In his first season as head coach, West led the Lakers to the N.B.A.’s greatest document, 53-29, with Abdul-Jabbar because the league’s most beneficial participant, however they misplaced within the playoffs to the eventual champions, the Portland Path Blazers, led by Invoice Walton, who died final month. Two years later, Los Angeles as soon as once more misplaced to the eventual champs, the Seattle SuperSonics.
West’s won-lost document over three seasons as coach was 145-101 — a creditable résumé, particularly on condition that he’d had no earlier teaching expertise at any degree. However it was not a rewarding expertise.
Amongst different issues, he had been by two troubling incidents. In a single, Abdul-Jabbar broke his hand when he punched the opposing middle, Kent Benson of the Milwaukee Bucks, after Benson had elbowed him within the abdomen. A number of weeks later got here one of the stunning and upsetting episodes in league historical past: On Dec. 9, 1977, when an on-the-court melee broke out between the Lakers and the Houston Rockets, the Laker ahead Kermit Washington delivered a punch to the pinnacle of the Rockets’ Rudy Tomjanovich that almost killed him.
Changing into an Government
In a 2010 biography of West, Roland Lazenby wrote that “West is definite that expertise supersedes teaching within the enterprise of basketball,” and though Cooke bought the workforce after the 1979 season and the brand new proprietor, Jerry Buss, needed West to remain on, he didn’t look after being on the bench. West did, nonetheless, have an curiosity in participant analysis and in having an government position on the workforce, and in 1982, following a season that had introduced the Lakers, led by Abdul-Jabbar and Magic Johnson, their second championship in three years, Buss named him normal supervisor.
West was an lively workforce builder His draft picks included a number of gamers who turned Laker stalwarts: James Worthy (No. 1 general in 1982, forward of Dominique Wilkins), A.C. Inexperienced within the first spherical in 1985, and, to exchange Abdul-Jabbar, who retired after 20 years as the sport’s dominant participant, Vlade Divac within the first spherical in 1989.