Westphal Rises Again in Phoenix as Coach at Grand Canyon College

It was just a single play in a basketball game 6 1/2 years ago. It took no more than five seconds to complete.

And yet it summed up two careers and perhaps launched a dynasty.

It was the spring of 1980. The Lakers, behind a rookie named Earvin Johnson, were trying to re-establish themselves as a National Basketball Assn. power.

Their first obstacle in the playoffs that season was the Phoenix Suns.

Game 3 of the best-of-five series was held in Phoenix’s Veterans’ Memorial Coliseum. The Suns, which lost the first two games at the Forum, had to win this one to get back into the series.

The Lakers led by three with two minutes to play. Johnson dribbled the ball up court, but had it slapped away. Walter Davis picked up the loose ball and threw a long, soft football pass to Phoenix guard Paul Westphal, who was waiting all alone like a wide open receiver at the other end of the court.

Westphal, with apparently plenty of time, let the ball bounce once before attempting the uncontested layup that would put his team just a point back.

Enter Johnson. From nowhere it seemed.

The Laker guard, angered at losing the ball, sprinted all the way down the court, arrived an instant after the ball did, snatched it right out from under the arm of a stunned Westphal, turned back up court and threw a no-look pass to waiting teammate Kareem Abdul-Jabbar at the other end. The Laker center wound up with a three-point play when he drew a foul while making a layup.

Game, series, season to the Lakers.

The Suns never recovered. Neither did the rest of the league. The Lakers went on to win the NBA title that season and the nation had its first glimpse of the magic Earvin Johnson would bring to the NBA playoffs.

But that Game 3 play was not only a microcosm of Johnson’s career, but Westphal’s as well.

Although possessing a great deal of shooting and ball-handling talent, Westphal always seemed to find stardom just beyond his grasp, kind of like that pass Walter Davis threw him so long ago. Just when it seemed Westphal was ready to reach the top, something seemed to sneak in and steal his chances away, sort of like Magic did.

Not that Westphal had a bad career. Far from it. After playing at Aviation High School in Redondo Beach where he was Southern Section Player of the Year in 1968, Westphal went on to USC, then to the Boston Celtics, who made him a first-round draft choice in 1972.

He spent three years there, playing on a championship team in the 1973-74 season, but he was the third guard there. It wasn’t until he was traded to the Suns that he became a starter, his scoring average zooming from 9.8 points per game to 20.5 as his playing time nearly doubled. Phoenix reached the NBA finals in Westphal’s first season there, but was beaten by his old teammates from Boston in a memorable series that included that unforgettable triple-overtime game.

Nevertheless, Westphal had established himself. In his five-year stay in Phoenix, he became one of the league’s premier guards, averaging over 20 points a game. Over a seven-season span, he missed just four games because of injury.

Not that there was a direct connection, but once Magic Johnson took that ball from him, Westphal never seemed to get it back. Following the 1979-80 season, he was traded to the Seattle Supersonics for guard Dennis Johnson, a trade that made headlines across the nation. Star guard for star guard. Who was better?

We’ll never know.

Westphal suffered a stress fracture in his right leg soon after arriving in Seattle and he was never the same again.

With two operations on his leg, he appeared in just 36 games in his only season in Seattle. He broke the leg again in the off-season. Westphal limped over to the New York Knicks as a free agent late the next season, played all of the following year in New York and was named the league’s Comeback Player of the Year.

The comeback didn’t last long. Before the start of the next season, the Knicks put him on waivers.

He finished up his 12-year NBA career back in Phoenix where he played in just 59 games and averaged seven points over the 1983-84 season.

At age 33, the five-time All-Pro was ready to look for a new line of work.

Paul Westphal is back in the Phoenix sunlight these days.

Two and a half years after taking his last shot at remaining an active player, he has found there is life after basketball.

In basketball.

He spent his first year of retirement playing golf, his second working as a volunteer coach at Southwestern Baptist Bible College, a tiny Phoenix school of just under 250 students.

When John Shumate left the head coaching job at Phoenix’s Grand Canyon College to become an assistant at Notre Dame, Westphal stepped right in and accepted the position last May.

He’s been working hard ever since, but he doesn’t really have a feel for the team he’ll take out on the floor tonight when Grand Canyon opens its season at home against Master’s College of Newhall.

“I don’t know who to compare them to,” Westphal admits. “We’ve lost several kids to ineligibility, but I don’t really know how good we are.”

Coaching isn’t something Westphal just grabbed to stay out of the unemployment lines. He had thought about it for a long time, patterning his own style after four men--Bill Westphal, Ken Brown, former UCLA coach John Wooden and former Celtic coach Red Auerbach.

“My brother Bill, who coaches at Occidental College, taught me everything I know about the game,” Westphal says. “Brown was my high school coach and, through him, I learned about Wooden. Even though I never played for Wooden, I went to his basketball camps and was recruited by him.

“Wooden and Auerbach taught me to respect players, that you can treat them as individuals and still be fair. You have to be fair, but not necessarily equal in the way you treat everybody. I remember what it was like to be a player. No player minds being coached. He just doesn’t want to be treated like an idiot.”

But can Westphal, used to performing in the spotlight, be satisfied at this NAIA school of 2,500 students, or does he dream of coaching at a higher level, perhaps the pros?

“I didn’t need the spotlight,” he says. “There just happened to be a spotlight where I was playing. I’m happy here right now, but I wouldn’t close any doors for the future.”

For now, Westphal is just content to learn the game at this level.

“You have to make adjustments,” he says, “but it’s still basketball. We’re doing some things. If you have a reason for everything, you can run a lot of different things.”

One area hasn’t changed. The guys in the striped shirts are still out there.

“My relationship with the referees,” Westphal says, “is the same as it was when I was a player--peaceful coexistence. If I was playing golf with one of them and they hit the ball into the woods, I’d make sure I went in there with them to look for it. It’s not that I don’t trust them. I just don’t like them.”

Although he is taking over a team that finished 19-8 last season, there is no complacency at Grand Canyon. The school, an NAIA independent and a winner of two NAIA national championships in the past decade, failed to make the playoffs last season for the first time in 16 years.

“I think I can offer a lot,” Westphal says. “I’ve seen how good it can be in this game at it’s best. And how bad it can be at its worst.”

And how quickly it can turn around. Just like magic.