set to move into his new Bel-Air mansion, only the furniture hadn’t arrived. His palace sat as empty as his heart, so he hid out for three days in his Culver City apartment. His mother, Christine, phoned to see how he was doing. He told her he just couldn’t talk about it.

Yet everywhere he turned there seemed to be something to read about it. The Celtics were having fun with their victory. McHale even dubbed him “Tragic Johnson.” Asked about the 1984-85 season, Bird said of the Lakers, “I’d like to give them the opportunity to redeem themselves. I’m sure they have guys who feel they didn’t play up to their capabilities.” Asked if he meant Magic, Bird replied, “You think we don’t love it? Magic having nightmares [about his poor play].”

Johnson retorted that he had no need for redemption.

Even worse than the Celtic cockiness was the trashing Johnson took from the LA newspapers. “I sat back when it was over,” he said later, “and I thought, Man, did we just lose one of the great play-off 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.”

Michael Cooper: “Magic has had his trials and tribulations throughout his entire NBA career. That’s the thing I’ve always admired about him. He’s always met them head-on and conquered them to the best of his ability.”

His meeting this Celtics challenge began when the Lakers returned to Palm Springs for training camp that fall.

Byron Scott: “When we walked on the floor that first day of camp, we saw it in everybody’s eyes. This was going to be a serious year.”

Especially for Riley.

Gary Vitti, longtime Laker trainer: “Pat was screwed down pretty tight, like a spring. And it escalated from there.”

Byron Scott: “Riles made us aware of exactly what he wanted. He let us know from day one, ‘I’m gonna work you from the first day of camp to the last day of the play-offs.’ He didn’t let up. That’s the main reason we kept going all year, because we had a coach who wouldn’t let us stop.”

Riley later explained that his team’s psyche was fragile. They had won two championships on their talent, but the Celtics had challenged them with psychological warfare in 1984 and won. The Lakers would have to either form as a team and fight back or fall apart.

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar: “That first series that we gave them in ‘84 really seasoned us. It gave us the mental tenacity that we didn’t always exhibit. We couldn’t outrun everybody. We had to understand that sometimes there were other ways to skin the cat.”

It was something that Paul Westhead had lost his job trying to tell them.

By the 1985 play-offs the Lakers had regained their composure and their strength. The frontcourt was bolstered by the return of Mitch Kupchak and Jamaal Wilkes to go with Kareem, Worthy, Rambis, McAdoo, and Larry Spriggs. The backcourt showed Magic, Scott, Cooper, and McGee. As a group, they were driven by their ‘84 humiliation.

“Those wounds from last June stayed open all summer,” Riley said as the play-offs neared. “Now the misery has subsided, but 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.”

After all, Johnson was a mere 25, and at a time when most pro players were just beginning to feel comfortable in the game, he already owned two championship rings. Across pro basketball, observers sensed that he was about to add to his jewelry collection. The Celtics, however, were conceding nothing. With a 63-19 regular-season finish, they had again claimed the home-court advantage. The Lakers had finished 62-20. And neither team  dallied in the play-offs. Boston dismissed Cleveland, Detroit, and Philadel- phia in quick succession. The Lakers rolled past Phoenix, Portland, and Denver.

For the first time in years, the Finals returned to a 2-3-2 format, with the first two games in Boston, the middle three in Los Angeles, and the last two, if necessary, back in Boston. The situation set up an immense opportunity for the Lakers to steal one in the Garden, then pressure the Celtics back in Los Angeles.

Yet on the eve of the Finals they were struck by old doubts.

James Worthy: “We really weren’t sure of ourselves. We got back to the Finals and said, ‘Golly, we got the Celtics again. How’re we gonna do it?’ We just came out and played like a bunch of women, really. Didn’t have any aggressiveness. No killer instinct. We paid the price for it.”

Which was one final, profound embarrassment. Game 1 opened on Memorial Day, Monday, May 27, with both teams cruising on five days’ rest. The Lakers, however, quickly took on the appearance of guys who had just come off two weeks on the graveyard shift. The 38-year-old Kareem, in particular, slogged up and down the court, while Boston center Robert Parish seemed to glide. Often Kareem would just be reaching the top of the key to catch up to the play when all of a sudden the action raced the other way. He finished the day with 12 points and three rebounds. And Johnson had only one rebound. Meanwhile the famed Showtime running game had been slowed to a belly crawl.

And the Celtics?

They placed a huge red welt on the Lakers’ scar from the previous year, 148-114. Scott Wedman hit 11 for 11 from the floor, including four three-pointers. Danny Ainge fired in six straight buckets at the end of the first quarter to finish the period with 15 points. “It was one of those days,” Boston coach K. C. Jones said, “where if you turn around and close your eyes, the ball’s gonna go in.”

Abruptly, the Celtics quieted their trash talking, as if they sensed that they had gone too far. They hadn’t expected it to be this easy. And the last thing they wanted to do was rile the Lakers. “It’s definitely time to back off,” Maxwell said. “It’s not like backgammon or cribbage, where if you beat someone bad enough you get two wins.”

But it was too late. The teams didn’t play again until Thursday, and there was an uneasy air in Boston despite the big win.

The next morning in the Lakers’ film sessions, Kareem moved to the front row, rather than recline in the farther reaches as he usually did. And he didn’t blink when Riley ran and reran the gruesome evidence of his terrible performance. In fact, the captain went to each of his teammates later and personally apologized for his effort.

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar: “That horrible game, the Memorial Day Massacre. That was mainly me. I remember watching the film of that game. The camera would follow the ball, and I would always be at the back of the pack. I’d be out of camera range, always bringing up the rear. I realized I simply wasn’t keeping up with the play. I had worn down over the course of the playoffs. So we had like three days before we played. The massacre was on Sunday, and we didn’t play again until Thursday. And I did like a mini training camp. I just made myself get my cardiovascular back to where it should be. I told everybody, I promised, that whatever happened on the next game I would give my best, whatever that was. Pat was trying to accommodate me minute-wise, but I don’t get into shape unless I work myself into shape. I got to play. So the more time I spent on the bench, it really wasn’t getting the job done. We needed a different way of approaching it.”

James Worthy: “A lot of the discussion was pointed at Kareem. But it was all of us, because none of us played well. But he was our leader.”

“He made a contract with us that it would never happen again. Ever,” Riley said later. “That game was a blessing in disguise. It strengthened the fiber of this team. Ever since then, Kareem had this took, this air, about him.”

James Worthy: “That set the tone. That game was the turning point in Laker history, I think. We came back strong and Kareem led the way. Riley, too. He stepped forward. It was the turning point in his career, too. He took his coaching to another level. It brought the last development of his coaching technique. It was to utilize all aspects. After that particular game it wasn’t pretty. It was factual. It was the truth, and it was presented to us in a way we couldn’t deny. We had to go out and do something about it.”

As the second game approached, the Lakers knew exactly what they had to do. “Our break starts with good, tough defense,” Rambis said. “That forces teams out of their offense. Then we must control the boards. That’s where the work comes in. If we do those two things, the fast break is the easiest part.”

Before Game 2 on Thursday, Kareem went to Riley and asked if his father, Al Alcindor, could ride on the team bus to the Garden. Riley consented and thought of his own father.

Gary Vitti: “Pat talked about when he was a little boy. His big brothers would take him down to the playground. He was the smallest guy out there, and he’d get beat up every day and go home crying. They’d take him home, and his father would say, ‘Take Pat back down there tomorrow.’ And the big brothers would say, ‘Dad, the guy’s getting beat up.’ His father said, ‘Take him back. At some point, you gotta plant your feet, kick some ass, and make a stand.’”

Just before he died, the elder Riley had reminded his son that to survive you had to make that stand. Riley recalled those words to his players in his pregame talk. It was time, he said, to make a stand.

Gary Vitti: “That’s why Pat is what he is today, those types of influences. Riles is an inspiring guy. I mean after hearing him, I wanted to go out there and kick some ass, too.”

And the Lakers did. Kareem, in particular, reasserted himself with 30 points, 17 rebounds, eight assists and three blocks. Cooper hit eight of nine from the floor to finish with 22 points. And just like that, the Lakers evened the series, 109-102. Best of all, they had stolen a game in the Garden and now returned to the Forum for three straight.

“They expected us to crawl into a hole,” Lakers assistant Dave Wohl said of the Celtics. “It’s like the bully on the block who keeps taking your lunch money every day. Finally you get tired of it and you whack him.”

They hosted the Celtics on Sunday afternoon and really whacked ‘em again, returning the favor of Game 1, 136-111. This time Worthy was the man, with 29 points. But Kareem’s presence was felt again, too. He had 26 points and 14 rebounds.

At one point, Boston had led, 48-38, but Worthy dominated the second quarter and Los Angeles charged to a 65-59 edge at intermission. The Lakers ran away in the second half, during which Kareem became the league’s all-time leading play-off scorer with 4,458 points.

Bird, meanwhile, had fallen into a two-game shooting slump, going 17 for 42. He had been troubled by a chronically sore right elbow and bad back, although some speculated his real trouble was Cooper’s defense.

As with ‘84, the series was marked by physical play, although this time it was the Lakers who gained an edge. “We’re not out to physically harm them,” Kareem offered. “But I wouldn’t mind hurting their feelings.” Before Game 4, the NBA’s vice president of operations, Scotty Stirling, warned each coach that fighting and extra rough play would be met with fines and suspensions. Riley told his players of Stirling’s warning, but K. C. Jones chose not to. With their uninhibited play, the Celtics stayed in it, and the game came down to one final possession. Bird had the ball but faced a double-team, so he dumped it off to D. J. above the foul line. From there, Johnson drilled the winner with two seconds left. Boston had evened the series and regained its home-court advantage, 107-105.

Game 5 two nights later in the Forum was another showdown. The Lakers went on a 14-3 run at the close of the half to take a 64-51 lead. They stretched it to 89-72 after intermission, until the Celtics closed to within four at 101-97 with six minutes left. But Magic hit three shots and Kareem added four more, giving him 36 on the day, as the Lakers walked away with a 3-2 lead, 120-111.

“People didn’t think we could win close games,” Johnson said afterward.

From there it went back to Boston. Lakers GM Jerry West didn’t dare make the trip for fear of spooking the proceedings. Across the country old Lakers held their breath and watched the tube. After eight painful losses, this seemed to be the best chance yet to end Boston’s domination. The Celtics would have to win the final two games. With a mere 38 hours’ rest between games, that just didn’t seem possible.

Kareem was there again, this time with 29 points, 18 of them in the second half when it mattered. The score was tied at 55 at intermission.

Kareem sat much of the second period in foul trouble while Mitch Kupchak did admirable work as a backup. The Celtics had played only seven people in the first half, and Magic could see that they were tired. It was written on their faces. Riley told him to keep pushing it at them, not to worry about turnovers. Just keep up the pressure.

He did.

And the Celtics did something they had never ever done before. They gave up a championship on their home floor, on the hallowed parquet, 111-100. Boston forward Kevin McHale had kept them alive with 36 points, but he got his sixth foul with more than five minutes left. And, thanks in part to Cooper’s defense, Larry Bird was closing out a 12-for-29 afternoon. “I thought I’d have a great game today,” he said afterward.

In the end, the Lakers’ victory was signaled by the squeaking of sneakers in the deathly quiet Garden as the crowd slipped away. It was the same crowd that had so riotously jostled the Lakers the year before.

“We made ‘em lose it,” Johnson said with satisfaction.

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar: “They fought as dirty as they could until they realized they were gonna lose. Then they came back with Celtic pride and all this crap. Being able to shut those people up in Boston Garden, that was so satisfying. Even though we came back to LA and lost a game, we didn’t lose any momentum. That was the first year where James really just started to dominate. He just emerged in such a spectacular, wonderful way. It was a nice thing to see. He could finish the break and he could post up. He was just so versatile. And we had Mitch Kupchak and Bob McAdoo on the bench. It was just great stuff.”

Kareem was named the MVP. “He defies logic,” Riley said of the 38-year-old Laker center. “He’s the most unique and durable athlete of our time, the best you’ll ever see. You better enjoy him while he’s here.”

Johnson’s trophy was the sweet redemption he had said he didn’t need. “You wait so long to get back,” he admitted afterward. “A whole year. That’s the hard part. But that’s what makes this game interesting. It’s made me stronger. You have to deal with the different situations and see if you can come back.”

For Lakers’ owner Jerry Buss, the celebration was quieter and very personal.

Jerry Buss: “The Garden was nearly empty with the reporters taking notes in the locker rooms and writing their stories.  Hampton Mears, one of my old friends, and I slipped out to the center of the Garden parquet. We giggled and exchange high fives. The most odious sentence in all of sport — the Lakers have never beaten the Celtics— wasn’t true anymore.”

From the Garden, the Lakers retreated to their hotel, where at last Riley got to celebrate in his white tuxedo from the year before.

The team’s next business was to vote on Pres. Ronald Reagan’s invitation to visit the White House. If the coaches hadn’t cast ballots, too, the team might have passed. It was a close vote, but the ‘85 champions visited the presidential quarters. They were tossed about on a bumpy flight into Washington, but once there Kareem and Riley had a nice chat with Mr. Reagan. Then it was on to LA.

Byron Scott: “We wanted to get back home to party with our families and friends.”

Across the country, old Lakers felt a weight lifted.

Pat Riley: “All those Celtic skeletons came out of the closet.”

Roland Lazenby is the author of Jerry West, The Life And Legend Of A Basketball Icon, recently released by ESPN Books.

So how could you even consider him the All-Time MVP of the NBA Playoffs?

Well, you have to at least consider Baylor among the nominees along with Boston’s great Bill Russell (the centerpiece of 11 championship teams), Chicago’s Michael Jordan, and a select few others. By the way, the number of once and former Lakers on this list is strong: Magic Johnson, Kobe Bryant, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Shaquille O’Neal, George Mikan…

Mikan? Hey, the dude powered Minneapolis to six championships back when the lane was shaped like a keyhole (yes, that’s why they still call it the “key,” although the lane was long ago widened and no longer looks remotely like a keyhole).

So you have to nominate Mikan, just as you have to nominate Baylor, who was the motherlode of talent that took extremely weak Lakers teams all the way to the league championship series. To look at Baylor, we’ll consider this brief excerpt from my biography, “Jerry West.” After all, West and Baylor teamed together to make the Lakers one of the most consistently good teams in the history of pro hoops. They just couldn’t beat Bill Russell and the Celtics.

ELEGANT ELGIN

The Minneapolis Lakers had made Baylor the first pick of the ‘58 draft, not long after he had led the little University of Seattle to the NCAA championship game against powerhouse Kentucky, coached by Adolph Rupp. Baylor was called for a run of fouls in that game and his little team lost that title game. It would start a run of frustrations for the Magnificent Elgin.

Baylor, a Washington, D.C., native, sent his uncle to negotiate the contract, a $22,000 deal. As a rookie he had averaged 24.7 points and 15 rebounds for 1958-59. He was second in the league in the most minutes played and led the Lakers in assists, scoring, and rebounding. Midway through that rookie season, he scored 55 in a game, the third highest total in NBA history.

The team clunked along to a 33-39 record, while the roster learned to play with Baylor. By the play-offs, his Lakers teammates had gotten the hang of it, and that’s when Baylor showed his true value.  First, Minneapolis dumped Detroit, then Baylor and company got everybody’s attention by beating defending NBA champion St. Louis for the right to meet Boston and Russell for the 1959 league title.

The Celtics promptly swept the Lakers, but everybody knew there was an amazing new force among them. “Baylor was clearly the most exciting player in the league,” said his coach, former Laker great Jim Pollard.

The Lakers quickly hustled to increase his money to $50,000 a year, a huge figure at the time. Baylor opened that next season by scoring 52 against Detroit. A few nights later, on November 8, 1959, he rang up 64 points against the Celtics, breaking the league’s single-game record set a decade earlier by Jumpin’ Joe Fulks.

With almost no help, Baylor couldn’t lift Minneapolis to the championship series for 1960, but that off-season the club drafted Jerry West and announced that it was moving to Los Angeles for the 1960-61 season.

If people in Los Angeles didn’t know much about pro basketball, Baylor gave them the first big clue that November 15 when he scored 71 points, a new NBA single-game league record, against the Knicks in Madison Square Garden. The news would hit Los Angeles like a lightning bolt, giving sports fans the idea that they needed to get out and see this talented Lakers team.

The veterans around the league, though, weren’t surprised by anything Baylor did. “You couldn’t defend Elgin,” explained Detroit guard Gene Shue. “He had such good outside shot. He could stare you down. He had a quick jab step. He would catch the ball at the top of the key or further out and he’d get you going back and forth. He’d just explode by you. He had a nervous twitch. He was very, very hard to defend. Not only was he a good outside shooter, but he had a good deceptive first step. He had incredible strength and could hang in the air with the ball. When you put all those things together you couldn’t stop him.”

Baylor supposedly had gotten his name at birth when his father glanced at his wristwatch and liked the sound of the name on the face. And later, his college coach, John Castellani would say, “Elgin has more moves than a clock.”

Driving to the basket, he would leave the floor, often not quite sure what he wanted to do, simply relying on his hang time to open his options. Because he was an excellent passer, he could usually find someplace to put the ball for a teammate. Failing that, he could resort to a lay-up, as he seldom chose to dunk.

Even so, Baylor was no gliding featherweight. He was 6-foot-5 and 225 pounds, a powerful rebounder with another special gift for following his own shots and correcting the misses.

“Elgin was very strong,” said John Radcliffe, the Lakers’ longtime scorekeeper. “He would get bumped all the time, but it never seemed to throw him off stride. Even in the air, he would get bumped a lot, but his concentration was so good that the shot would still go where he wanted it to go. He used the glass a lot. I never saw him dunk. It wasn’t the thing to do in those days.”

“Baylor was really the first to have body control in the air,” former Laker and longtime NBA broadcaster Hot Rod Hundley said. “He’d hang there and shoot these little flip shots.”

“He just might be the best player I ever saw,” Chick Hearn offered. “He was doing things that Dr. J. made famous 20 years later, the hang time and so forth. But Elgin didn’t have the TV exposure. Nobody did in those days.”

Added to Baylor’s dynamic mix was the curiosity of his nervous tick, a twitching of his face, leaving defenders confused as Baylor headed around them to the basket. “We used to kid about it,” recalled Johnny “Red” Kerr. “If he gave the nervous tic to the left, he was going left. If he gave it to the right, he was gonna go to his right. But when he shook both ways, that’s when you fell on your ass, and he was gonna go around you.”

“Some players, they struggle when they score,” Gene Shue said. “Elgin, his instincts were so good. He kept you off balance. There wasn’t one forward in the league that wanted to play Elgin. Elgin was one of those players that could embarrass you. He could do 60 on you. And you couldn’t stop him.”

The opportunity to play with a talent like Baylor was one of the major strokes of good fortune in West’s career, something he would genuinely cherish. West came to rely on his multi-talented teammate that first year.

“It was an honor to play with him,” West said later. “I never considered Elgin Baylor as someone I competed against. He is without a doubt one of the truly great players to play this game. I hear people talking about great players today, and I don’t see many that compare to him, I’ll tell you that. He had that wonderful, magical instinct for making plays, for doing things that you just had to watch. I learned from him, from watching him. I was young, wanting to learn. I had an incredible appreciation for other people’s talents. It was incredible to watch Elgin play.”

Baylor’s performances seemed to entrance his less-talented Lakers teammates, especially the forwards, Tommy Hawkins and Rudy LaRusso. Which left little doubt that the Lakers were Baylor’s team, on and off the court.

“Tommy Hawkins was the hardest worker on the team, but he always had trouble getting the ball to go in the hole,” said John Radcliffe, the Lakers’ longtime scorekeeper. “He was a tremendous leaper but he had small hands. He and Rudy LaRusso worked so hard for Elgin. They’d battle and battle, setting picks, getting rebounds, whatever it took.”

Baylor’s mastery extended far beyond the floor with those young teams in Los Angeles, explained Merv Harris, who covered pro basketball for the old LA Herald Examiner: “It was fascinating to see the domination of his personality over that team. Elgin was the boss. He was the most physically dominating player, and his status began with that. Whenever Elgin wanted to play poker, they played poker. Wherever Elgin wanted to eat, they went to eat. Whatever Elgin wanted to talk about, they talked about.”

And in that age before trash talking became an art in the NBA, Elgin pioneered that element of the game, as well. “Elgin knew he was good and he’d let you know,” Gene Shue recalled with a chuckle. “He did it out on the court. He was really an unstoppable player.” “Our nickname for Elgin was Motormouth,” Hot Rod Hundley said. “He never stopped talking. He knew everything, or he thought he did. We had a lot of fun.”

For the Baylor and the Lakers, 1961-62 was one of those golden, fun-loving seasons in which almost everything seemed to go right.

“It was an enjoyable year,” Baylor remembered. “Our camaraderie was great. On and off the court, we did things together. We enjoyed one another. As a team we gave the effort every night.”

Baylor turned in one of the most remarkable performances in NBA history — and he did so while serving his country in the armed forces.

After opening the season on another scoring tare, Baylor was called into reserve duty with the army near Fort Lewis, Washington. As a result, he was able to appear in only 48 regular-season games. He made the lineup mostly on weekends or with an occasional pass, and when he did, he was fresh, ready, and virtually unstoppable. His 38.2 scoring average was second only to that of the prodigious Wilt Chamberlain, who averaged better than 50 points per game that season.

Even with Baylor’s intermittent schedule, the Lakers won the Western Division with a 54-26 record, 11 games better than Cincinnati and Oscar Robertson, and whipped Detroit 4-2 in the division finals series. For the league championship they faced the Celtics, who had ousted Chamberlain and the Warriors in the Eastern playoffs.

The series opened in dank, smelly Boston Garden, where the smoky haze hung over the floor. In that diffused light, the air took on a green hue. It was clearly Bill Russell’s lair, and the Celtics emphasized that in Game 1 with a 122-108 victory. The Lakers’ edge was that their legs were younger, and they used that the next night to deliver a 129-122 upset in Game 2.

A record crowd of 15,180 packed the L.A. Sports Arena for Game 3 on April 10. The Lakers had never seen the place so crazy. All night the noise fed their adrenaline. In the closing seconds, the Lakers were down 115-111 when West scored four points to tie it. Then Boston’s Sam Jones tried to inbound the ball to Bob Cousy with four seconds remaining. Guarding Cousy, West laid back, then surged into the passing lane, stole it, and drove 30 feet for the winning lay-up, 117-115. Boston coach Red Auerbach complained to the refs that it was impossible for West to dribble the distance to score with only four seconds left. The Lakers bench had feared as much. Everyone there shouted for West to pull up and shoot. But he kept digging for the goal and laid the ball in. It fell through the net as the buzzer sounded.

“I had deflected the ball on the run,” West recalled. “I knew I would have enough time. Most things in my life have been instinctive. I played basketball that way. I always knew what the clock was.”

Unfortunately, the Celtics never allowed dreams to linger. They promptly killed any thoughts of prolonged jubilation in LA by taking Game 4, 115-103, and headed back to Boston with the series tied at two. There, it was all Baylor in Game 5. Despite fouling out, he scored 61 points (the record for an NBA Finals game) and had 22 rebounds, while the Celtics’ defensive specialist, Satch Sanders, contemplated another line of work.

“Elgin was just a machine,” Sanders said later.

But his was the kind of performance that elevates Baylor onto the list of nominees. Unfortunately, his Lakers fell short in overtime of Game 7 of that 1962 title battle.

His LA teams also lost Finals series to Boston in  ’63, ‘65, ‘66, ‘68, and ‘69. His Lakers teams also fell in seven games to the New York Knicks in the famous 1970 championship series.

Baylor suffered what was thought to be a career-ending knee injury in the 1965 playoffs, but he defied doctors’ expectations and worked his way back to compete the next season.

Baylor finally retired early in the 1971-72 season, the year the Los Angeles Lakers finally won a championship.

Time has obscured Baylor’s major performances early in his career, especially his superb showing in the 1962 championship series. But he deserves to be considered among the game’s all-time best when it comes to playoff performances.

Roland Lazenby is the author of Jerry West, The Life And Legend Of A Basketball Icon, recently released by ESPN Books.

Lakers coach Phil Jackson confirmed as much recently when he opened up about Jerry Buss, the team’s 77-year-old owner.

“He’s a gambler,” Jackson told reporters before a recent game in Los Angeles. “He knows the odds, he knows when to take the risks. I think he carries that sense of this is a risk/reward type of game, and what are the rewards with the risk I’ve thrown out there in each situation.”

Jackson, of course, is echoing something he learned from another owner — Chicago Bulls chairman Jerry Reinsdorf — who first taught him about risks and rewards years ago. Jackson also had his unpleasant moments with Reinsdorf yet was able to maintain a strong respect for him even through their nastiest showdown in 1998.

In his years on the bench in the NBA, Jackson has learned some difficult lessons about the mind-set of team owners. You could see those lessons reflected in his recent comments. Jackson has long been known for his masterful use of the media, for planting ideas with reporters and stirring the pot if it needs stirring. Jackson himself calls this “seeding” ideas with the media.

But as he’s aged Jackson has also learned to employ a more direct approach. You might argue that with his recent comments, Jackson was reaching out to Buss, telling him through the media that he understands the pressures the owner faces. (Thanks to the great Kurt Helin at http://probasketballtalk.nbcsports.com/2010/03/phil-jackson-says-jerry-buss-knows-when-to-hold-them.php )

“This year he took the big risk and brought Lamar (Odom) back, so we could get back to where we are the championship, that we could have a shot at that championship again,” Jackson said of Buss signing Odom in the off-season. “But that was a big pill to chew for an organization that has never lost money in the however many years he has owned the team, 30 years (31, actually). I know that was something he had to convince himself of. I had to convince him of, and stay after it that it was imperative for us to stay with this crew, this group of guys.

“I think Jerry was very close to his teams in the ’80s, the Showtime teams,” Jackson continued. “And I think he learned something from that. He learned that you can be friends with these guys, but time passes, a generation passes. There’s some heartache involved in that. There’s some pain involved in it the closer you get to the guys.

“I think he admires this team, I think he likes his athletes. He has an ability to stay removed and yet attached to them.”

These are somewhat difficult circumstances. Buss pays Jackson the exorbitant sum of $12 million a year to coach the Lakers. Jackson, in turn, has rewarded Buss by leading the team to last year’s NBA title, his fourth championship in nine seasons with the team. Yet Jackson’s contract is up after this season, and Buss has not offered him a new one.

In place of an offer, Jackson and his girlfriend — the owner’s daughter, Jeanie Buss — are left reading the master poker face of Jerry Buss. What is he thinking? What cards is he holding? What will he do?

These are serious questions, because Buss has already fired Jackson once in their time together in 2004. So it’s understandable that this poker face would privately unnerve Jeanie Buss and to some degree Jackson (and the team itself). After all, he is trying to coach his team to another championship.

Jerry Buss has been a tremendous owner in Los Angeles in terms of his success over the past three decades. But it’s not right. Jackson shouldn’t have to play this poker game and try to win a championship too.

Yes, Jerry Buss is a sly, tough owner who plays a sly, tough hand of poker. But passionate Lakers fans know this isn’t the time or place for a hand of poker. The Lakers have an opportunity to do something special here if they can win a title in 2010.

Then again, Jackson has won in tough circumstances before. That’s why he reached out to Buss with those almost tender comments.

Buss has indicated in the past that he doesn’t love the triangle offense that Jackson runs. Truth be known, he prefers the Showtime days of Magic Johnson. Well, who the hell doesn’t? As the recent HBO documentary on Johnson and Boston’s Larry Bird made so perfectly clear, the two players gave the NBA a truly wonderful era. But here’s a news flash: We will never see another Magic and Larry because you don’t turn out special players like that on demand. They were not the product of a system. They were magical players, once-in-a lifetime gifts from God.

In the absence of that, Jackson has helped create the next great era of pro basketball. The era of the triangle offense, if you will. Like the era of Larry and Magic, when this era is gone, it won’t be duplicated.

So Jerry Buss should think twice about hurrying to usher the Triangle Era out the door so that he can get back to Showtime. These eras themselves are special things. They come our way once in a lifetime. We get players like Kobe and Magic and Bird and Jordan and coaches like Jackson and his longtime assistant Tex Winter once in a lifetime.

So with all due respect, Dr. Buss — and I sincerely mean with all respect for you have been a great owner — please leave the fucking poker games for Vegas.

Roland Lazenby is the author of Jerry West, The Life And Legend Of A Basketball Icon, an L.A. Times bestseller recently released by ESPN Books.

He wouldn’t go there to be part of a side act, says a basketball source who has known James well and worked with him since childhood. “And the Clippers are definitely a side act.

“He loves being a part of the show,” says the source. “And in L.A., that’s the Lakers. They’re the main show.”

James absolutely loves the California lifestyle, and if he were to make a move away from the Cleveland Cavaliers, California is the place he’d most likely want to go, the source said. He wouldn’t have to be a savior for the Lakers, wouldn’t have to inhabit the fishbowl lifestyle that he does elsewhere. He certainly would face less pressure in L.A. than in New York or even Cleveland.

Still, James will likely remain a Cav for next season, simply because the odds seem to grow daily making the Cavaliers the favorite to win an NBA title this June.

Last year, after Cleveland lost to Orlando in the playoffs, veteran Orlando assistant coach Brendan Malone said it was obvious that the Cavs needed scoring help from the forward position. They have that help now, with GM Danny Ferry’s acquisition of Antawn Jamison in February.

Another key question mark will be the health of veteran center Shaquille O’Neal. If O’Neal can overcome his thumb injury to return to the Cavs roster for the playoffs, the Cavs have size in O’Neal and backup center Zydrunas Ilgauskas to match up with the Lakers, should both teams reach the championship round.

If somehow, the Cavs reach the NBA Finals against the Lakers and lose, there’s little chance that James would try to force a trade to the Lakers. As much as James might want to be a Laker, that scenario would simply not be acceptable, the source said.

What scenario might bring James to the purple and gold? If both the Lakers and the Cavs lost in the playoffs, that might open a situation where James would aggressively attempt to force such a trade.

That, of course, would mean the failure of the two teams with the best record in each conference. Playing for the Lakers would be James’ ideal scenario, the source said, but only that narrow set of circumstances would make it feasible.

Those who have taken exception to my reports that James has quietly explored his Lakers option through an entertainment agent have cited salary cap issues as the obstacle to such a scenario.

Actually, James is a player with tremendous power. The main obstacle to such a move will be what happens on the court, as it should be.

Still, it’s interesting to ponder the result. How would James fit with Lakers star Kobe Bryant? Would there be enough basketballs for the two of them?

James would have no problem deferring to Bryant, said the source. “LeBron has no problem deferring if the player he’s deferring to is worthy.” The best proof of that lies in their Olympic play together.

One issue might be getting James to fit his game into the triangle offense run by Lakers coach Phil Jackson, even though James and Jackson are said to have high regard for each other.

James, however, would be a dangerous wing in the triangle, playing behind the defense much as Michael Jordan did in Chicago. The triangle seeks to create an imbalance by “filling the corner” on the strong side with a great shooter, which would leave James facing four-on-four from the weak side, with the defense spread out.

Good ball movement would mean James could find nice lanes to the basket.

Oh, well. L.A. is sort of a fantasy for James, one that would require certain developments. Still, stranger things have happened in the NBA, and the league is headed for a very strange off-season.

MORE TRIANGLE NOTES

What did the Lakers learn about the triangle offense during Kobe Bryant’s recent injury time? I posed that question to center Pau Gasol.

Without Bryant, the team got a different view of the triangle and more opportunity to explore options, he replied. “We can search more into it.”

And learn different things. “The ball moves a little more,” Gasol said, echoing a frequent complaint that triangle guru Tex Winter used to make about Bryant. “We can search more through the triangle and we can get more options. It’s made for that.”

Gasol acknowledged that the team has a different relationship with the triangle this season, mainly because of new teammate Ron Artest.

“Ron is trying to figure out the triangle and where to be on the court and how to have an effect offensively,” Gasol remarked. “Little by little he’s getting there, and he’s doing a good job.”

THE SIMPLE MAN

For years now, Spurs center Tim Duncan has been a favorite of many of the NBA’s legends and retired greats such as 11-time Celtics champion Bill Russell.

“I had a nice little interview with Bill Russell, and he’s always told me that he’s a big fan of mine,” Duncan said. “That’s an incredible honor to hear that from someone like Bill Russell. That’s the main guy.”

Why do the legends prize his game so much, I asked Duncan. “Probably just the simplicity of my game,” he said. “I’ve been blessed to win four championships over the years with that simplicity. I hope that’s it.”

MAGIC

Magic Johnson continues to rave about the play of Oklahoma City’s Kevin Durant. I asked Durant about the props. “I’ve met Magic a couple of times,” he said, “and I really admire how much he loves the game. You can see it in how he speaks, how he carries himself when he talks about basketball… You watch old tapes of him, he’s always smiling and he’s always competitive. Hopefully, I’ll live up to that.”

Roland Lazenby is the author of Jerry West, The Life And Legend Of A Basketball Icon, recently released by ESPN Books.

The passage from the book says: “That November, as a new season was set to open, Magic Johnson announced to the world that he was HIV positive, a stunning event that brought revelations about the climate of sexual frivolity around the Lakers. Johnson admitted he had been sleeping with 300-500 people a year. The team’s locker room, and its sauna, had been a place where the star and other players had entertained women, even right after games. Johnson would retire to the sauna after a game, have sex, then put on a robe and return to the locker room for his post-game media interviews. How far had the team gone in condoning such questionable behavior? ‘I cared,’ West said in his interviews for this book. ‘I did things for those guys. It was ridiculous, some of the things I did for those guys. If the public knew they’d be outraged. It was a pretty crazy period for us.’”
The West bio doesn’t deal all that much with sex, so I was surprised that the media picked up on the passage.
In retrospect, it makes some sense. Tiger Woods has been vilified for his recent troubles and admissions about his sex life.
And the typical blunt honesty from Jerry West makes it seem like he stands out as some sort of perverse element in the universe of pro sports.
Actually, that’s not the case. History has shown to me that while West may have looked the other way perhaps and allowed the situation to go on in the locker room, his approach was simply business as usual as it has been for most of the history of pro sports.
Let’s consider a few facts.
Babe Ruth’s debauchery is well-documented, and it required the collaboration of both New York Yankees management and the media to enable that.
That same approach was taken by sports management and media for decades in virtually every sport. And it’s understandable why they did.
Sex and athletic performance have long been key factors in the philosophy and practice of coaching. From the early twentieth century, high school and college coaches had their players sit in ice water and pursue other practices so that they would avoid masturbating before games.
On the pro level, coaches simply didn’t have the same power over their players. Yet pro coaches have always dealt with huge pressures. They were unceremoniously fired if their teams failed to win.
It’s little wonder that they have long made efforts to deal with the sexual appetites of their players, long before the Lakers ever moved to L.A.
Hot Rod Hundley, a noted partier and ladies man, was the number one overall pick in the 1957 NBA draft, when he was selected by the Minnieapolis Lakers.
Team owner Bob Short soon realized he had a real rounder on his hands. Hundley would head out to the bars almost every night to carouse and enjoy the secretaries and professional ladies of Minnesota.
Short watched as Hundley’s off-court activities sapped the young star’s strength and hurt his performances. Finally the owner went to Hundley, begged him to stay in his room after games and even offered to bring prostitutes to his room so that he could “take care of his business” and then get the proper rest.
Hundley refused the owner’s prostitute offer. “The thrill is in the chase, baby,” the player told the owner.
Truth be told, such exchanges were common in the rowdy early days of all pro sports. Owners, GMs, coaches, all simply felt they were dealing with the realities.
Still, there’s no question that, as Johnson’s plight revealed, once the city of Los Angeles joined the world of pro sports in the 1950s, the influence of groupies escalated in the business.
To offer a little more insight, I’m including the following excerpt of another of my books, “The Show,” an oral history of the Lakers that explains the circumstances.

SEX AND THE CITY

It was just before World War II that the English writer Aldous Huxley took a stroll on the beaches southwest of Los Angeles with his good friend, the German writer Thomas Mann, and their lady friends. As they strolled in the sunlight talking of Shakespeare, it was the women who first noticed the small white creatures. There were millions of them, strewn across the sand as far as the eye could see, strange diaphanous creatures. What were they?
Upon closer examination, the couples discovered in surprise that they were used condoms, millions of them, which helped explain why the lovely beach was so deserted.
From there it was just a short distance to the conclusion that, first, the city was dumping literally tons of untreated sewage daily right into the ocean, and second, that the natives certainly seemed possessed of healthy and active libidos.
The distinguished visitors probably shouldn’t have been surprised, at least not about the libidos. As Jessica Hundley and Jon Guzik wrote in the introduction to their guidebook, Horny? Los Angeles, “From the very beginning, Los Angeles was built on a history of scandal and intrigue, feats of sexual perversion, prowess, and seduction that would make your mama blush.”
Hollywood and its stars, of course, had been on the Coast but a short time in the early 20th century before they began wallowing in sexual excess and scandal. Film legend Mae West in the early days of the industry was known for an immense sexual appetite that drove her to bed a wide array of male stars, including Cary Grant and George Raft. Lusty as she was, West was just one of dozens of Hollywood stars caught up in enjoying the Southern California climate over the years.
Clara Bow, another sexually liberated starlet, was rumored to have exceeded even West’s dalliances by taking on the entire University of Southern California football team. Many Hollywood historians scoff at that claim. Regardless, the tendency toward frivolity —not to mention statistics—was well established before the Los Angeles Lakers ever arrived on the scene.
As the decades rolled by, the city’s circumstances only leant edginess to the climate. Millions of residents crammed into the small Los Angeles Basin, which, in turn, sat upon one of the world’s most violently active seismic zones. Earthquake, anyone? What better way for Los Angelenos to take their minds off the impending doom?
There’s little wonder then that California led the charge into the American sexual revolution. As fate would have it, Minneapolis Lakers owner Bob Short moved his team into the midst of this stirring pot in 1960 just as that revolution was surging over the ramparts. No one, it seems, had to mention the phrase “free love” more than once around the Lakers in the early days.
Let’s see. Hollywood, the world’s casting couch? Movie stars? The porn industry? And basketball players?
In all fairness, it should be pointed out that hypersexuality evidenced itself in other sports and pastimes, in other cities. Hot Rod Hundley (now what was the genesis of that nickname?) freely admitted to doing his best to bed the female population of Minneapolis/St. Paul before the Lakers ever made their move west.
Los Angeles, though, clearly provided the opportunity for the team’s stars to explore an array of sexual options, with decidedly mixed results, evidenced by more than a bit of heartbreak. From Wilt Chamberlain’s claim of making love to 20,000 women, to Magic Johnson’s surprise announcement that he was HIV positive to the prostitution solicitation charge against James Worthy to the 2003 rape case against Kobe Bryant that garnered international attention, the Lakers have made scandal a persistent part of their image. Did we mention that Jeanie Buss, the daughter of Laker owner Jerry Buss, posed nude for Playboy magazine in the team offices in 1994? Buss himself has long been known for serially dating literally hundreds of beautiful young women (and proudly keeping a photo collection of each). True to his Playboy image, Buss has even fathered two children with younger women.
It’s no wonder then, that despite his early determination to avoid trouble, that Bryant went to Los Angeles as a 17-year-old high school player and eventually wound up in trouble.
It didn’t take Magic Johnson (now we know the true meaning of the nickname) long after he arrived in Los Angeles in 1979 as a 19-year-old to learn that he had taken up residence at the prime end of the world’s casting couch. Hollywood offered an abundant supply of beauties, many of whom were eager to get to know a basketball star. Back then Norm Nixon was the reigning ladies’ man, and Johnson was an inexperienced understudy. Butch Carter came to the Lakers as a rookie in 1980 and found Johnson marveling at Nixon’s popularity. One day Johnson walked through a hotel lobby and three women gave him their phone numbers—to take up to Nixon’s room.
Butch Carter, former Laker: “At the time, Norm Nixon was the king of LA. When we’d go out somewhere, the women would ask, ‘Where’s Norm? Where’s Norm?’”
It wasn’t too long, however, before Johnson was making his own time. Taking the Lakers to championship after championship, he lit the incandescent lamps of his own stardom. Captivated by his smile, by the career shortcut that an association with him might offer, those Hollywood ladies began asking, “Where’s Magic?”
It wasn’t long before Johnson’s excesses became the stuff of legend around the Lakers. He would later estimate that he had sexual relations with 300 to 500 women annually. Even more amazing was the discretion with which he rang up these numbers. Outside of a small inner circle of Laker staffers and players, few people knew exactly what he was doing.
Rudy Garciduenas, longtime Lakers equipment manager: “When I first started with the team, it was astounding. But it was an existence, a way of life with Earvin. I came to understand Earvin and the way he did things, his love for women, females in general. That’s the way it was. When you’re a person of that stature, it’s almost expected. All the movie stars get the same attention. It’s part of the business.”
As it had for generations of Lakers before him, the club life in Los Angeles posed an irresistible playground for Johnson. After all, there were thousands of beautiful young women, and there was only one Magic Johnson.
Rudy Garciduenas: “You’d just have to shake your head. Every male wants to be that way, or dreams of being that way for just one night. But with Earvin, it was reality. . . .”
Actually, the tales of his exploits had to struggle to keep up with the reality. There was a series of rumored liaisons in public places with a prominent TV newscaster. There was sex in a movie theater. Sex in an elevator. Sex in a corporate boardroom. Sex in a thousand hotel rooms.
But the Great Western Forum itself had been the lair for Laker players for years. The team’s veterans would entertain women in the team saunas and weight rooms after games. And Johnson eventually inherited the privileges, allowing him to have sex with one or more women in the team’s training rooms or sauna just moments after a game. Then, according to routine, he would put on a robe and step out to hold post-game interviews for waiting reporters.
Rudy Garciduenas: “It’s difficult to imagine, but Earvin was used to doing anything he wanted, really. And people loved Earvin so much that nothing he did was wrong. It was never really hidden from anybody, what Earvin did. He was always pretty up-front with it. That was part of him. You had to learn to accept it.”
Joe McDonnell, longtime L.A. radio personality: “It was amazing when Jerry Buss took over (in 1979) and Magic showed up, it became Showtime. There were women. You would go to the end of the tunnel, and the women would be handing their phone numbers to the ball boy, or Magic would have seen somebody that he liked. ‘Bring her in, and bring her in.’ The women were just ridiculous.”
This phenomenon, of course, wasn’t exclusive to Johnson or the Lakers. The modern professional athlete in all major sports has discovered that physical prowess, fame, and fortune attract large numbers of women.
Joe McDonnell: “I could tell you Dodger stories for a year and tomorrow about stuff going on down in little rooms at the club house before the games. It’s prevalent in all sports. In baseball, it can happen during a game. In basketball, it always happens after a game.”
One longtime NBA coach went so far as to suggest that the reason the Lakers had become the NBA’s dominant team over the years was the women.
“That’s why the best players wanted to play there because of all the women,” he said. It’s not the first time that a connection between the two has been made.
J.A. Adande, L.A. Times: “How come the Clippers aren’t great then?”
Such a theory deserves to be met with skepticism. Still, there’s no denying the Lakers’ lusty history has shaped how middle America perceives Hollywood’s team.
Rick Telander, Chicago Sun-Times: “I don’t think it’s a coincidence that Magic Johnson ran into his trouble being in L.A.”
Mike Monroe, San Antonio Express News sports columnist: “You know what Laker mystique is? It’s an owner whose daughter has appeared nude in Playboy.”
Steve Bullpet, Boston Herald sportswriter: “Celtic mystique is, you know, championships and black sneakers and the parquet floor. Laker mystique is Jerry West and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Magic Johnson and women with boob jobs lining the front row. Their history of success follows the whole idea of the West Coast lifestyle.”
The Laker image itself soon translated into expectations.
Ron Carter, former Laker: “When we were in college and our teams played each other in the NCAA tournament, Norm Nixon and I went out after the game. And we couldn’t get a date. Couldn’t get in a club. Two years later we were laughing because two women were fighting in a nightclub over Norm one night. I said, ‘Norm, what happened?’ He said, ‘You know, Ron. It’s an amazing thing, but when you sign a Laker contract you become awfully good looking.’”
Doug Krikorian, longtime L.A. sportswriter: “Even back in ‘68 and ‘69, we’d get off the bus and go in the hotel lobby, and there’d be a bunch of women in there looking at (Laker guard) Johnny Egan, who was a straight Catholic boy who would never play around on his wife, straight as a string. Even then these guys would be besieged with women.”
Nixon and Carter came to the Lakers in the late seventies when the climate around the team had been stewing for more than a decade. The sixties may have unleashed the sexual revolution, but the seventies turned it into a fest, especially for the Lakers, which left the team’s front office struggling to deal with blatant sexual frivolity.
Pete Newell, former Laker GM: “We were reluctant to get involved, although we were all appalled by the women who just flaunted themselves. The players just kind of passed these gals around. There was no deterrence about AIDS and sex in those days. The players just didn’t have as much to lose.”
As Lakers GM, Newell even retained off-duty LAPD vice officers to keep track of Lakers players and the company they kept.
Ron Carter: “The women were very aggressive. Very aggressive. We were very promiscuous. That was the pre-AIDS era. The big thing then was herpes. You might contract herpes. Other than that, unprotected sex was very, very common. We were coming right off of the free love era.”
Looking back on the times in his 1990 book, “A View From Above,” Chamberlain claimed to have slept with better than 20,000 women during his career. His claim was designed to sell copies of his book, but Chamberlain very quickly came to regret it.
Rick Telander: “Wilt’s was a body of work that transcended L.A., but he probably did 80 percent of his work right there in L.A., yeah, under the big retractable roof in the circular bed or whatever he had.”
Kelly Tripucka, former NBA player: “Thank you, Wilt. We can all tip our hat to Wilt. He paved the way, not only on the court, but off the court as well. It was a 10-lane highway for Wilt.”
Part of the reason for Chamberlain’s regret was that he felt his claim led people to view him differently. Suddenly his off-court activities overshadowed his real accomplishments. However, there was another reason as well. Some of his associates doubted his claims.
Doug Krikorian: “Complete hyperbole. Trust me. I spent many a Saturday night where Wilt would call me and say, ‘Let’s go out and have dinner together.’ He was the worst guy I’ve ever seen trying to hustle women. I’m serious. That thing should be debunked. Trust me. I saw firsthand. Yes, he might have had his share of women, but as a slick hustler, please. No. I saw too many nights where he was alone. I was with him. There were nights he’d call me up. I was like his valet at times. I’m sure he had hookers come up to his room and stuff like that. He scored on some women, but as a regular Lothario? I know bartenders that scored way more than Wilt. Please. He was playing basketball. How could a real guy be a Lothario? What did he say, 20,000? It’s ridiculous. It’s farcical. Why would he even claim that?”
Lou Hudson, former Laker: “I didn’t see that. That’s an exaggeration on Wilt’s part. That’s like one and a half to two people per day, every day. There are days you travel all day, days you play, days you spend time with your family. I do know some people who came close for maybe a year or a month, but you don’t do that for like 12 years, every year. Nobody does. If they do, they’ve got a problem. That’s beyond the realm of fun. That’s the realm of a nymphomaniac, the same for men as for women. If somebody does that, he has a sexual disorder. It just wasn’t that way. We did things, but not to that extent.”
Doug Krikorian: “There’s married Laker players who had a lot more sex than Wilt did. I don’t want to go further than that. There was one, I won’t name him, who made Wilt look like an amateur.”
While some observers have implied the scale of NBA sexual activity was related to ethnicity, that’s hardly the case. The women absolutely loved Jerry West, according to team sources from that era. And Gail Goodrich also enjoyed immense popularity as did other Caucasian players. Clearly the 70s presented an equal-opportunity environment.
Ron Carter recalled coming to the team in 1978 and being stunned by the veterans’ attitudes and sexual habits.
Ron Carter: “All the old school guys, these guys were like sex addicts. They were crazy with it. It was there and it was available. Actually, it was a part of the mentality that the veteran players would teach you how to manage the women. Kobe could have used some of that.”
Understandably, the circumstances made players from other teams eager to visit Los Angeles. Some observers said it was the Lakers’ true homecourt advantage.
Fred Carter, former NBA player: “The Forum was kicking in the seventies too. It was just a different time. The hype wasn’t there. But the feeling, the enthusiasm was still there. We had our East Coast clothes and our West Coast clothes. And when you’re married, all of a sudden your wife wonders, ‘Why are you wearing that out there?’ Some things you had to hide. You didn’t let your wife pack your clothes.”
Kelly Tripucka: “That was a big distraction for teams. You’re going out to L.A. and coaches worried about that. Not only is the weather warm, especially after the snow in Detroit and those other East Coast cities, you wonder if you’re going to have the guys there. But now you go in the game and you’re so hyped up to be into it and to play against Showtime, and you’re sitting over there looking at whoever may be walking by, and your head’s doing a little swivel. You know what? You’re not concentrating. You’re not into the game. You really had to have blinders on like those horses at the track across the street. As far as coaches, they really sweat it, playing the Lakers in that particular environment. Especially if you weren’t a very good team. That was just an automatic loss. If you didn’t have your team’s entire concentration for 48 minutes, you could get embarrassed out there.”
Likewise, the Lakers would go on the road and find the female populations of other cities more than eager to welcome them.
Ron Carter: “These women would come to the hotel. First of all, it always amazed me that they could figure out where we’re staying. But they’d be there when we got there. They’d have the team roster. ‘Can I speak to Magic Johnson?’ ‘I’m sorry, ma’am, that line is busy.’ ‘Can I speak to Kareem Abdul-Jabbar?’ ‘Sorry, that line is busy.’ ‘Can I speak to Jamaal Wilkes?’ They’re reading down the roster. They are there to get a Laker. I used to get down. I was the eleventh call. Every other guy would go in the room and take their phone off the hook, so it rings busy. I’d keep a phone on the hook. I’m waiting for the overflow. I know it’s coming, especially if we’re in New York or Philadelphia. I remember we were in Boston. I met a cute girl, and I was trying to get her to go out with me. I said, ‘Look, I’ll get you tickets to the game, and after the game we’re gonna be here overnight. You can stick around. We’ll go out.’ She said, ‘Well, I don’t know. Can you introduce me to Kareem?’ I asked the girl, ‘What you want to talk to him for?’ Actually, this is what I said to her. I said, ‘Give me your arm. Put it on the table. Is that what you want?’ She started laughing. I said, ‘Come over here with me.’ We went over to the house phone. I said, ‘If he’s busy, you’re gonna hang out with me.’ She said, ‘Okay, deal.’ I phoned him up and said, ‘Cap, you busy? I got a young lady who wants to hang out with you.’ He said, ‘I got company.’ I said, ‘Say hello and tell her you got company.’ I hand her the phone and he tells her he’s busy, so she hangs out with me. There are a million stories like that.”
The team’s sexuality quotient took a huge jump in 1979 when Jerry Buss bought the team. He wanted to revolutionize basketball marketing by dressing pretty young girls in skimpy outfits so that they could perform sexy dance routines during timeouts.
Joe McDonnell, longtime L.A. sports radio personality: “Jerry Buss, if you look, never did any marketing. His marketing was all on the floor. He used sex to sell the Lakers. Buss built them that way. He wanted the Laker girls and the uniforms and Showtime and having a guy like Magic with a great infectious personality as the main guy. Buss wanted to be that way. That’s where the Laker girls came from. Was it a novel idea to have cheerleaders? No. But to dress them like that and make them an important part? A very novel idea.”
Jerry Colangelo, former Phoenix Suns owner: “I remember when Jerry Buss came into the league. He was a newcomer to say the least without any background whatsoever in basketball. But he had his own M.O. He had his own style. He has made great contributions. He’s a very innovative guy from a marketing standpoint. He’s made great contributions to the game in Los Angeles and on a national scope as well. His record speaks for itself. Showtime worked well in the Los Angeles marketplace. It’s tough to say that would have been the same script in another market. Certainly it was the appropriate script in L.A. I think Jerry hit a grand slam.”

Roland Lazenby is the author of Jerry West, The Life And Legend Of A Basketball Icon, set to be released by ESPN Books Feb. 23.

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 30^th 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.