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.

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.

And while we’re honoring Henderson, wouldn’t it be nice if Washington’s Central YMCA put a plaque on the wall to recognize his contributions to the game? The NBA should also do something.

You better scramble if you really care about Hot Potato, there are simply not a lot of copies of this treasure in print.

http://www.amazon.com/Hot-Potato-Washington-Basketball-Americas/dp/0813925568/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1267883153&sr=1-1

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

This blogging stuff is all brand new for all of us. And it’s changing every day as more and more websites and blogs come online giving more and more people power and voice, not just to write but to interpret things.

I spend months and months writing a book while I teach about 100 media writing students per semester. That doesn’t allow much time for blogging until my book is finished. Then I wade back into blogging and reporting, which is highly experimental these days.

We bloggers are on the edge of the world, the tip of the wave of thousands of years of human history.

The world of sports blogging is a rapidly changing and evolving thing. But it’s great fun to be a part of that.

My crazy work schedule leads to a strange pace here at lakernoise.com. I’m away intensely working on a book for months at time. Then I’m back. Lakernoise contributor and good friend Jorge Ribeiro has been able to help out by posting. And I look forward to his doing more, as well as more from any readers, regular or otherwise, who want to have their say.

Then there’s the online community. I can always count on certain sites, LA Times Lakers blog, FB&G, now Kurt Helin over at NBC’s pro basketball talk and the always reliable K brothers and Henry at Truehoop for an intelligent discussion of things. They and the many posters and readers are the heart of all the Lakers and pro hoops sites. They don’t always agree with what I write, but they take the time to read it and offer honest opinions.

Frankly, I love that sense of community and so do most of you.

And many of you have had opinions about my recent posting about LeBron James and the Lakers inner conflict on hoopshype.com. Frankly, it pissed off a lot of folks. Thanks, by the way, to those who took the time to defend me.

It was a gnarly story to write. There were two elements to the story: 1) LeBron’s quiet approach to the Lakers’ facilitators, 2) a more in-depth view of the conflict in Lakers ownership, management and coaching. I could have written about Jeanie and Phil and Jerry and Jim Buss at the top of the piece, but if I had put LeBron second I would have buried the lead. The big news is LeBron’s overture, and even if I had hidden that news down in my story, that’s what all the crazy websites of the sports world would have hyped.

Yet it’s all a subset of Phil Jackson. LeBron is a 25-year-old looking around at the major options in his life. Isn’t exactly thrilled with certain things about the Knicks and other options. Is a bit weary of Cleveland/Ohio where he’s lived all his life. He’s like Lloyd Dobler, really trying to figure out what he wants in life. Loves LA. The Lakers are cool, Phil is cool. Will Phil be available? That’s the option that LeBron finds very intriguing. He’s the most powerful person in the NBA besides David Stern and a few owners. He has the power of youth and talent.

In his world, the world of media and money and power, you very discreetly explore what you want.

But it’s upsetting to a lot of people that he would do that, and that I would report it.

The whole experience reminds me yet again how deeply people invest their emotions in their sports teams. Fans are insane about their teams. And that’s how it should be.

As for the intrigue of the Lakers, it’s a story that some want to know about. Others don’t.

In writing sports history, I am reminded every day that people, athletes and coaches and their agents, usually wait years to tell what really happened during a season.

My goal is not just to try to get the truth out about yesteryear. I also try to provide as much information as I can about what’s going on behind the scenes right now. It’s not always easy to get at that information, but I think it’s important to try.

I think fans have a right to know.

I also understand that such information can be jarring to fans and their teams.

But I like to emphasize what a lot of owners and commissioners and agents and certain fat cat players and coaches all too easily forget — it’s the fans who pay the bills, the fans who truly own the teams and the leagues.

And it’s the fans who have a right to know.

So I’ll continue to report stories and blogs just as I presented the LeBron James overture story.

If you like it or don’t like it, I trust you’ll let me know about it either way.

Peace,

RL

Roland Lazenby is the author of Jerry West, The Life And Legend Of A Basketball Icon, just 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.

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.

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.

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.

Tex Winter says there’s an easy answer to that question in the headlines. “Phil Jackson is a patient man,” he said appreciatively the other day. “He’s the most patient guy in the whole Lakers organization.”

Jackson’s going to need all that patience and more as he helps this talented young roster on its way. He’s having a heck of a year picking his way through some challenging options on the Lakers roster (of course a lot of coaches would like to have Jackson’s problem, scratching their heads and deciding who gets minutes among all the talent).

Patience is in short supply these days. And not just in Lakersville, where Winter notes that expectations have soared among fans, executives, owners and players and coaches themselves.

Although expectations for the Lakers have long since shot out of the atmosphere, Phil Jackson is one of those few coaches secure in his status (he goes for his 1,000 regular-season coaching win on Christmas day against the Celtics). It is worth pointing out, however, that even Jackson got fired in 2004 (and the writer of this blog has stated more than once that Jackson deserved to be fired in 2004, just as he was the perfect choice for rehiring in 2005).

Still, as Winter notes, these are dangerous times for NBA coaches.

“That’s why in the business of being a head coach the worst thing in the world that can happen to you is that expectations are too high and you disappoint fans,” Winter said. “A lot of head coaches have lost their jobs this year because of that.”

Of all the firings that bothered Winter, he pointed to the release of Reggie Theus as head coach of the Sacramento Kings. “I don’t think he had the real opportunity he needed to show what he could do,” Winter said of Theus. “But that’s the territory these days in the NBA. It’s easier to fire the coaches than it is to fire the players.”

In the NFL, player contracts allow for their release. Which raises an interesting question in the NBA, where contracts are guaranteed despite performance. If you could fire 10 players around the league, who would be on your walking list? Who would you put out in the cold for Christmas? And why?