McKinney’s Fateful Bike Ride : Coach’s Day Off Turns Into Downhill Tragedy

The night of Nov. 7, 1979, had not been the most pleasant for Jack McKinney. His Lakers had been blown out by the Golden State Warriors on the road, 126-109.

Still, there were plenty of positive things to talk about as he and assistant coach Paul Westhead stretched out in the midsection of a plane taking them on a late-night flight home.

The team was 9-4, Magic Johnson was starting to make believers of his doubters, most of the kinks had been worked out of a fast-break offense that was just starting to run on all cylinders, and besides, tomorrow was the club’s first full day off in the 1979-80 season, McKinney’s first.

By the time McKinney and Westhead reached McKinney’s car in an LAX parking lot, however, basketball had given way to a new topic--gasoline. It was a far more pressing matter at that moment, since the car’s gas gauge hung dangerously below the empty mark.

McKinney turned on the defroster and windshield wipers to gain visibility through the dew-laden front window, then began the drive home to the Palos Verdes Peninsula, a 15-mile trip south. Both he and Westhead peered through the windshield, trying to find an open service station. They finally settled for an all-night market-gas station near home.

By the time McKinney dropped Westhead off at his condominium, it was after 1 o’clock. Both men could think no farther than their warm beds.

When McKinney’s eyes popped open on Nov. 8, he sat straight up in bed and tried to brush away the cobwebs so he could remember what was on today’s agenda. For a moment, he was lost. Was he home? Was there a game? A practice? A shoot-around?

“Go back to sleep,” said his wife, Claire. “You’ve got a day off, remember?”

McKinney smiled and slipped back under the covers. Claire left in the family’s only car, bound for a morning class on personal relationships that she and Cassie Westhead, her close friend and Paul’s wife, were taking.

The next time McKinney’s eyes popped open, it was an hour later. The phone was ringing. He groaned as he reached over to pick up the receiver.

“Want to play some tennis?” asked the voice on the other end. It was Westhead.

McKinney grunted an affirmative.

“I’ve got the court for two hours. We can play singles at 10 and maybe some doubles with the girls at 11.”

“What time is it now?” McKinney asked.

“Nine-thirty.”

“OK, give me a chance to get some coffee and I’ll be over.”

McKinney took a quick shower, poured his coffee and then frowned as he unfolded a newspaper and glanced at the story about the previous night’s loss. He read it quickly, then put it down. “No basketball today,” he told himself.

He grabbed his racket and headed for the garage. He and Westhead tried to play tennis a couple of times a week, but it never seemed to work out that way. Basketball kept intruding. Today was going to be different.

“Damn,” McKinney muttered when he reached the garage. “How stupid can I be?” No car. “Of course not,” he thought. “Claire took it to class. I totally forgot. How in the heck am I supposed to get over there?”

The courts were in the condominium complex where Westhead lived, about a mile and a half away. “I could jog,” McKinney thought, looking out at the quiet street. He stood there for a minute, then crunched up his face in disapproval. “Nah,” he thought. “I’ll be too tired to play when I get there.”

Then he saw it, leaning unobtrusively against a wall in a corner of the garage. It was his son John’s bicycle, not something Jack would normally ride. But he certainly knew how, and there weren’t a lot of alternatives at the moment.

So he wheeled it out, shoved his racket into the bike’s rack and was off.

Day off or not, McKinney couldn’t totally put the Lakers out of his mind. As he navigated the residential streets, clear of all but a few cars on this quiet Thursday morning, he ran through a mental checklist of things to be done at tomorrow’s practice.

Even on this day off, he couldn’t stop coaching altogether, and why should he? He loved every minute of it. He was 44 and living a dream. This team was about to get hot. Good things were about to happen. He could just feel it.

McKinney reached a long, steep hill, and started down. Waiting in his car at an intersection at the bottom of the hill, Robert N.S. Clark watched the bike rider.

“He was not speeding, as I remember,” Clark later said. “He seemed to be going at a moderate speed, then he slowed down even more and looked at the corner. My impression was that he put his brakes on and something happened then.”

What happened was that something seemed to lock as McKinney attempted to brake for the final run to the bottom. The bike came to a sudden, jarring halt, but McKinney kept going, straight over the handlebars to the asphalt beyond.

His hands, which had been tightly gripping the handlebars, remained locked in position an instant too long. McKinney couldn’t use them to cushion his fall. Nor was he wearing a helmet. He hit the pavement head first, his arms, finally free, trailing underneath. He bounced with a sickening thud and slid on his stomach for another 12 . . . 15 . . . 18 feet before stopping.

A pool of blood formed under his head.

The only sound was the soft whirring of the wheels of the shattered bike as they slowly spun to a halt.