The Hot Seat : Pfund Heard the Rumors at the End of Last Season, but Now He’s Hearing Complaints From Players

It was March of 1957 in Republican, conservative, upper-middle-class DuPage County outside Chicago, a time of celebration in the Pfund household. Lee, the father, had just coached Wheaton College’s basketball team to a 28-1 record and the national championship in what would become known as Division II. And, besides, baseball season would begin soon and it was hard to find a bigger Cub fan than his wife, Mibs.

The mail that came one day that month included a letter from a Wheaton graduate who had remained a big follower of Pfund’s program. The man who dropped the line was even something of a friend.

“Congratulations on a good season,” he wrote. “Hope you do better next season.”

Twenty-eight and one.

The coach’s son, the youngest of his three boys, thought back on that moment the other day and laughed.

“I’ve never forgotten that line,” Randy Pfund said. “That let me know early you can’t please everybody. There’s always somebody.”

*

In a city of millions, there are plenty of somebodies.

In Wheaton, Ill., in the 1950s, they wrote notes. In Los Angeles in 1993, where the coach’s youngest son has become the coach of the Lakers, they blanket the talk shows and write letters to the editor. Apparently nobody told him about the “KICK ME” sign on his back.

There was a time, as recently as the late 1970s, that Pfund never thought about coaching for a living. Then, after he got on Pat Riley’s staff in 1985, he never even dared to dream about being No. 1 on the Laker sideline. He was talking contract with the Sacramento Kings when Mike Dunleavy left unexpectedly for Milwaukee. Lee Pfund, who once had told Randy he would never get a good job until he got that masters degree in recreation, got a call in Wheaton that May day in 1992.

“I’m a few courses short,” the coach’s son said. “But I think I may have a decent job.”

Then came the tough part.

Keeping it.

Pfund spent the last part of the off-season and all of training camp planning on a team that would have Magic Johnson, only to have Johnson retire--for the second time--only four days before the opener. Sam Perkins was traded at the All-Star break, signaling the start of a rebuilding effort. Pfund faced signs of insurrection from some of the veterans, especially Byron Scott, and grumblings about an inconsistent rotation.

By the end of the regular season, there were strong rumors that he would be fired, then later others saying that the Lakers had contacted Kentucky’s Rick Pitino about taking over, although General Manager Jerry West denied that. Ultimately, the Lakers, who were expected to be swatted aside in the first round of the playoffs by Phoenix, took the Suns to overtime of the deciding Game 5 on the road before losing and rookie Coach Pfund survived in a season when bigger names in their first years with a team--Jerry Tarkanian and Doug Moe--did not.

“It was like walking through the woods at night and hearing noises,” said Atlanta Hawk assistant Dick Helm, who lived three doors from the Pfunds in Wheaton and coached Randy in high school. “You keep waiting for someone to jump out at you. I think that was the kind of shock he had.”

Amid the criticism and speculation, Pfund stood up to it all, never ducking the questions. He is as proud of that, of not even providing a moving target, as the fact that his Lakers won more close games, those decided by three points or fewer, than any other team.

He had a three-year contract, but the only thing that really bought him time among critics was the Phoenix series. Pfund was determined to make sure that was the only window he would need, that, as rookie players are better in their second season, so, too, the rookie coach would be.

“More than things relate to the games themselves, there are some things you learn about maybe being a little more forceful in terms of directions given, game plans or whatever,” Pfund said. “I think even more, I really learned what the coaching profession is all about. I think it’s about handling people. That’s at the forefront of everything you do and everybody you have to deal with--players, management, media, fans. I’m talking about the whole realm of coaching.

“I think I learned a little bit that you’re on an island by yourself as a coach and that nobody is ever going to worry about whether things are fair or whether things are right. People are going to deal with you from their point of view, and as a coach you can’t worry about that stuff. You have to proceed at a pace and at a direction you think is right.

“Most people would say when you go into coaching, ‘Man, I’m sure you know some X’s and O’s.’ You can’t have been around them 20 years as a coach, no matter what level, and not have some ideas. But are you really prepared for all the other things that go with it? And I think those are the areas I probably learned more about and that were probably a little more uncontrollable. I thought it was a little easier to control those variables. I’m not just talking about one or two writers or radio people who got on me, I’m talking about all the dealing with it.”

He went beyond self-analysis and into research. Knowing that the question of his capabilities would again arise, he looked back at the starts of coaches who won NBA titles and found there were many more from humble beginnings than there were like Riley. That was a comfort.

Pfund also asked a few people he respects to critique his work. “Be as frank with me as you can,” he told them. Laker consultant Bill Sharman, Orlando Magic Coach Brian Hill, Washington Bullet scout Jay Hillock and Helm responded.

Your team played hard, they said, giving him one of the best endorsements a coach can get.

But you also could have demanded more from the Lakers, became the most regular criticism.

“I think it’s a credit to Randy that he was open to that kind of feedback,” Helm said. “Searching for ways to get better was not a sign of a lack of confidence or inability, but more like, ‘What can I do better?’ ”

Pfund thought he was in a tough spot last season because his team was still made up largely of veterans who didn’t need the constant demands, but he knew the 1993-94 group would be different. Scott and A.C. Green were gone. George Lynch, Nick Van Exel and Doug Christie, back for his first full season, were here.

Pfund liked the idea of molding a team himself, a young coach with a young team, even if that meant both were learning on the fly. He even liked the symbolism of how his rookie season could set a tone for this season.

“Maybe that’s good for the young Laker team right now, to have a coach who has the ability to get knocked down and yet bounce back up and feel as though, ‘You can’t get to me,’ ” he said.

When the time came, he did, in fact, change. He was tougher, as promised, and the difference was apparent from the start. Owner Jerry Buss was in Honolulu for only a few training-camp workouts before he noted Pfund’s take-charge approach. It was equally obvious to the players and staff and has lasted through the first two months of the regular season.

“When you get experience, you are going to coach with confidence,” center Vlade Divac said. “If you can’t coach with confidence, you can’t coach in the NBA. And he’s got that confidence.”

Said longtime Laker assistant Bill Bertka, “I think he has a much clearer idea of what he wants to do now. Not that he didn’t last year, but he’s better. He’s been through a war already.”

And Pfund’s analysis?

“From an all-around standpoint, whether it’s been personnel, whether it’s been game plans, halftimes, I don’t think there’s any doubt I’m a little more assertive in those situations in stepping forward,” he said. “I think I feel it a little more with this team.”

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The talk shows were feasting on him before the season was a dozen games old, during the five-game losing streak that included the disaster of a finish against Chicago, that having followed one four-game losing streak and preceded another. Now the Lakers are 8-16, their worst start since 1966-67, and get Shaquille O’Neal, Houston and Seattle in three of the next four outings.

“Again, I think it’s that peripheral sort of pressure that’s always on this team, that they want more before they maybe can get it,” said Riley, a man who should know. “They’ve just got to be patient.”

The peripheral pressure might turn out to be the least of Pfund’s problems. Three prominent players--Christie, Anthony Peeler and James Worthy--have criticized the offense as being too restricting, and the Lakers, who have never averaged fewer than 100 points a game since coming to Los Angeles, are at 99.3. Buss, while conceding that the rebuilding process will bring some growing pains, has said he wants to make the playoffs.

Pfund pushes onward, often against the tide. As if he had just gone 28-1.

“I suppose if there’s anything last year should have taught me, it’s that there is not going to be much acceptance of anything other than people expecting more,” the coach’s son said. “But I don’t think you function well in this business if you coach looking over your back. I’m a young guy.

“I don’t want to be too philosophical here, but I’m going to be in the NBA a lot of years. Let’s face it, at some point in time it won’t be here, probably. But I don’t think that’s healthy coaching. You coach what you believe. Sure, you’re not immune to worrying about how you’re being analyzed, but you can’t coach from that standpoint. You’ve got to coach the game and let it fall where it does.”