In his first season as head coach, West led the Lakers to the N.B.A.’s finest report, 53-29, with Abdul-Jabbar because the league’s most precious participant, however they misplaced within the playoffs to the eventual champions, the Portland Path Blazers, led by Invoice Walton, who died final month. Two years later, the Los Angeles as soon as once more misplaced to the eventual champs, the Seattle SuperSonics.
West’s won-lost report over three seasons as coach was 145-101 — a creditable résumé, particularly provided that he’d had no earlier teaching expertise at any degree. However it was not a rewarding expertise.
Amongst different issues, he had been by way of two troubling incidents. In a single, Abdul-Jabbar broke his hand when he punched the opposing heart, Kent Benson of the Milwaukee Bucks, after Benson had elbowed him within the abdomen. A number of weeks later got here one of the vital stunning and upsetting episodes in league historical past: On Dec. 9, 1977, when an on-the-court melee broke out between the Lakers and the Houston Rockets, the Laker ahead Kermit Washington delivered a punch to the pinnacle of the Rockets’ Rudy Tomjanovich that just about killed him.
Turning into an Government
In a 2010 biography of West, Roland Lazenby wrote that “West is for certain that expertise supersedes teaching within the enterprise of basketball,” and regardless that Cooke offered the crew after the 1979 season and the brand new proprietor, Jerry Buss, needed West to remain on, he didn’t look after being on the bench. West did, nonetheless, have an curiosity in participant analysis and in having an government function on the crew, and in 1982, following a season that had introduced the Lakers, led by Abdul-Jabbar and Magic Johnson, their second championship in three years, Buss named him common supervisor.
West was an energetic crew builder His draft picks included a number of gamers who grew to become Laker stalwarts: James Worthy (No. 1 total in 1982, forward of Dominque Wilkins), A.C. Inexperienced within the first spherical in 1985, and, to exchange Abdul-Jabbar, who retired after 20 years as the sport’s dominant participant, Vlade Divac within the first spherical in 1989.
