Paul Westhead’s Winning Ways : He’s Instilled a New Spirit on Loyola Marymount Campus

Five miles down the LAX glide path from the Forum, Paul Westhead, now the coach of Loyola Marymount, continues in a new career amid a rising decibel count.

The roar you hear isn’t the surf, or the jets. It’s Saturday night and there are 4,465 people in Loyola’s Gersten Pavilion, its largest crowd ever and 300 above listed capacity.

The student section is right behind Westhead’s bench. There are students in fake grass skirts with their chests painted gray and crimson, the school colors. Student are banging drums in his ears. They’re chanting “N-C-A-A!” or “Wah! Wah!” when Pepperdine’s Dwayne Polee complains about a foul.

The Lions are in the rare position of facing off for first place in the WCAC. So what if Pepperdine proceeds to tear their faces off?

Their team is 24 points down in the second half, and the Pepperdine students across the way are yelling, “LM-WHO?” but the Marymount students are just happy to be here. They’re still greeting made field goals by throwing rolls of toilet paper in the air. Ah, college basketball, the innocence, the excitement.

Westhead is asked later if he has enjoyed it.

“It’s been fine, up until tonight,” he says smiling.

And the biggest difference between this and the NBA?

Another smile. “You mean besides the salary?” he asks.

An almond tree grows again in Inglewood. That was how Westhead referred to himself on the last night of his Laker incarnation, the game at Salt Lake City after which Magic Johnson exploded and Westhead was asked why he never responded to the rising tide of player complaints.

“An almond tree bears its fruit in silence,” Westhead replied.

The next day, Jerry Buss cut the almond tree down. Westhead, still considered a hot young property, was transplanted in Chicago where they know something about cutting a coach off at the kneecaps.

The Bulls had just traded Artis Gilmore, had little else and fell apart quickly. Still, few of the deposed Bulls coaches failed on Westhead’s level. There was talk of a player mutiny, of Westhead being off the wall. After one season, the Bulls fired him and ate one $175,000 year on his contract.

Westhead: “I might have been naive, but I said, ‘Hey, they can not hang this season on me. I didn’t do all this.’ I thought that was clear and evident to all.

“I tried to jump right back. That was when it began to dawn on me that I was somehow a marked man. I was beginning to hear, ‘Sorry, he’s in a meeting, he’ll call you back’ and then they don’t call back. That’s when you know a whole new world has opened up.”

He applied for several college jobs but didn’t get any of them. He embarked on projects: writing an autobiography, becoming a TV announcer, coaching overseas. The holder of a master’s degree in English, he taught and coached a club basketball team at Marymount Palos Verdes College.

“Everyone has a list of things he’s always wanted to do,” Westhead says. “I wanted to run a marathon, write a book, learn how to play the piano. I started in on my list. I ran a marathon. I started to write a book.”

He laughs.

“If I get fired from another job, I’ll learn how to play the piano.”

After two years of looking, the Westheads were planning to move back east. That was when Jim Lynam, newly named as the Loyola Marymount coach, got an offer to become a 76er assistant. Westhead got Lynam’s old job--the day after Westhead had sold his house.

He was taking over a team that had gone 11-16 the year before, but it had two players considered pro prospects, guard Keith Smith and forward Forrest McKenzie.

They started 6-6, then won 10 in a row, prompting dreams of Marymount’s first NCAA bid, or its first NIT bid. Before the season, a 15-victory season would have been acceptable. The Lions are 16-7 with six games left, including the finale at Pepperdine.

In his Marymount office, somewhat surprisingly, are pictures recalling his Bulls and Lakers days: an old Sports Illustrated photo of the Laker starters sitting in a classroom, with Westhead outfitted as their teacher, in bow tie, wearing spectacles; a promotional banner the Bulls had done, with the team on the floor of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, over a headline that says, “We’re Bullish on Chicago.”

He sees the Lakers, themselves, when they come over to practice. He exchanges greetings with Magic and Buss whenever he sees them.

He and Jack McKinney were good friends until their relationship was strained when Buss fired the latter to retain the former. The friendship has been largely repaired. In McKinney’s last days with the Kings, he hired Westhead to scout.

Westhead now earns something in the $50,000 range, down from the $275,000 he made as Laker coach, or the $175,000 in Chicago.

But he’s not about to be released overnight, either. If you really want to know what he can do, just watch.

“One of the pluses in coaching, it’s ageless,” Westhead says. “Past experiences never tarnish or effect what you’re doing. So this season for me is like my first season, the challenges, the disappointments. Getting a university excited about its team has been an immense joy.

“It’s not how that matches up with winning a world championship or getting fired. I’ve often said that a season is like a lifetime. So it really doesn’t have any immediate bearing on any of my other lifetimes.

“I’m very pleased. It’s a good situation that I think can develop and become better. And much of how it goes will depend on me. I like being involved with that kind of growth.”

He speaks of it all, firings, accusations, all that time off to fill, without anger or pathos.

Does he feel as if he’s been through a hard time?

He pauses.

“I think I’ve been through a number of life experiences,” he says. “I’ve gone over some bridges that took me to some fun times.”

He laughs again.

“And I’ve gone over some bridges that blew up halfway across. So I’ve done it all.”