Bertka: Riley’s Other Assist Leader : Top Laker Assistant Carries Title of AOAT--Administrator of All Things--Given by Coach He Serves, and With Whom He Argues

Bill Bertka, running late for practice, cannot find his bag anywhere in his hotel suite across from the Forum. He walks quickly from the bedroom to the living room and back, his neurons doing calisthenics. He mutters aloud, as if the bag will flap its handles and identify itself.

How Bertka, long-time Laker assistant coach, can possibly find anything as ordinary as a blue bag here is a mystery. The place, Bertka’s in-season residence, actually is tidy and arranged orderly, but the sheer accumulation of memorabilia gives it a cluttered look.

There are black-and-white photographs from Bertka’s days as a high-school and junior college coach, shots of him beside Pete Maravich during the infancy of the New Orleans (now Utah) Jazz, plaques and certificates from Bertka’s tenure as director of parks and recreation for the city of Santa Barbara.

Most prominently on display, though, are Laker treasures. A signed poster of Magic Johnson, calling Bertka his second father, is in the entryway. A signed copy of the box score of the game in which Kareem Abdul-Jabbar set the NBA scoring record hangs over the kitchenette. A cardboard cut-out of Pat Riley’s head, about three times normal size, smiles at Bertka from behind a potted plant. Riley’s eyes seemed to follow Bertka around the room, a reminder not to be late for practice.

The elusive bag finally found, Bertka calms to his usual state of perpetual frenzy and goes to work.

Although 62 and Riley’s top assistant for 10 seasons, Bertka remains as excited, excitable and useful in his job as ever. Riley used to call Bertka the consummate assistant coach. Now, he has decreed Bertka the AOAT, the Administrator of All Things.

His duties range from his work with unpolished Yugoslav rookie Vlade Divac and other Laker big men to making sure the bus leaves on time for games; from developing and maintaining detailed statistical analyses of Laker players and league trends to checking on timeouts remaining; from working on the fitness of Laker reserves to checking the air pressure of the game ball before opening tip-off.

Bertka can easily be overlooked on the Laker bench. He does not wear custom-made Armani suits. Only every other hair is in place. Riley is said to resemble any number of leading men, but Bertka, with his wire-rimmed glasses, cleft chin and twangy voice, could pass for television journalist Bill Moyers.

Bertka chews gum and chews out officials with equal fervor, yet rarely leaves his seat. He mostly keeps his head buried in a clipboard on his lap, charting the action. When he walks to the scorer’s table to check timeouts, which he does about three times a game, Bertka’s gait is purposeful.

“Nobody works harder or loves the game more than Bill,” said Bill Sharman, the former Laker president. “He has continuously done a very thorough and professional job . . . and I feel they are very fortunate to have him.”

Bertka is as sharp as the crease in Riley’s pants. He is one accessory Riley cannot be seen on court without. He has yet to go out of style. Yet, to label Bertka a subordinate to Riley would not be entirely accurate. Riley may be Bertka’s boss, but not his superior.

“I compare Bill’s position to the Chief of Staff for the President,” said Brendan Suhr, Chuck Daly’s top assistant with the Detroit Pistons. “If Bill does his job, the President looks good. And that’s all that matters. Bill has the best assistant’s job in the league, and he does it better than anybody.”

A basketball coach since 1951, Bertka guided Hancock College in Santa Maria, Calif., to the state junior college title in 1957. He was head coach at Kent State, his alma mater, for three seasons, director of player personnel and chief scout for the Lakers in the late 1960s and early ‘70s.

Later, he became general manager and, later still, assistant coach, with the Jazz, both in New Orleans and Utah.

And for the last 18 years, Bertka’s wife, Solveig, has run, out of the couple’s Santa Barbara home, a college scouting service, Bertka Views, that Bertka originated nearly 30 years ago.

Yet, Bertka’s loyalties, as well as the dominant wall space at his hotel suite, remain with the Lakers. The man breathes basketball. His dedication to the sport and to the Lakers is woven tightly into his identity. Bertka, essentially, has given up a normal home life to help coach the Lakers. Bertka tried commuting to Santa Barbara after joining Riley’s staff during the 1981-82 season. But he soon grew weary of the ride and stopped commuting after falling asleep at the wheel and narrowly missing an accident.

Bertka now lives an elevator ride and 342 steps from his courtside seat at the Forum. His commute takes him about three minutes, depending on whether he jaywalks across 190th Street or uses the crosswalk.

Bertka has found permanence in transience and has turned his 10th-floor suite into something of a shrine, joking that, someday, he will find a place for all his stuff by opening a sports bar. Photographs cover every wall: Bertka and family on a Laker victory float, Bertka and team in the Oval Office, Bertka and Riley in tuxedos, Bertka with Jerry West, with Sharman, with Frank Layden, even with Wes Matthews.

Wicker baskets on the floor overflow with newspaper sports sections featuring Laker stories, some five or eight years old. He saved the final edition of the Herald Examiner, but “I still haven’t gotten around to reading it yet.”

Basketball magazines are tossed on a coffee table and back issues of House and Garden and underlined newspaper accounts of a water shortage in Santa Barbara are spread on his dining room table--important because Bertka’s Santa Barbara home is surrounded by 53 acres of land.

Bertka has three television sets. Two are in the bedroom, so he can edit and copy videotape of opponents for Riley. The other is in the living room, so Bertka can get away and watch videotape of opponents in another atmosphere.

He has an ironing board in the bathroom, a small refrigerator and a microwave oven.

And now that the NCAA tournament is over, Bertka also has Solveig around. The place is home.

Solveig and Bill are accustomed to basketball-enforced separations. Bill has, essentially, lived on the road since joining the Jazz in 1974. Solveig, training as a legal secretary, has her own career, running Bertka Views. She said she long ago accepted the burdens of being a coach’s wife.

“If I didn’t have the business, it would be hard,” she said. “But Bill and I are used to it.”

They were married, 33 years ago this summer, on a recruiting trip to the Midwest. Bertka, then coaching at Hancock, wanted a 7-foot center from Liberty, Ind., and he and Solveig drove there from California to sign him.

“We were in a pool room, waiting for the 7-foot kid to come back from farming, so we were just killing time,” Bertka said. “I remember asking someone if there was a justice of the peace in town. We were planning on getting married anyway, but we figured we’d get it out of the way.”

Bertka admits that there are hardships to his solitary in-season life but he has, over the years, developed a rapport with Airport Park Hotel employees.

When he sits down for breakfast in the coffee shop, the waitress does not bother with a menu. She merely asks if he wants the usual--two poached eggs and hash, buttered toast and a bottomless cup of coffee--then delivers it remarkably fast. She brings him the ketchup without being asked.

Bertka has kind words for all the employees, greeting the woman at the front desk by name. He waves and says hola to all the housekeepers. They let Bertka use the service elevator when the guest elevators are running slow.

One day, Bertka was running out to a 5 p.m. walk-through Riley had called before a 7:30 game. Bertka, on edge, punched the buttons for both the service and guest elevators. The service elevator arrived first, then deposited him in a musty storage room with white walls and exposed pipes. He weaved through a maze of hallways, found the door to the lobby and arrived at the Forum early, even before the pathologically punctual Riley.

Riley and Bertka are more than just colleagues. Riley jokingly says they sometimes act like an old married couple. They do tend to think alike, but they also have had disagreements.

Bertka, for instance, thought that Riley, in pre-1985 days, experimented too much with the offense. Riley listened, then experimented some more.

These days, Bertka says, Riley knows what works and what does not. Riley also has delegated more responsibility. Randy Pfund handles the defense, Bertka works with the big men and the offense, and Jim Eyan does the scouting.

“Bill is more than a sounding board for me,” Riley said. “He’s a damn good basketball coach and is perhaps my best friend. He and Randy are about the only people I see most during the season.

“Working with big men is Bert’s strength. He did some real research. He’s really helped Vlade. I don’t think Kareem would ever admit to this, but I think Bill helped Kareem improve his post game in his last five years. Kareem just needed somebody to drill him on the fundamentals, and he respected Bill.”

Bertka plays down his influence on Riley. He says Riley has his own coaching style and philosophy and seldom asks advice on major decisions. But Bertka has left a mark on Riley.

In 1982, Riley put in a 1-3-1 trapping defense that he thought was innovative. The next day, Bertka exhumed from his vast files a yellowed piece of paper with squiggly lines and familiar--to Riley--diagrams. It was Claire Bee’s 1-3-1 trapping defense. Bee had drawn it up for Bertka in 1951 when they were at a coaching seminar in New York City.

“What Bertka was telling me was that there’s nothing new, we all steal from each other,” Riley said.

Riley has generally been credited with ushering in the video age for NBA scouts back when he was Paul Westhead’s assistant in 1980. Truth is, Riley called Bertka in Utah and asked advice about the uses of videotape.

Riley was a Laker player in 1971-72 when Sharman and Bertka, then the team’s chief scout, put together films--16mm in those days--of opponents. Said Sharman: “One day (in 1971-72), I mentioned to (Bertka) that it seems like sometimes the players were getting a little tired and bored watching films and weren’t paying attention to details like I wanted them to. So, after some thought, Bill said he had an idea. . . . At our next film session, he turned off the lights and started the projector. After a few film clips, a beautiful pin-up girl would appear. What (Bertka) did was splice in some gorgeous girls in bikini suits every few minutes. Needless to say, the players sat up and paid attention.”

Laker players listen to Bertka now, even without visual stimulation.

“I’ve always felt the door is open with Bertka,” Michael Cooper said.

“Sometimes, we take Bertka for granted. One of the scariest moments of my career came when Bertka passed out in the playoffs (last spring). It was during that 29-point comeback, and I was sitting next to him. He got up to argue a call and Jake (O’Donnell, the official) ejected him. Bill fell to one knee and I was worried he had a heart attack.”

Bertka recovered from that fainting spell and did not miss a practice. But it reminded Bertka to try to calm himself even during the game’s most stressful situations.

Bertka also was told to find outlets to release the pressure and, on those moments he wants to get away, Bertka will slip on his headphones and walk for miles, listening to Johnny Ray or Johnny Mathis or Robert Goulet. Bertka says his favorite song, the one that always gets him thinking about his life, is “Sentimental Journey.”

When the guy at the job-placement agency for teachers in New York City shuffled through files and mentioned a rural boarding school in the foothills of coastal California, Bertka accepted it without pause. Midland School, in Los Olivos, tucked in the hills near Santa Barbara, was the only institution of higher or intermediate learning that met Bertka’s one requirement: that he be the head basketball coach.

One year out of college and firm in his resolve, Bertka packed his possessions in a car and drove from Ohio to California. It was 1952. He did not know what to expect. All the card said was that the job paid $1,800, plus room and board, and the obliging civil servant had called it the smallest high school imaginable.

“When I got to the school, I said, ‘Oh my gosh, what have I done?’ ” Bertka recalled. “The school had not had a basketball program. They had an outdoor court and, the first day of practice, nobody showed up. They were all playing soccer.”

So began Bertka’s coaching career. He recalls that cross-country trip fondly, though, because it was the first of three he made before finally settling in as Riley’s AOAT in 1981.

Bertka’s second such trip was in 1960, this time after having quit after several rough seasons at Kent State. Then, in 1981-82, Bertka returned to the West as a Jazz assistant coach and, on the day the Lakers met the Jazz, was lured away by Riley.

“California’s been good to me,” Bertka said. “My whole life, when I was coming out to Midland, was just to get to California.”

Bertka’s desire to be a head coach was not his only motivation for pulling up roots and leaving Ohio. He wanted a change of environment, new experiences.

He grew up in Akron, the son of Slovakian immigrants who worked at the rubber plants in town. Bertka spent much of his time playing basketball at the Akron YMCA and trying to avoid thinking about the predictable adolescence-high school-factory worker cycle of many Akron youth at that time.

“I can remember when I was in high school--this was in the ‘40s--they said to me, ‘You aren’t college material, so go on and get a job,’ ” Bertka said. “I said, ‘How do you know, I’m not college material?’ Because of our home conditions, we weren’t exposed to a lot of things, and you can’t develop until you get the opportunity.

“Like many young people back there, there was nothing I wanted more than to get away.”

He did. Bertka, even then, always did what he said he would. First, he spent a few years in Austria in the Army, then returned and went to Kent State, where he played basketball.

“I could shoot, but I couldn’t drive around a chair,” Bertka said.

After graduating with a double degree--in physical education and recreation--Bertka did a year’s apprenticeship as a high-school assistant, then went shopping for that head-coaching job.

“Bill always knew what he wanted, even when we were just kids,” said Rick Forzano, former coach of the Detroit Lions and a childhood friend of Bertka. “Like when we played ball at the Y, we always needed two balls--one for Bill and one for the rest of us because he always had to get his shots. Bill was very intense. He knew he was going to get out of the area and be a coach.”

In no time, Bertka had the students at Midland thinking and playing basketball. He built the program himself, coaching, sweeping the court, driving the bus to games.

In what spare time he had left, Bertka played for the Santa Maria Golden Dukes, a team in the old National Industrial Basketball League, which rivaled the NBA in those pre-television days. Teams were sponsored by companies and players would be in executive training programs. Bertka’s team, however, was sponsored by the city.

Bertka always had an eye for talent, and he knew his was limited as a player. He played for cash, while planning his advancement as a coach. Not long after Midland’s program was established, Bertka accepted an offer to coach Hancock Junior College. Again, there were no on-campus facilities. Bertka had to work almost from scratch again.

In three seasons, though, Bertka turned Hancock into a power. Recruiting players from Ohio, he assembled a team that won 41 consecutive games over two seasons and the state title in 1957.

“Bill was probably the most organized and disciplined coach I ever played for,” said Dick Hickox, who played for Hancock in 1957 and later became and All-American and then coach at the University of Miami in Florida.

“That Hancock team may not have been that good, individually, but Bill knew how to get us to play well together. He always had us prepared. He is one of those guys--I don’t know if you’d call him a fanatic--but he puts everything into his coaching.”

Bertka, married by this time, still had ambition. Offered the coaching job at his alma mater, Bertka relished the idea of returning home a success. He was 30 at the time. But after logging a 30-57 record in three years at Kent State, Bertka tired of the recruiting hassles, longed for California’s sunshine and was told by doctors that coaching might shorten his life.

In a prelude to last spring’s fainting spell, Bertka almost passed out on the bench during a Kent State game. His players called him Wild Willie, because of his tantrums and exhortations.

“He was like a Bobby Knight-type when I played for him at Hancock,” Hickox said. “He went crazy. One time, I kicked the ball out of bounds, he came rushing over and I told him, ‘Please don’t hit me.’

“Another time, two other starters and I missed a practice. When we got back for the game--this was during the 41-game winning streak--Bill was like a mad dog. He benched us for a couple games. We won, but they were close. He finally motioned for me and said, ‘Hickox, go to the side of the bleachers and bounce the ball against the wall for a while.’ After a while, he put me in. But I never missed another practice.”

Ed Pryor, a friend of Bertka who was one of the administrators of the Golden Dukes, said that Bertka sometimes walked off the court and behind the bleachers to get a drink of water during particularly tense moments.

Bertka’s practices at Kent State were legendary for planning and execution, not to mention sheer physical pain.

“His practices were really hard, but Bill was always positive and enthusiastic,” said Louis Mott, Kent State’s team manager during Bertka’s tenure and now a dentist in London, Ohio. “He had it all written out, to the exact moment. I remember I had to blow a whistle at the end of each segment. The players would be hurting by the end of practice.” Ultimately, Bertka’s approach to coaching drained him. For the first time in his life, he wanted out. So he resigned at Kent State and pointed his internal compass toward California again. The plan was to move to Santa Barbara, where Bertka still was known from his Hancock days, and became director of parks and recreation for a low-rise community that, in 1960, considered shuffleboard strenuous exercise.

“My dad died of a heart attack at age 59, and I had the same factors,” Bertka said. “I was a Type A personality, a big eater, a gregarious drinker, cigar smoker, those traits. Plus, I just got tired of it. I came to the conclusion that there were only two levels for true coaching--pros and high school. I threw everything I had in my car and decided to go to the place I thought was the nicest in the world.”

Friends in Ohio tried to dissuade Bertka, but he was going to California, this time to stay.

“I told him, ‘Bill, I always knew you were mentally unbalanced, but this proves it,’ ” Forzano recalled. “He was ready to go, though. I remember he got an old truck with about 90,000 miles on it, measured the bed of the truck, drew a schematic diagram of it in his garage, then fit every inch of furniture and belongings he and Solveig had into that truck. He sold off the rest. Everything. For Bill, going to California was his idea of crossing the U.S. in a covered wagon.”

Solveig Bertka was a working mother even before the label became popular. There she was, home with two daughters while her husband spent most of the year in New Orleans running an expansion NBA franchise called the Jazz. Solveig had plenty to do, though. She ran the family business. Somebody had to.

Since 1973, when Bertka left Santa Barbara’s parks-rec department to start a venture in sports management with friend and neighbor Sam Battisone, Solveig has run Bertka Views, an independent college basketball scouting service.

From October through March, Solveig fields requests from coaches unable to scout opponents. Bertka Views employs scouts throughout the country who will provide a detailed report, usually about 40 typed pages in length, within a day or two.

Most of the money the colleges pay, according to Bertka, goes to the scouts, but Bertka has consistently turned a modest profit each year. Even after the advent of cable television and saturation basketball coverage, and even after the NCAA passed a rule forbidding schools to pay someone to scout a specific team more than once a season, business thrives.

“Louisville, for instance, just sends us their schedule in October and says, scout them all,” Solveig said. “We’re still quite busy until the end of March. We do a lot with the women’s teams now.”

The scouting service, the only one of its kind, started in 1961 after the Bertkas relocated in Santa Barbara. It started small, Bertka simply wanting to keep ties to basketball. His parks-rec job kept him occupied, but it wasn’t enough.

In the early ‘60s, when he wasn’t scouting, Bertka introduced a variety of programs for Santa Barbara residents, long before the fitness craze hit the rest of the state.

Bertka is mostly a modest man, except when talking about those innovations.

“We encouraged businessmen to take a break at lunch and work out,” Bertka said. “We had senior citizens’ walking programs, seminars featuring leading cardiologists talking about the effects of exercise on longevity. We were the only city in the world to implement those things. People looked at us as exercise nuts back then.

“They invited me to speak at the World Congress of Parks and Recreation in 1967 in Brighton, England. I spoke on modern-day concepts in leisure time activities. That was the highlight of that phase of my life.”

But it was only a phase. Bertka’s passion for basketball endured. So, he began scouting games on the West Coast, mostly for college teams back East. Bertka would scout as many as 80 games a year.

The demand eventually became so great that Bertka hired a network of scouts. The wall of his den at home looked like a war room, with flags stuck on a map at strategic locations where scouts were matched with teams that needed to be scouted.

Among those who scouted for Bertka Views early in their careers are Pete Babcock, general manager of the Atlanta Hawks; the Pistons’ Suhr; Barry Hecker, a Clipper scout; Bob Kloppenburg, an assistant coach with the Seattle SuperSonics; Al Menendez, scout for the Indiana Pacers, and Pfund.

“Most of us in the league probably began our careers free-lancing for Bill and Solveig’s service at one time or the other,” Suhr said. “It affords you the opportunity to get experience and a little money and make contacts. The reports are as comprehensive as you can get. Bill was a pioneer-type with this service. He’d give colleges $1,000 worth of information for $75.”

Added Menendez: “I got my Ph.D. in basketball scouting under Bertka. His reports give you almost too much information. I mean, he and Solveig wanted it typed. That’s unheard of in scouting. What set Bill apart is that he covered every possible thing a coach would want.”

Until he became the Lakers’ chief scout and, later, director of player personnel in the early ‘70s, Bertka scouted games himself.

Houston commissioned him to scout UCLA before the first meeting of the teams in 1968. In his report, Bertka told then-Houston Coach Guy Lewis that there was no way the Cougars could beat the Bruins. Bertka wrote that the Bruins were “superhumans.”

Houston beat UCLA was injured--but Bertka still retained Houston as a client.

As successful as Bertka was, though, he longed to return to coaching. Twice, Bertka was in line to be Sharman’s assistant with the Lakers in the early ‘70s, but he lost out both times. Undaunted, Bertka and Battisone created Invest West Sports, which dabbled in the ill-fated World Football League and indoor track before landing an NBA expansion team in New Orleans in 1973-74.

First, Bertka was vice president of basketball operations. He showed skills as a negotiator. When the agent for Pete Maravich and Jazz vice president Barry Mendelson were locked in a contract dispute, Bertka took Maravich out to the parking lot and had him sign the contract on the hood of his car. Apparently, Bertka had coached against Maravich’s father, Press, and they were friends. It’s good to have contacts.

Then, after Mendelson took over in a front-office coup and later made the infamous Gail Goodrich deal that gave the Lakers the first-round draft pick that turned out to be Magic Johnson, Bertka became assistant to Coach Elgin Baylor. Battisone moved the franchise to Utah, then sold it, but Bertka stayed on as an assistant.

“The curves and bumps in that expansion road are tough, and I wouldn’t want to do it again,” Bertka said. “But I had a lifetime job with the Jazz. That’s the way Sam had worked it out. I could have stayed there forever.”

But, of course, he would not. California beckoned once more, and Bertka could not help but answer the call. When the Jazz flew to Los Angeles for a mid-season game, Sharman and Jerry West hired Bertka as Riley’s top assistant.

“There was nothing to think about,” Bertka said. “I took the job.”

Happy as Bertka is with his station in life, he is not without ambition. He still wants to be a head coach in the NBA, under the right circumstances. He said he has turned down four offers, three while an assistant with the Jazz and one since joining the Lakers.

“In the back of my mind, I’ve always wanted to test myself and be a head coach in the NBA before I hang ‘em up,” Bertka said. “It’d have to be the opportunity where you had a chance to succeed. So many teams don’t give you a fair chance. It’s, ‘Win now or you’re gone.’

“But this job, this team may spoil you for coaching anywhere else.”

The last few years, speculation has persisted that Riley will leave the Lakers. This season, rumor has it that Riley will consider a broadcasting offer from NBA for next season. Riley, himself, has said that, when Johnson retires, he’ll go, too. A speculative column in the National last month had Pfund the leading candidate for the Laker job. Bertka, it was implied, was too old and too valuable as an assistant to promote.

Even Riley has doubted Bertka’s desire to be a head coach.

“About once or twice a year, Bert looks at me and waves his hand and says, ‘You can have it--all the money, all the recognition. It ain’t worth all the anguish you go through,’ ” Riley said.

Bertka laughed at the retelling. He knows that if he were in charge, Wild Willie would be back.

“It’s not that I don’t lie and die with the games now ,” Bertka said. “But the fault for a loss is not going to be on the assistants. If I don’t get a (head coaching) job, that’s fine. I feel I have a mental happiness about how I look at life as opposed to the early ‘70s. I’m more content. I want to do this as long as I can. It’s all I’ve ever done.”

To punctuate his point, Bertka produced from his blue bag a sheet of paper with a convoluted, yet passionate, paragraph of prose. It is dated Jan. 20, 1958, and written for a basketball class Bertka taught at Kent State:

“Anyone who is sufficiently interested in the game to study, work develop his personality, teaching ability, belief in sportsmanship, ethics, and character in athletics . . . who feels a 24-hour day is too short; who thinks of basketball when he first awakes in the morning, while in the shower, shaving, eating breakfast, going to school, before and after classes, in the office during consultation with players, at lunch, before practice, while on the train . . . at a sports event where a pencil is borrowed, not to keep the score but to jot down a play, in a restaurant where tablecloth, envelopes, napkins, cuffs and menus are used for plays, at home where the all-time All-American ‘martyr,’ the wife, must approve this play, that rule . . . who intersperses a game of bridge with a dummy play all over the tally sheet and finally goes to bed with a pencil and pad at hand so his dreams can be recorded for the next practice--anyone who can do all this and then can hardly wait until the next morning to repeat the process, and love it, he can coach.”