Those Original Lakers Won a Lot of Games--and Had Fun Doing It

They stayed in cheap hotels, ate in greasy spoons, shuffled cards all night and played a style of basketball that would be copied by other teams and come to be known as showtime.

They were the original L.A. Lakers, 1960-61.

Several of those original Lakers jumped back into our consciousness recently when they were called upon to comment on the Lakers’ dramatic victory over the Celtics. The overall impression I got from reading the quotes was that the old-timers thought it was great that the Lakers had finally beaten the Celtics, but the win didn’t really erase all those old losses to Boston.

It occurred to me that it’s too bad those old guys are best remembered for what they didn’t do. They should also be remembered for what they did do.

They introduced NBA basketball to the West Coast, won a lot of games, created an image and set a style that persists to this day, and had a lot of fun.

For the players, the move from Minneapolis was a grand adventure. The first two Lakers to head west were Rudy LaRusso and Hot Rod Hundley, who literally raced one another ‘cross country, Rudy in his Pontiac Bonneville and Hot Rod in his Olds convertible.

They stopped in Las Vegas, won $100 on one hand of blackjack, and celebrated by jumping into a motel swimming pool at five in the morning, wearing their suits and ties.

The Lakers featured a cast of characters you could build a movie around. The marquee name was Elgin Baylor, who played basketball the way other NBA players played in their dreams. Baylor brought the fans in, and kept the team tight, and loose. He gave out nicknames, organized card games, dispensed advice and spouted amazing true facts that he made up.

There was a quiet, nervous kid named Jerry West, who reported to the team right after helping the United States win an Olympic gold medal. West took a fast cut in status. He didn’t break into the Lakers’ starting lineup right away, and his rookie assignments included toting the team ball bag and fetching sandwiches for the card games.

West, a superstar in college, was most impressed with the intensity of play in the NBA, on and off the court. In the exhibition season that year, the Lakers and Celtics barnstormed through New England, playing 10 games in 13 days.

“I got my baptism,” West told me a few years ago. “We won two or three of the games. I remember the tempers were very short. I couldn’t believe the physical play. There were a lot of fights and near fights. It was not like college. It was a learning experience. You had to learn to stand your ground.”

It was a close-knit team. Coach Fred Schaus introduced a system of revolving roommates on the road, and for probably the first time in sports history, white players routinely roomed with black players.

The players usually ate dinner as a group, and they always played cards together, in planes and in hotel rooms.

“Many nights we’d stay up all night playing cards,” West said. “It was something I’d never done. The next day I’d feel like I’d been up two straight weeks, and they’d all be fresh.”

These were the days before the big money fell on the NBA. On the road, each player got $7 a day in meal money. Center Ray (The Count) Felix earned $9,000 one year, held out for $10,000, and finally settled for $9,000. The Sports Arena P.A. man, John Ramsey, made $5 a game. He asked Lou Mohs, Laker general manager then, for a raise to $10. Mohs said, “We’ll give you $7.50.”

The hotels had thin walls. During one all-night card game, Hundley was saying how if he was the coach, he would put Ray Felix into the lineup. The phone rang. It was Felix, calling from the next room to tell Hot Rod, “Hey, baby, thanks for starting me.”

Felix is the guy who reportedly said, after the Lakers had lost the final game to Boston in the ’62 playoffs, “Don’t worry, baby, we’ll get ‘em tomorrow.”

Felix denies that story, but it was the kind of thing he would do. Going up against Bill Russell one night, Felix had four straight shots blocked. Next time he got the ball, The Count faked, then tossed the ball over his head without looking, over the backboard, into the stands. He pointed at Russell and said, “You didn’t get that one, baby.”

Felix, tall and thin, once berated a reporter for describing him in print as gangly. He ordered the reporter out of the locker room, then turned to a teammate and asked, “What does gangly mean?”

In the playoffs that season, the Lakers scrambled for playing sites. They played the Pistons in the decisive game of the Western Division semifinals on stage at the Shrine Auditorium.

Baylor remembers seeing Piston center Walter Dukes leaping out of bounds and disappearing off the stage, out of sight. West remembers catching an elbow and then catching his two front teeth in his hand.

They lost to St. Louis in the Western Division finals.

But the Lakers found a home.