Golden Days Read online

  Praise for GOLDEN DAYS

  “[Jack] McCallum holds legitimate claim for being the greatest NBA writer of all time—he wrote for Sports Illustrated for several decades, and his Dream Team (2012) is a chronicle of the souls of every basketball player you’ve ever cared about—and this book, typically, is full of juicy anecdotes and wagging fun….The Warriors are a team of big ideas, big achievements and big personalities….You can’t go wrong doing a deep-dive into its story.”

  —The Wall Street Journal

  “[Jack McCallum is] a great chronicler of the NBA game….The 1971–72 season was an odd one…and even more odd is how little has actually been written about that team, compared with some of the other historically great NBA single-season squads….McCallum is great this way, unearthing gems, such as [Jerry] West’s intense dislike for the late Lakers owner Jack Kent Cooke…and the behind-the-scenes management role played by the team’s legendary play-by-play radio man, Chick Hearn….Nearing 80, West still has something to give a team desperate to win on the biggest stage. McCallum shows why that is.”

  —DAVID ALDRIDGE, NBA.com

  “With his classic eye for detail and deadpan wit, Jack McCallum connects two of the greatest teams in sports history through the endlessly fascinating persona of Jerry West. McCallum manages to unearth new details about some of the giants of the game, while shining a light on overlooked figures such as Elgin Baylor, delivering an original, fascinating, and breezy read.”

  —ZACH LOWE, senior writer, ESPN

  “I spent some of the 2016–17 season working as a consultant for the Golden State Warriors, but even I didn’t know every detail of how this championship team came together. Golden Days breaks that all down and shows how the Warriors have revolutionized basketball.”

  —STEVE NASH, two-time MVP

  “I had the pleasure of playing with, coaching with, and coaching for Jerry West, one of the great influences in the history of the NBA. Jack McCallum’s Golden Days gets at the essence of the man as a player and an executive, while also exploring today’s game through the Golden State Warriors.”

  —PAT RILEY, president, Miami Heat

  Praise for DREAM TEAM

  “The absolute definitive work on the subject, a perfectly wonderful once-you-pick-it-up-you-won’t-be-able-to-put-it-down book.”

  —The Boston Globe

  “An Olympic hoops dream.”

  —Newsday

  “What makes this volume a must-read for nostalgic hoopsters are the robust portraits of the outsize personalities of the participants, all of whom were remarkably open with McCallum, both then and now.”

  —Booklist (starred review)

  “One of the best basketball books you’ll ever read.”

  —The New York Post

  “A great read for basketball junkies.”

  —Los Angeles Times

  “[A] stellar retrospective.”

  —The New York Times

  “The Dream Team was one of a kind, and so is this fascinating account of the best basketball team of all time. Jack McCallum, the consummate basketball insider, lures you into the back rooms, living rooms, and locker rooms of this volatile group of superstars with revealing, colorful anecdotes that will make you laugh, cheer, and gasp. This is a terrific read by an all-star journalist.”

  —JACKIE MACMULLAN, New York Times bestselling co-author of When the Game Was Ours

  “Perfect book, perfect subject, perfect writer. Dream Team is one of the best sports books I have ever read—a riveting inside look at a once-in-a-lifetime squad at a once-in-a-lifetime moment in time. Jack McCallum has pieced together a masterpiece.”

  —JEFF PEARLMAN, New York Times bestselling author of Sweetness and Boys Will Be Boys

  “Jack McCallum is one of my favorite writers on the NBA. If Jack writes it, even if I know the story, I want to read it. He reflects the best of his longtime residence in the glory days of Sports Illustrated: You can see the event, but you still want to know what the reporter has to say about it. Dream Team is a wonderful look back at what will live on not only as one of the NBA’s great times but as a summary of its golden era. Jack beautifully blends what happened then with where-are-they-now? anecdotes, taking you behind the locker-room door with the greatest names of their era. This is such a wonderful read, you can’t help but smiling.”

  —SAM SMITH, New York Times bestselling author of The Jordan Rules

  Copyright © 2017, 2018 by Jack McCallum

  All rights reserved.

  Published in the United States by Ballantine Books, an imprint of Random House, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.

  BALLANTINE and the HOUSE colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.

  Originally published in hardcover in a slightly different form in the United States by Ballantine Books, an imprint of Random House, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, in 2017.

  Poem on this page courtesy of Tom Meschery.

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

  Names: McCallum, Jack, author.

  Title: Golden days: West’s Lakers, Steph’s Warriors, and the California dreamers who reinvented basketball / Jack McCallum.

  Description: First edition. | New York: Ballantine Books, 2018.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2017038872| ISBN 9780399179099 (paperback: alk. paper) | ISBN 9780399179082 (ebook)

  Subjects: LCSH: Golden State Warriors (Basketball team)—History. | Los Angeles Lakers (Baseketball team)—History. | West, Jerry, 1938- | Basketball—California—History. | BISAC: SPORTS & RECREATION / Basketball. | SPORTS & RECREATION / History. | SOCIAL SCIENCE / Popular Culture.

  Classification: LCC GV885.52.G64 M35 2017 | DDC 796.323/6409794—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/​2017038872

  Ebook ISBN 9780399179082

  randomhousebooks.com

  Book design by Caroline Cunningham, adapted for ebook

  Cover design: David G. Stevenson

  Cover photograph: © Kyle Terada/USA Today Sports (Stephen Curry), © Manny Rubio/USA Today Sports (Jerry West)

  v5.3.2

  ep

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Epigraph

  Prologue: West Agonistes

  Chapter 1: Uncertain Start to the Revolution

  Chapter 2: The Terrific Tandem of West and Baylor

  Chapter 3: Shopping in the Hamptons

  Chapter 4: 1969: A Summer of Discontent

  Chapter 5: Curry’s Unhappy Draft Day

  Chapter 6: Fame and Glory but No Ring

  Chapter 7: When Peter Met Joe

  Chapter 8: Elegant Elgin Exits

  Chapter 9: The Logo Signs On

  Chapter 10: And a Celtic (?) Shall Lead Them

  Chapter 11: Steph Stays, Fans Fret

  Chapter 12: The Immortal Streak

  Chapter 13: Kerr: Light Touch, Heavy Influence

  Chapter 14: A Loss at Last; Wilt Throws a Bash for the Ages

  Chapter 15: Gaining a Record but Losing a Title

  Chapter 16: Championship Brings West Only Muted Joy

  Chapter 17: A Season Not on the Brink Exactly, But…

  Chapter 18: Cooke Stirs the Wrong Pot

  Chapter 19: West and the Art of Talent Evaluation

  Chapter 20: A Championship and a Sad Goodbye

  Epilogue


  Photo Insert 1

  Photo Insert 2

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  Photograph Credits

  By Jack McCallum

  About the Author

  “These are the days of miracle and wonder.”

  —PAUL SIMON

  “The Lakers back then had a pretty good thing going. One night Elgin Baylor would kick the shit out of your team, and the next night Jerry West would kick the shit out of your team.”

  —PHIL JACKSON

  “When the Warriors play at their highest level they look like they’re playing a different sport.”

  —MIAMI HEAT COACH ERIK SPOELSTRA

  PROLOGUE

  West Agonistes

  The room is dark at sunset, though no darker than the mood. Jerry West, his wife, Karen, and a visitor are watching the Game 4 broadcast of the 2017 NBA Finals from Quicken Loans Arena in Cleveland on a large TV in the large living room of their large home in the Bel Air section of Los Angeles. So are five yapping dogs, a couple of which are in as bad a mood as Jerry. A long time ago when he was on a road trip with the Los Angeles Lakers, West was kept up all night by the incessant barking of dogs in his New York City hotel room. When he complained to the front desk he was told, “We’re sorry, Mr. West, but the dogs are our guests, too. They’re competing at the Westminster Dog Show.” Such was life in the NBA back then.

  “The dog who nips belongs to Ryan,” says Karen West. (The man who nips belongs to Karen.) The Wests’ oldest son dropped off his two dogs so he could take a yapless birthday trip to the desert.

  When Ryan, now the assistant general manager for the Lakers, turned six years old in 1985, thirty-two years ago to this day, his father was watching another Finals on TV. As Ryan’s birthday party went on, Jerry kept his eyes on his Lakers. To be accurate, he had been keeping his ears on them since his cable had gone out during the party. West preferred listening to Lakers announcer Chick Hearn anyway, so it was Hearn who brought him the joyful play-by-play during which L.A. beat the Celtics at Boston Garden in Game 6 to win the NBA championship. It remains among West’s top memories, perhaps the best memory, for it partially erased (emphasis on partially) the specter of so many defeats on that cursed parquet floor, defeats that scar his soul and, to his mind, define his career.

  During this 2017 broadcast, ABC flashes a graphic of Celtics immortal Bill Russell’s record in the Finals. It is 11-1, six of those victories having come in the sixties at the expense of West’s Lakers.

  “Jesus, what a record,” says West’s visitor impulsively. Wrong thing to say, the Celtics being West’s personal bête noire. West says nothing.

  The 1985 win was so singularly satisfying that one wonders if West regrets, even decades later, not being there to celebrate with the team he had assembled as general manager. For that matter, why isn’t he in Cleveland right now? He is just one day back from a quickie fishing trip to Alaska where rough conditions left the anglers salmon-less. So why didn’t West fly directly to Cleveland for Game 4? The Warriors, for whom at the moment he is a consultant, part owner, and member of the executive board, came into the game with a 3–0 series lead, the opportunity to become the first team to go through the playoffs undefeated and capture their second championship in three seasons. Why not be there to share the love, take a bow for a job well done, and spray some champagne?

  “Oh, hell, I never wanted to go on the road,” says West, squirming in his well-worn spot on the couch. “You feel like you’re a distraction when you’re around. There’s enough going on there that they don’t need me. The other thing is, when you’re in crowds you get so many people…look, some are very nice. I understand they want a picture, and I don’t like to say no. But my Gawd! So many. I enjoy being around people. But not that much.”

  “Dammit, Zaza, why would you foul him?” (Warriors center Zaza Pachulia commits a foul on LeBron James, who then finishes a three-point play.)

  When he’s out in public, a steady stream of cellphone-holding supplicants does indeed seek out the quite recognizable visage of West, who turned seventy-nine a few days before the Finals began. He’s one of those carved-in-granite legends, wide eyes, nine-times-broken nose, his sharp features settled in on themselves, a handsome man, his overall look less haunted than it once was. West does not go anywhere without being recognized, and he invariably complies for a photo, duct-taping a smile to his face as he hunches over to get his still-erect 6'3" frame into the shot. His hips and knees are fine even if his nose is not. “People think I’m a drug addict, I do so much sniffling,” says West. For the record, he is not.

  Over the years West did attend a few postseason games when he was a general manager, but not many and never during a championship series. “I went a few times,” says Karen, “even when he didn’t.” Pat Riley, a former teammate and fellow Lakers immortal with whom West shares so much NBA history, says there is another reason that he stays home. “Jerry thinks he brings his teams bad luck,” says Riley, president of the Miami Heat. “It’s from all those painful losses in the sixties.”

  “Steph, you gotta get up on him!” (Warriors guard Stephen Curry goes under, instead of fighting his way over, a screen, and J. R. Smith gets loose for a three-pointer.)

  As West watches at home, he is almost positive that he is a de facto ex-Warrior. There could be a saving phone call over the weekend, but it doesn’t look good. He is apparently heading for the Los Angeles Clippers, who are in the process of applying a full-court press on West. The Clips, who despite much promise over recent years have never made it to even a conference final, need West in the same way the Warriors needed him a half dozen years ago; in fact, his position as consultant would be almost identical to the one he holds at Golden State.

  But…West a Clipper? Over a decade ago he went to the Memphis Grizzlies, and, while he did a solid job, we kind of forgot that he was there. Then it took a couple of years to come to grips with the fact that West was a Warrior, which we came to understand only when Golden State got good; West is almost always associated with good.

  The Clippers obviously aren’t the joke they used to be under the ownership of Donald Sterling, but to have West back in Los Angeles and associated with any team besides the Lakers seems, at its mildest, strange. For forty years, beginning with his selection in the 1960 draft, West seemed like the eternal Mr. Laker. He played until early in the 1973–74 season, coached for three years, served as a scout, returned to the bench (under much confusion) as Pat Riley’s “offensive coach,” and finally found his way upstairs as the team’s general manager, where he became the greatest combination of player/general manager that has ever existed in sport. (Denver Broncos general manager John Elway is second.)

  West’s impact as a GM is felt even today. He is the bar, the paradigm, the (purple and) gold standard, the man who picked up major stars and bit pieces that provided the raw material for two distinct eras of Lakers brilliance: the piloted-by-Magic Showtime and the Shaq and Kobe Show. We still wonder how West did it, for talent scouting is one of the sports world’s dark arts. Do the best evaluators possess some unique powers of divination? Can they train their eagle eye on a player for five minutes, watch him zig when he should’ve zagged, and make a measured judgment? Can they stare into the beating heart of a player and conclude which one is a killer competitor, as West did with Kobe Bryant? Hard to say what makes one a seer and another a sucker, but over the years West has proven to be the former.

  All that history notwithstanding—L.A. made eleven Finals and won seven championships with teams that West assembled—it has been a wrenching ordeal to drift apart from Golden State, an organization that signed him in 2011 when it was looking for the kind of credibility that only West could provide. No one around the NBA believes it was mere coincidence that West was part of the management team when the Warriors rose from the ashes of an undistinguished pas
t. He had been a major part of the Golden State decision-making apparatus as the Warriors added pieces, both by the draft and free agency, to build a team that has become a model in pro sports.

  And that success, in effect, speaks largely to why West might be gone. Bob Myers was a general-manager-in-training when West came aboard, Curry was the only major piece then on the roster, and there was no sign that the Warriors would be anything but a fair-to-middling club. But by 2017 Myers had become a two-time NBA Executive of the Year, Curry had become a superstar, and the Warriors had become a smooth-running machine with its major parts (Curry, Kevin Durant, Draymond Green, Klay Thompson, and Andre Iguodala) all signed at least through the 2018–19 season. The Warriors seemed to be on automatic pilot and West’s handiwork would not be needed nearly as much as it had been.

  In light of that, primary owner Joe Lacob thought it justified to adjust his compensation downward. Exact figures are hard to come by because West’s salary was partly dictated by franchise evaluation and some monies were deferred to enable him to buy a small stake in the team—remember that “small” in this business means as much as $1 million—but the best estimate is that West was asked to take what one source called a “material” pay cut to about $1 million. The best guess on material is about 50 percent, meaning that West was making about $2 million. (Neither West nor Lacob would comment directly on dollar figures.)

  The apparent separation, however, has done nothing to diminish West’s feeling for the Warriors players, with whom he remains close. And it is killing him that they’re getting beaten so badly.

  “We just have no energy. Look at our body language. It’s whor-a-bull.” (The Warriors are behind 29–13 and slump off the court after a time-out.)