Pfund Is Instinctive Choice of Lakers : Pro basketball: Assistant to Riley and Dunleavy has a special quality, West says.

If Jerry West wanted someone with stars in his eyes, he came to the right place.

During the summer of 1977, Randy Pfund, a 25-year-old high school teacher in the Chicago suburbs, yearning to be a basketball coach, quit his job, withdrew his pension money and moved to Santa Barbara to become an unpaid volunteer assistant at Westmont College.

The same summer, he knocked on the door of Bill Bertka, the Laker assistant coach who also ran a scouting service, introduced himself and asked for work.

In the ensuing 15 years, Pfund impressed Bertka, who recommended him to Pat Riley, who brought him to the Lakers, where he impressed West, who on Monday chose him to succeed Mike Dunleavy as Laker coach.

“I live my life by my instincts,” West said, hiring his third assistant in three head coaching searches. “This business, an awful lot of it is instinctive.

“Randy coaches our summer league team, and there’s something about the way people react on the bench that really appeals to me. Randy has a great court demeanor. He understands this game. Somewhere along the way, some person has to get a chance to coach a basketball team.”

Pfund says he was close to getting a chance to coach the Sacramento Kings--”I think we were heading in that direction,” he said--when the Laker job suddenly opened.

Dunleavy told the Lakers May 11 he was leaving.

That same day, Kansas Coach Roy Williams said, West called him to discuss the Laker job. Williams said they discussed money, which he called “fantastic.”

Williams said he was close to being offered the job. West denies it.

Tuesday, the Lakers held a news conference to announce Dunleavy’s departure.

Wednesday, West took Pfund to San Diego to have dinner with owner Jerry Buss.

Thursday, Williams says, he called back and took himself out of the running.

That seems to have ended the selection process. Pfund’s contract was drafted during the weekend and agreement was reached by Sunday. No terms were announced.

This was Pfund’s second application to coach the Lakers. He applied to succeed the departing Riley in 1990, but West had long had his eye on Dunleavy.

Thus Pfund began learning the pitfalls of ambition.

“The first time I interviewed with Pat Riley, he told me what kind of a guy he wanted,” Pfund said. “He wanted someone who hadn’t been with another team, someone who he could bring into this organization and teach how to coach and become a Laker. He said, ‘I want someone who doesn’t have any scars.’

“And when that decision was made (to hire Dunleavy), I had my first NBA scar.”

Pfund swallowed his disappointment, though, and Dunleavy kept Riley’s staff intact.

A year later, with Riley having taken the Knick job with the intention of making his top assistant the highest-paid in the NBA, Pfund was surprised when West offered him a huge raise to keep him.

Pfund was further surprised to find himself turning Riley down.

“I really thought a year ago that I would be going to New York,” Pfund said. “Pat provided me with a great opportunity. It was a really nice offer and one I really expected that I would take.”

Asking around, however, Pfund found his name still seemed to be on teams’ lists of prospective coaches. The Knicks were then going through the Patrick Ewing crisis, with Ewing vowing he would never return. So, when the Lakers increased Pfund’s salary to more than $100,000, he decided to stay.

Pfund will retain present assistants Bertka and Jim Eyen, minimizing the transition from Dunleavy.

To promote Laker continuity, Pfund wants to hire Michael Cooper as the third assistant. Cooper was set to come aboard a year ago when the Lakers believed they would lose Pfund to theKnicks.

Pfund says he wants to install a “ ‘90s-style” offense, although he doesn’t want to spell out exactly what that means.

“The ‘80s were Showtime,” Pfund said. “And we’re past that. We’ve got to develop a different style. We certainly want to play at a faster pace, if that’s at all possible with the team we have.

“I think our team showed great heart and surprised the people in Los Angeles, last year making the finals, this year getting into the playoffs. But I think one thing that has to be addressed is our inside play. We have slipped in the rebounding department almost to the point of embarrassment. We need to have a tougher inside game.”

PFUND’S EDUCATION: It began with his father, the coach, and continued with Laker assistant Bill Bertka. C2

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