The Big Fill-In

It was obvious in the body language, the subdued manner.

The Lakers were boarding a plane at LAX that could take them to the peak of their glory, yet they acted as if they were marching off a cliff.

This was a team that had already endured the loss of its coach, Jack McKinney, because of a tragic accident, and the removal of one of its players, Spencer Haywood, because of his weird, disruptive behavior, which included fighting with teammates and falling asleep at practice.

Still, the Lakers had persevered and prospered, and now found themselves within 48 minutes of a championship heading into Game 6 of the 1980 NBA finals.

That game would be played the next day--May 16, 1980--in Philadelphia, with the Lakers leading the 76ers in the best-of-seven series, 3-2.

But the excitement had been drained away by the distressing news the Lakers had received that Thursday morning: Center Kareem Abdul-Jabbar would not be making the trip. Abdul-Jabbar had sprained his left ankle at the Forum in Game 5, and it had not improved overnight.

Losing the popular McKinney had made the players sad. Losing the troublesome Haywood had made them glad.

Losing Abdul-Jabbar, the team captain, evoked feelings of despair. This was a loss it seemed the Lakers could not bear. With the 7-foot-2 center sitting home with his ankle wrapped, who would guard the middle and effectively deal with the powerful Philadelphia front line of forward Julius Erving, the magnificent Dr. J, along with forward Caldwell Jones and center Darryl Dawkins, known as “the Gruesome Twosome.”

Magic Johnson remembers all too well his teammates’ reactions at the airport that morning.

“There were a lot of long faces,” said Johnson, now a highly successful businessman, Laker vice president and tireless advocate for numerous charities. “Not a lot of people thought we could win without the Big Fella. We started feeling sorry for ourselves. Our chances looked bleak.”

Even bleaker than they knew. The general feeling was that the Lakers would go to Philadelphia and do the best they could, knowing full well they still had Game 7 back home. Hopefully, Abdul-Jabbar would be able to make it onto the court for that one.

But Paul Westhead, the Lakers’ interim coach in McKinney’s absence, had received a call before he left for the airport from Robert Kerlan, the Laker team physician. There was no way Abdul-Jabbar would be ready for Game 7 either, Kerlan had said.

Westhead didn’t share that information. Indeed, it hasn’t been made public until now. Westhead saw no reason to make a bad situation worse.

Little did he know that his team was about to usher in a decade of unparalleled Laker dominance and unprecedented NBA popularity. Heading into that game, prime time was still off limits to the NBA, “Showtime” was still strictly an entertainment term and “winnin’ time” was not yet Johnson’s mantra.

But then, little could Westhead have known when he was coaching at LaSalle in 1979 that, a year later, he would be coaching a team heading for an NBA title.

For that, he could thank his best friend, Jack McKinney.

The Coach

Brought in to coach the Lakers for the 1979-80 season under new owner Jerry Buss, McKinney knew the key to his success. He had to combine Abdul-Jabbar’s inside game with the running style of rookie Johnson and fellow guard Norm Nixon.

McKinney knew his plan would work when Abdul-Jabbar uttered the two words McKinney had been hoping to hear: “I’ll run.”

But just as the Lakers were beginning to kick into high gear under McKinney’s system, a system that would form the basis of the Laker attack of the ‘80s, McKinney himself was gone, suddenly and dramatically.

With the season only 13 games old, McKinney and Westhead, whom McKinney had hired as his assistant, had plans to play tennis on a rare day off.

But when McKinney entered the garage in his Palos Verdes home, he realized his wife, Claire, had taken the car. So, he hopped on his son John’s bicycle and took off for the courts a mile and a half away.

He made it only as far as a steep hill, where he lost control, flew over the handlebars and, without the benefit of a helmet, landed headfirst on the pavement, a pool of blood forming under his head.

McKinney, after hovering briefly near death, faced a long recuperation.

Westhead took over as interim coach. The former Shakespeare professor referred to himself as “the substitute teacher.”

But with the Lakers on a roll and McKinney’s recovery agonizingly slow, Westhead remained at the head of the class.

Buss realized how far McKinney still had to go when he saw his coach at a game at the Forum late in the season.

“Jack, how are you? How ya feeling?” Buss asked McKinney, who had come as a spectator.

McKinney walked by without acknowledging Buss. He hadn’t recognized the Laker owner.

After Game 2 of the finals, McKinney learned that he had been fired and Westhead had been given his job.

The Magic Man

On Laker flights, Abdul-Jabbar always took the same seat--the bulkhead on the left side.

As the Lakers boarded their DC-10 that Thursday morning, Johnson was determined to snap them out of their funk.

“I had to do something to get them going,” he said.

So he marched up the aisle and symbolically took Abdul-Jabbar’s seat.

“Never fear,” he told his teammates, “E.J. is here.”

Yes, Johnson was coming off a season in which he had led Michigan State to the NCAA championship. But that was college and this was the pros. He was 20 years old with only two years of college ball on his resume, only average leaping ability and a mediocre jump shot.

But there was nothing mediocre about his spirit, his competitiveness, his inventiveness on the court and his ability to adjust until he found a way to come out on top.

Brad Holland, now the basketball coach at the University of San Diego, was also a rookie on that 1979-80 team.

“Magic won the team over with his enthusiasm, starting in training camp,” Holland said. “He even won Kareem over. Magic was special. He had an amazing impact. He was one of those people who just had a gift.

“From the beginning of training camp, he tried to win every drill, every three-on-three, every four-on-four, every five-on-five. He was out to win. Not necessarily to score, but to win.”

Said Michael Cooper, now starting his first season as coach of the WNBA Sparks, “We figured, since he had just come from winning an NCAA championship, he must know something.”

Taking all that into consideration, Westhead and Johnson talked about a bold move: Johnson would not only take Abdul-Jabbar’s seat on the plane, but his place on the court as well.

Magic Johnson, point guard, would handle the opening tipoff and then play center, at least on defense.

“I can do that,” Johnson told Westhead. “I did it some in high school.”

And that had been only three seasons earlier.

“Everybody is talking about Game 7,” Johnson told his teammates in the locker room. “We’ve forgotten about Game 6. But we can win if we believe. All the pressure is on them because everyone has written us off.”

Johnson laughs now when he remembers the doubts he saw on the faces of the other Lakers.

“Everybody, was looking at me like, ‘Puhleez, you are 6-8 and 220. Do you really think you can handle Darryl Dawkins?’ ”

The Game

As the teams came out for the opening tipoff, forward Jim Chones said to Westhead, “Do you want me to go in and jump center, Coach?”

“He still didn’t get it,” said Westhead, who is seeking basketball employment after losing his job as an assistant with the Golden State Warriors earlier this season, fired along with P.J. Carlesimo.

The 76ers didn’t get it, either. The Philadelphia media had been on an Abdul-Jabbar watch for two days, refusing to believe he wouldn’t show up. The 76ers had prepared themselves for a last-minute arrival by the big center.

Instead, out came Johnson for the tipoff.

And, a few moments later, he took the ball in the low post and launched a hook shot, Abdul-Jabbar’s favorite weapon.

“I had never seen him shoot that shot before,” Buss said.

It wasn’t only the shot, but the mannerisms that raised eyebrows. Johnson had transformed himself into a smaller version of the Big Fella.

“From a distance, you might think it was Kareem,” Westhead said.

The 76ers certainly knew it wasn’t, but they didn’t know quite what to make of Johnson. He was playing a new position, point center-forward-guard. As the center, he was playing defense. As a forward, he was crashing the boards. As a guard, he was handling the ball.

As a leader, he was stimulating. Other key figures as the game moved on were:

* Holland in the second quarter. He thought it was only fitting that he was in a Laker uniform on this memorable night for Los Angeles, his hometown.

Holland, who’d played for Crescenta Valley High and UCLA before being a first-round pick by the Lakers, had played in the first game at the Forum opening in 1967--as a fifth-grader in a kids’ game played before the Lakers took the court for their first appearance at the Inglewood arena.

But Holland grew up fast on May 16, 1980. Given additional playing time because Johnson was occupied in the frontcourt, the rarely used Holland responded with eight points in nine minutes, six of them late in the quarter to enable the Lakers to tie the score, 60-60, heading into halftime.

* Forward Jamaal Wilkes in the third quarter. Wilkes was nicknamed “Silk” because of his smoothness on the court, because of his soft, sure touch with the ball. With that ball cocked behind his right ear, Wilkes would fire away with deadly accuracy from 20 feet out.

He was so accurate, announcer Chick Hearn referred to Wilkes’ shot as “a 20-foot layup.”

Westhead said Wilkes’ release was like “snow falling off a bamboo leaf.”

On that night in Philadelphia, the 76ers got hit with a blizzard. Wilkes scored a career-high 37 points, 16 in the crucial third quarter.

“People talk about my game that night,” Johnson said. “What about Silk? He was sensational.”

* Cooper in the fourth quarter. Known for his defensive skills, Cooper ran into a defensive force that nearly knocked him out.

Dawkins, nicknamed “Chocolate Thunder,” was a 6-11, 251-pound force in the middle for Philadelphia. When he saw Cooper driving the lane early in the fourth quarter, Dawkins hit him with thunder and lightning, extending a powerful forearm to Cooper’s throat.

The 6-6, 170-pound Cooper hit the floor as if he’d been shot. He had two free throws coming, but first, he had to get up.

“It was the toughest hit I have ever taken,” said Cooper, who went on to play in the league for a dozen years. “And after he hit me, he stepped on my stomach.”

The next thing Cooper knew, trainer Jack Curran was bending over him.

“Do you know where you are?” Curran asked.

“I’m home,” the glassy-eyed Cooper said.

If it had been a fight, they would have stopped it. But there was no stopping these Lakers.

Cooper got up on unsteady feet for the two free throws the Lakers desperately needed in a still-close game.

“To this day, I don’t remember anything about the first one,” Cooper said.

No matter, he made it, and the second as well, and finished the night as the team’s third-leading scorer with 16 points.

* Nixon, also in the fourth quarter. Playing despite a dislocated and badly swollen left ring finger--he had missed nine of 10 shots--Nixon was, nevertheless, able to steal an Erving pass and feed off for a big basket near the end of the game.

A 20-6 Laker run put the game away after Philadelphia had closed the gap to two with five minutes to play.

There were other clutch performances. Chones had 10 rebounds, as did Mark Landsberger, as did Wilkes, who wasn’t known for his board work.

And through it all, there was Johnson. He finished with a stat line for the ages: 42 points, 14 of 14 from the free throw line, 15 rebounds, seven assists and three steals while, at various times, playing every position on the floor.

With a little over a minute to play, Westhead turned to his assistant coach, Pat Riley, and said in genuine amazement, “We’re going to win this. I can’t believe it.”

Up in the seats, Buss wasn’t ready to acknowledge the moment.

“When Chick puts it in the refrigerator, I’m always several minutes behind,” Buss said. “I’m very conservative.”

But finally, even Buss had to let go of his anxiety.

The buzzer sounded.

Lakers 123, 76ers 107.

The Celebration

As Cooper and Johnson embraced on the floor, Cooper allowed himself an instant to think of the man who wasn’t there.

“I thought of Jack McKinney,” he said. “He started it all, but he didn’t get a chance to see it through. He made that team. He let everybody know what it was all about from the beginning.”

McKinney hadn’t even watched the Lakers win on television. Instead, he chose to go to the movies that night.

For a long while, a deep chasm separated the McKinney and Westhead families, which had been so close before the accident.

“They can’t share our joys,” Cassie Westhead, Paul’s wife, said at the time, “and we can’t share their sorrows.”

In the locker room, Holland turned around and found himself face to face with a legend, Erving, who had come by to congratulate the winners.

“I didn’t really know him,” Holland said. “He was a superstar and I was just a punk rookie. But I thought, ‘Wow! Dr. J just congratulated me.’ That’s when I knew we had won.”

Erving also made his way over to Johnson, who had visited Erving when he was trying to decide if he should leave college early.

“Here you are, just a kid beating me in the finals, after I hosted you at my house,” the gracious Erving said with a smile.

Back at the hotel, Johnson called his first fan, Earvin Johnson Sr., and sat on the phone with his father for more than two hours.

“I wasn’t even old enough to go to a club,” Johnson said. “My father and I were both so excited, we couldn’t believe it. The year before, we had watched the finals on television together. Now, I had won it, his son had won it.”

Westhead, who had come from Philadelphia, went out with family and friends to an all-night diner, a Philly tradition, and feasted on a local delicacy, scrapple--scraps of meat and eggs.

The taste of victory, though, had an edge to it.

“It was bittersweet because Jack wasn’t there,” Westhead said.

On the plane ride home the next morning, a reporter said to Johnson, “You played center, you played forward, you played guard. You could probably write our stories for us too.”

Responded Johnson: “I know I could do that.”

And who could argue?

One of the NBA’s greatest games was seen on tape-delay at 11:30 that night everywhere in the country except L.A. and Philadelphia. That was soon going to change, largely because of Johnson and his archrival in Boston, Larry Bird, and largely because of games like Game 6.

“The crescendo of excitement had been growing for so long over the weeks before that game,” Buss said. “Then, boom, it was over. Silence.

“I have never been so lonely in my life. I didn’t know what to do with myself. I tried reading a book, I tried going to the movies, but nothing worked. There had been so much excitement that the Lakers had become my entire life. I couldn’t take a breath without thinking about them.

“Then, all of a sudden, you are back to a normal life. It took a long time to adjust.”

Twenty years later, the excitement might have faded, but for those who were part of Magic’s magic, the memories are evergreen.