Smooth as Silk Enterprises : Ex-Laker Star Jamaal Wilkes Has Taken His Transition Game From the Court to the Business World

The uniform used to be Lakers gold and purple, high-top sneakers and a large No. 52 on the jersey.

Now it’s business suits and ties and black leather shoes, but Jamaal Wilkes is still a straight shooter.

Wilkes hasn’t been seen on a National Basketball Assn. court since late 1985, when he cut short an attempted comeback with the Clippers.

And he hasn’t been seen with the court-side celebrities at the Forum, watching his old Laker teammates continue to win titles, since he left.

Instead, Wilkes has been trying to make his mark in the business world, commuting from his Playa del Rey home to his office in a high-rise in the mid-Wilshire District where he runs Smooth as Silk Enterprises.

Wilkes, the quiet assassin known as Silk for his sleek style on championship teams at UCLA, Golden State and the Lakers, now quietly shoots for business deals in an office that reflects none of his past athletic life.

Wilkes started Smooth as Silk while still playing, originally importing goods. After he retired, he returned to UCLA to take business courses, and Smooth as Silk now concentrates on setting up funding for mortgages and property deals. Wilkes’ new world has pushed his old career into the past to the extent that he says he didn’t even get the itch to call the Lakers last June when both Magic Johnson and Byron Scott went down with injuries in the playoffs.

“The reason I didn’t call the Lakers,” Wilkes said with a smile, “was I wouldn’t be able to help. It would probably take me six months to get back into shape.”

Still long, lean and a youthful-looking 36, the 6-foot-7 Wilkes looks like he could still suit up and shoot those trademark jumpers from behind his ear. In fact, some people think Wilkes is still a Laker.

“People come up and tell me, ‘You’ll get ‘em next year,’ ” he said with a laugh. But Wilkes has been so engrossed in his business that in the 3 1/2 years since retirement he has only occasionally touched a basketball.

“I went back to school. That was a trip,” Wilkes said over a light lunch. After taking a program though the UCLA business school, “I got involved in a shopping center development in Newport Beach and created some relationships. I started setting up my own operation with their help. Lately I’ve begun to focus most of my energies on my office.”

Wilkes heads what is basically a two-person operation, with some part-time help. In the business world, Wilkes is akin to a rookie feeling his way.

John Wooden, Wilkes’ coach when he came to prominence at UCLA, said it’s not a surprise that Wilkes is applying himself so diligently. “I would expect him to do well in anything he attempted,” Wooden said. “He makes the effort to do well and is intelligent. He wouldn’t go into something unless he felt qualified, or he would do what it took to get qualified.”

Wilkes said: “For a while, my learning curve was like the side of a mountain. Every day was like climbing a mountain. Now I’m getting more acclimated to it. I think I’ve made most of the major transitions.”

Basketball people talk about their transition game, and Wilkes discovered there were transitions to make after retirement. As a player, he hadn’t kept regular hours most of his adult life. He hadn’t had to worry about his weight. He hadn’t had to worry about being underfoot around the house, causing friction with his wife, Valerie. Suddenly, the everyday facts of life made for a real transition game.

“It was an adjustment to make a 6:30 or 7 a.m. appointment. It was an adjustment putting on a tie and jacket,” he said. “There was a point where I definitely felt like a fish out of water. Emotionally and physically, my body missed running up and down the floor.

“I missed those things I had become used to during the season. One thing I miss is having the luxury of exercising and getting paid for it. It’s a lot harder to get to the gym on your own time. I got away from it for about six months--I started getting a little gut. I said, ‘My ego can’t handle this,’ so I work out now two or three times a week.”

Wilkes said he shoots a basketball “once in a blue moon” but is starting to think about playing again on the recreational level. After spending the better part of two decades playing, he said, “I’d had my share” of basketball. “It was kind of nice to be able not to do it. I still love the sport. It’s nice to just be a fan.”

Despite his unassuming nature, the Santa Barbara native built one of the most impressive careers in basketball history. As Keith Wilkes, he played on undefeated national champion teams at UCLA in 1972 and ’73 and earned All-American honors as a senior in 1974. He then went on to win Rookie of the Year honors in his first NBA season in 1975, helping the Golden State Warriors win the NBA title.

After three seasons with the Warriors, he played out his option and signed with the Lakers, where he had his finest seasons. Wilkes made three NBA all-star appearances, was named to the all-defensive team twice and helped the Lakers win NBA titles in 1980, ’82 and ’85.

Loyola Marymount Coach Paul Westhead, who guided the Lakers for parts of three seasons, remembers Wilkes as “one of the quiet, great performers. If practice was at 10 a.m., he’d kind of show up out of nowhere about 10 seconds before 10, work like the dickens, then disappear again. But he didn’t disappear in games. He was a fierce competitor, the kind of guy who wanted the ball at the end (of the game), which to me is the sign of a guy who really wants to play.”

In an 11-year pro career, Wilkes scored 14,297 points to rank in the top 50 all-time scorers and averaged 18.2 points. He hit his stride with the Lakers, where his patented base-line jumper and great hands were a perfect complement for Magic Johnson’s no-look passes, and while wearing Forum gold-and-purple he averaged 18.4 points and shot 51.6%.

In a four-season stretch in 1979-83 he averaged more than 20 points while shooting 53%, with a premier season in 1980-81 when he scored 22.6 points per game. Perhaps even more impressive, in a five-year stretch starting in the 1978-79 season he missed only three games (out of 410) and twice led the Lakers in minutes played.

Wilkes was equally successful in building a personal reputation. Wooden once described him as the quintessential player on the court and gentleman off it. Wooden maintains that opinion today: “He was really a wonderful young man, one of the finest I had under my supervision. He’s bright, polite, courteous, all the admirable qualities. (His ego) never changed.”

Westhead characterized Wilkes as “always such a personable guy . . . always easy to get along with.”

Wilkes was rarely alone in the limelight, however. At UCLA he played in Bill Walton’s considerable shadow, Rick Barry was the star at Golden State, and Laker teammates Abdul-Jabbar and Johnson will someday have their own wing in the Hall of Fame. As if by script, Wilkes had perhaps his most memorable game in the 1980 championship clincher against Philadelphia, scoring a career-high 37 points--on the same night rookie Johnson started at center in place of the injured Abdul-Jabbar and scored 42 to steal the headlines.

Westhead said: “The thing I’ll always remember about Jamaal is in that last game in 1980. Magic started in Kareem’s spot and everybody talked about his 42 points. And rightfully, but Jamaal scored a silent 37. You wonder how a guy can score a silent 37, but that was always his style. People in the stands probably went home figuring he scored about 12 points.”

Injuries began to catch up with him in his last two seasons with the Lakers. At the end of the 1983-84 season he was slowed by an intestinal infection that limited him to spot duty in the playoffs, where the Lakers lost to the Celtics.

The next year, his last with the Lakers, he suffered a devastating knee injury that ended his season 40 games early. The Lakers went on to win the playoffs and beat the Celtics without him. With A. C. Green on the horizon, Wilkes became expendable at 32.

But after rehabilitating his knee, he wasn’t ready to end his career. So Wilkes signed with the cross-town Clippers but averaged only 5.8 points in a miserable 13-game stretch. Facing “living in that suitcase” for the Christmas holidays, playing hurt and suffering with a losing team for the first time in his career, he retired. This was one nice guy who was used to finishing first.

Joining the Clippers “was a risk I almost didn’t take,” he said. “But I had re-habbed my knee, so it was a situation of if I didn’t try again, I would always wonder.”

The Clippers were a lot of things, but wonderful wasn’t one of them. “It was such a nightmare,” he recalled. “It was like a self-destructing situation, it was like ‘Mission Impossible.’ . . . It was like they were gonna find a way (to lose). I was really having a series of (injury) problems. That’s when the (non-basketball) alternatives became more attractive.”

Wilkes considered playing in Europe but decided it was time to move on to another field.

“I felt blessed and fortunate to play all those winning years. When you get to the NBA, guys talk about winning a (championship) ring, and I had done all those things. I didn’t want to push it. I could still walk down the street without limping. There were more reasons to get out than to stay in it.”

Wilkes went back to school and kept up with basketball primarily via cable TV. He sees old teammates at social functions and charity affairs, otherwise they rarely cross paths. He may become more visible next season, he said, but is aware that he is no longer one of the boys.

It’s strange, he noted, to arrive at the Forum with the other paying customers and not put on a uniform. “Now it’s a whole different frame of reference,” he said.

Wilkes finds the same is true in the business world. Some people recognize him and are impressed. Some recognize him but aren’t fazed. “And some don’t recognize me and could care less.”

And someday soon, Wilkes said, it may even be time to strap on the high-tops again. “The longer I’m out, the more I think I could find a group of guys who aren’t looking to make a name for themselves and aren’t gonna kill each other. I sense I’m starting to gravitate back to wanting to play two or three times a week,” he said.

“Let’s face it, you can’t get a much better workout in a short time than a game of three-on-three.”