October 28, 2024 • 38 mins
On this episode of Our American Stories, Paul Westhead, former coach of the L.A. Lakers, shares his life story with Lee.
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Speaker 1 (00:10):
This is Lee Habib and this is our American Stories,
and we tell stories about everything here on this show,
from the arts to sports, and from business to history
and everything in between, including your story. Send them to
our American Stories dot com. That's Ouramerican Stories dot com.
And right now we're sitting down with coach Paul Westead.
Westad has a great book out called The Speed Game,
(00:31):
and he has coached the LA Lakers, the Denver Nuggets,
Loyola Marymounts Epic men's basketball team, and the Oregon women's
basketball team. Paul, let's talk about the beginning. Talk about
your childhood a bit.
Speaker 2 (00:45):
I grew up in a row house in West Philadelphia
in the summer. In Philadelphia, it's sweltering hot, and no
one had air condition and initially no one even had TVs.
So there wasn't much relief that was going on living there.
But there were a lot of good things happening.
Speaker 1 (01:05):
You know.
Speaker 2 (01:05):
I grew up around you know, thirty forty boys and
girls right on my own street. We played all kinds
of creative games, step ball, for example. You had a
tennis ball, actually a rubber ball, not a tennis ball.
We wouldn't know what tennis was at that time, and
we'd hit the ball on the step and try and
(01:26):
hit the corner of the step and make it go
high and across the street, and if it got hit
on the roof of the opposite street, it was a
home run. So we played baseball off the steps. I
do recall if the ball went down the sewer, they
would get the smallest kid to drop them down the sewer,
which happened to be me head first and grabbed the
(01:49):
ball out of the muck. So what skilly was? You know?
It was a tough lifestyle, but for a young boy
growing up, it was very satisfying because you were surrounded
by young boys and girls doing the same thing as
you and figuring things out and being creative. I mean,
(02:12):
somebody put up a peach basket up in the telegraph
pole and we would go and shoot hoops there reading
in the middle of the street. And good news I
guess is there wasn't nearly as much traffic then, you know,
and it wasn't wasn't that question they were going to
sit home and watch TV or sit home and play
video games. That was out the wind that no one
even thought of that. I do remember one time on
(02:36):
the row house. A family down the street got a TV.
They were like the envy of the whole neighborhood, and
kids would go by different times during the day in
the early evening and stand outside their porch area and
gaze in to see, you know, some objects moving around
on the TV screen, and you know, we were in awe.
(02:57):
That wow. But that's the outside entertainment. Everything you did.
My life in West Philadelphia was because you and others
created it.
Speaker 1 (03:09):
Let's talk about your brother Pete. You write about him
a lot in your book. Tell us about him.
Speaker 2 (03:14):
Yeah, Well, my brother Pete was five years older than me,
and literally before I was born, he contracted what they
then called infantile paralysis now we call it polio. He
was in the hospital for weeks just to kind of
get stabilized, and then the doctors made a decision to
(03:34):
wait until he was a teenager to do major surgeries
to kind of reconstruct his shoulders and his legs so
that he could have an adult life. So from a
very young boy, my brother Pete was my sidekick. He
was my guide. So when we would play these street games,
(03:55):
he couldn't really participate because he didn't have the arms
and leg movement that he needed. But he was a
friend of all the neighborhood guys, so they allowed me
to take his place. He would hit the ball and
I would run, so we were a good combo. That's
how we got through and the plus that eventually worked
(04:18):
for me. The boys who were friends of my brother
were five years older than me. They all then accepted
me as like their little brother. So even as I
went through my life, a couple of them helped me
in my young career. One fellow, Jack Savage, helped me
get a scholarship to Saint Joseph because he was a
(04:39):
player on the team. Paul Bernardo helped me get a
job as a lifeguard. So they treated me kindly because
of my brother.
Speaker 1 (04:50):
In your book, you say that despite your brother's illness,
your mom never babied him.
Speaker 2 (04:55):
Talk about that she never treated him any She, you know,
allowed him to flourish at his own pace. She took
care of him, but I think she realized that much
of what was in front of him he had to
figure out and do himself, and he did. I can
remember one time we were in our row house and
(05:19):
we were in our bedroom. My brother and I were
in one bedroom. My parents were in the what you
would call the master bedroom, which was paper thin and
three feet apart. They were listening to the radio and
we would listen, you know, lying in bed, and we
were messing around, and my father said, hey, don't stop
(05:39):
messing around. I'm going to come in and get after you.
And we kept messing around. So here comes my father
into our bedroom. You know, I don't know what he's
going to try to get, but as he's coming in,
I'm taking off. So we're going around and kind of
a circle. I'm going from my bedroom to their bedroom
to my bedroom, and he trying to catch me. My
(06:01):
brother is lying in bed laughing. He knows that he's
not going to get spanked. He's kind of like protected.
So finally my mother grasps me and says, all right,
now leave them alone, meaning me. So she was my
protector and we quieted down and went to.
Speaker 1 (06:22):
Bed, and we're listening to Paul west Head, the former
Los Angeles Lakers coach. He coached Magic Johnson's first year
in the NBA. An epic time for the NBA. Actually,
as the NBA matured and became a real national professional
league again, and it had struggled through the nineteen seventies,
and he's on to talk about his life and his
(06:43):
book called The Speed Game and listening to west Head
describe life in the West Philly streets when he was young,
before video games, before Instagram, heck, before TV. I was
back when kids had to just make up their own
entertainment and go out on the streets unsupervised for hours
at a time. And it's sounding like such a good
(07:03):
thing just listening to it, and I think all of
us are wondering why did we used to live like that?
And hopefully at least some places we're going to try
and continue to live like that, because what a thing
for kids to be able to do hang around unsupervised
and just play for days at a time. When we
come back more with Paul WestEd his life and his
book The Speed Game. Here on our American Story Folks,
(07:31):
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(07:51):
to the donate button and help us keep the great
American stories coming. That's our American Stories dot Com. And
we returned to Our American Stories and our interview with
(08:13):
coach Paul west Ed, who coached the LA Lakers, the
Oregon Ducks women's basketball team, the Royola Marymounts men's basketball
team when it was one of the best in the country,
and he's written a book called The Speed Game. When
we last left off, Paul, you were talking about your
childhood in West Philly and that's West Philadelphia, your brother,
the row house you grew up in. Let's pick up there.
(08:35):
Talk about your high school career in basketball. You got
cut a lot, but that helped shape you. Talk about that.
Speaker 2 (08:42):
I got cut every year and I was a pretty
good player. I wasn't a great player, but I probably
could have made ninety percent of high school teams. But
West Catholic High School that I went to had twenty
six hundred boys and they were all aspiring leads. And
basketball in Philadelphia was the sport of choice. When I
(09:06):
went as a freshman, I was a pretty good player,
but you know, they were two hundred freshmen going after
the team like me, so I didn't make the team.
I didn't make the team as a sophomore. I still
remember they would make lists. You would go from eighty
people to sixty people to forty to twenty, and then
they'd finally picked the final twelve, and I many times
(09:30):
would make the top twenty, but then the last day
or two, my name would not be on the list.
So then I go into my senior year, and sure enough,
from junior year to senior year, I grew from like
five to two to six two. And my last year
I go after the team and now at least I
have the size to be a player. I get to
(09:52):
the last day and the coach, who hadn't talked to
me in three prior years, come over and say, you're
actually good enough to be on my team now, but
you're a senior and you don't have any experience, and
I have players who have been with me, so you're
good enough, but I'm not going to keep you on
(10:13):
the team. Thanks for your effort. So my high school
career came to a close. Even though I was good enough,
fast enough and tall, enough.
Speaker 1 (10:22):
Obviously, you move on from this, Paul, and you attend
college with the intention of becoming a teacher, but you
also want to coach, and you end up doing both.
After a setback, talk about all that, you.
Speaker 2 (10:34):
Know, it was spinning around on me. I think I've
mentioned in the past my grade point average as a
student was better than my points per game average as
a player. I really wasn't destined for the NBA or
any kind of professional team. So I actually got a
fellowship to Villanova University. They gave out the fellowship, say
(10:54):
you can get your master's degree, and I was my
major with English literature, and during that time I was
totally removed from basketball, and I felt very comfortable, you know.
I spent three four hours a day in the library
and consulting with different professors. I said, yeah, this is
going to be my life. I'm going to be a teacher.
(11:15):
And then at the end of my second year, I
looked for jobs and there was a teaching coaching position
at a local high school, Cheltenham High School, so I
applied for it. They interviewed me and they were very
impressed with my academic credentials. They said, yes, we can
hire you. Right now as an English teacher at Cheltenham High. However,
(11:38):
you want to be the basketball coach. We have an opening,
but you have no experience. Ultimately said you want to
be a teacher, you can and I turned them down.
I said no, I want to do both. So from
there I went to the University of Dayton. I had
five classes. I was an acting assistant professor, and all
of a sudden, the basket ball team head coach became
(12:02):
very ill. They only had one other assistant. His name
was Don Donaher, who was the freshman coach. He heard
I had played basketball, so he came to me and said,
could you help us out? I said sure, So I
became the freshman coach for that year and Donaher became
the acting head coach, and subsequent to that, Donnaher was
(12:23):
the head coach for the next twenty five years. As
that year comes to an end, I hear that the
Cheltenham High coaching position opened up again. So I get
in touch with them and I said, this is Paul
West had I interviewed last year and now I'm at
Dayton and they see my credentials as a freshman coach
(12:46):
and they say, yes, you can be our teacher and
coach at Cheltenham High. So how life changes in one
year that I then went back to Cheltenham and became
their basketball coach and English teacher for five years and
in some ways the happiest five years of my career.
Speaker 1 (13:07):
And around this time of coaching around Philadelphia, you end
up going to Puerto Rico, a trip that would eventually
change your life. Talk about that.
Speaker 2 (13:16):
I kind of stumbled into this. In your life, you
always need somebody to give you a helping hand or
give you a break. I became a college coach in
Philadelphia Saint Joseph's because Jack McKinney hired me as his
freshman coach. And then McKinney, during his coaching went down
to Puerto Rico to coach in the summer. One year,
(13:40):
he was to go back and he couldn't do it.
He had some other responsibilities. So he asked me if
I would go down and I did so. Once I
got down there and I saw the scene, I mean,
it was an incredible basketball league and the players were
just pure basketball players. Loved the game and they love
(14:01):
to play fast. So that was kind of my introduction
to the speed game. I saw a group of young
men coming down the court and shooting within four or
five seconds. They didn't they didn't run plays back in
the States. If you're a coach, if you're a college
coach and you're any good, you have ten different plays
(14:22):
and everybody has to work them and practice them and
pass the ball five, six, seven times before you take
a shot. Well, the Puerto Rican players say, well, let's
passing the ball. If I'm hoping, I'll shoot it, and
they were making them. Ironically, the more you pass the
ball and work to get a good shot, it puts
a very high priority on that shot and therefore it's
(14:45):
harder to make, whereas the fast break system of the
Puerto Rican style is, they didn't have a lot of
priority on the shot. They said, if I'm oping, I
shoot it, and if I missed, so what, I'll get
another shot and make that. These are the things that
got ingrained into my coaching background that led me to
become a fast break choke coach.
Speaker 1 (15:07):
And from there. You moved to Los Angeles at a
very interesting time, but you didn't start out as a coach.
Talk about that and talk about magic Johnson, Kareem Abdul
Jabbar This was a time that people really started to
pay attention to the LA Lakers. Talk about that and
how you became the head coach and your time in
(15:28):
Los Angeles.
Speaker 2 (15:29):
It was Jack McKinney. McKinney wasn't assistant with the Portland
Trailblazers under Jack Ramsey when Jerry Buss is the brand
new owner. Magic Johnson was just drafted and they hired
Jack McKinney to be their coach. And he calls me
and says, I'd like you to be my assistant. Do
you want to think it over? I said, yeah, I
just thought it over. I'll be there tomorrow. Started the season,
(15:53):
and then about ten games into the season, we had
a day off and Jack said, do you want to
play some tennis? I said sure, and I went to
the court and waited half an hour. He didn't show.
I waited an hour. He didn't show, and so I
just went home and just thought maybe something came up.
And his wife called hours later and said Jack has
(16:14):
not been around, and she searched and they opimately found
him in the hospital. He had a bicycle accident and
was seriously injured. And the next day we had a game,
so I went to the shoot around practice and people say, well,
why'd they pick you as the coach? Well, it was
either me or the trainer. That was the staff. I
(16:35):
remember Jerry Buss saying, yeah, you're in charge for tonight.
I knew I had to be because they couldn't find anyone.
In five hours. Miraculously we won the game for a
kind of fall away jump shout by Jamal Wilkes and
you know, out a little bit out of the fault.
I was the interim head coach of his team in
(16:56):
Los Angeles, the Lakers with Jermam and Magic.
Speaker 1 (17:00):
Can't make that up, folks. I mean getting to Los
Angeles starting and his assistant and the head coach gets hurt.
And by the way, that's the last thing he wanted.
He was real friends with Jack McKenny and it broke
his heart that that's how he got the job. But
he had a job to do. Jack had to get better.
Paul had to coach the team, and as he put it,
it was him or it was the trainer. And when
we come back, we're going to hear more from this
(17:21):
remarkable life story. From the streets of West Philly to
the Golden lights and big city lights, of Los Angeles
coaching well Magic and Kareem, two of the greatest of
all time and one of the greatest teams of all time.
What will happen next? How does he handle all this?
And in the end, how does this change his life?
More with Paul Westead his book The Speed Game. Here
(17:45):
on our American stories, and we continue with our American
(18:11):
stories and with Paul west Head's story. He's also the
author of a fantastic book, The Speed Game. If you're
a sports fan, pick it up. Heck, if you're not
a sports fan, pick it up. It's a heck of
a life story. When we last left off, Paul had
managed to become the head coach of the Los Angeles Lakers,
a position he really didn't expect to have. You were
(18:31):
just sort of thrown into the middle of things, Paul,
Did that make it any easier for you?
Speaker 2 (18:36):
Something? You know, when necessity is rate in front of you,
you almost have no choice. I had to coach the
game that night, and the next day they said, well,
we have another two games at home, we're going to
keep you and I just went literally from game to game.
So on the one hand, I was an experienced basketball coach,
(18:58):
I mean I knew the game, I didn't know the
pro game, and I didn't know all the ins and
outs of what professional players think about. I mean, they
think about their contracts, they think about money, they think
about their family. My experience with players who thought about
going to class, and.
Speaker 1 (19:18):
You learn a lot about egos and salaries and all
the things that come with coaching a pro team. And
of course none of these problems in baggage come with
coaching college or high school. But you make it all
the way to the NBA Championship in your first year.
Talk about that ride. Talk about that final game. Magic
Johnson becomes the center because Kareem is hurt and you
(19:39):
managed to win. Anyway, talk about that.
Speaker 2 (19:42):
We had good success leading up to the championship round.
Were just seemed to be getting better and better as
we got into the playoffs. Magic had a terrific rookie year.
And what I learned about Kareem Abdul Jabbar is that
whatever he gave you in the regular season of eighty
two games, he up the level in the playoffs. So
(20:06):
with that going forward, you know, we had a terrific
series with the Sixers, and Kareem was very instrumental in
us winning Game five that put us up. And now
we have to go back to Philadelphia and Kareem is
in the hospital. His ankle is blown up and he's
not going to play for sure. A little bit out
(20:28):
of default. I talked to Magic Johnson and said, did
you play center? And he said, sure, you know I
can do that. I played center in high school and
that was only two years ago. We had a little
shoot around practice. We ran our routine with Magic at center.
I do remember that at the start of the game,
we're in the team huddle about to go out in.
(20:49):
My biggest player, Jim Chenones. He's like six eleven to
fifty strong guy. So Starry coach, I'm jumping right and
I said, no, Magic's going to jump because we wanted
to send age to the Sixers that we felt good.
But Magic went into the low post shot some jump books.
Like Kareem, he shot outside jump shots. He handled the
(21:12):
ball like a guard and scores forty two points and
we win the championship. Ironically, in my hometown, very few
fans are there. A couple of my friends I got
some tickets for my wife. Was their interesting stories. They
realized at the end of the game who she was,
(21:33):
and Philadelphia fans, who are have a reputation of being brutal,
stood up and applauded her. It was a nice touch
of Philadelphia.
Speaker 1 (21:42):
And by the way, a Philly boy goes all the
way to LA returns to Philly where he beats the
Philadelphia seventy six ers away wins the national championship. And
even the folks, diehard Philadelphia basketball fans that they are
know the Paul west Ed and his wife are Philly people.
And that's why the bride gets the applause. And Paul,
let's talk about your firing. You just won an NBA
(22:04):
championship and not long after you found yourself out of
a job. And the thing about getting fired in professional
sports is, well, when we get fired, our family and
friends know those ordinary folks, But when an NBA or
professional sports coach gets fired, the entire world knows. How
did you manage that?
Speaker 2 (22:22):
Before I had the meeting, I had lunch with my
daughter who was a student at LMU and Loyal Marymount,
and she heard the story and she said, Dad, you're
going to get fired. Oh no, don't worry about it. No,
you go back to class honey, and everything's going to
be fine. So I walked into the meeting and I
got fired. But as you said, getting fired, especially for
(22:44):
the first time going home, you know, I was devastated
to know my wife and my kids are looking at
me like there's something really bad you must have done,
or something bad happened, because there's TV cameras peering through
the windows and all that stuff. So that was hard.
It was hard to get through a day or two
or a week. Ultimately you move on and you get
(23:05):
another job. I would say my reflection now is the
first time you get fired, it's personal. After that you
realize that it's business. You're hired, and they don't like you,
they'll they'll find someone else to take over the team.
And you know, in my career of twenty coaching jobs,
I probably got fired in about fourteen of them. So
(23:27):
I became a pro getting fired. I know how to
handle that now. But the first time it was very hard,
and I will say an hour after I got home,
I did get a call from Kareem ab Bill Jabbar
and said, sorry this happened, coach, or no, you can't
call me coach, you call me Paul. I'm sorry. This happened, Paul,
and thanks for your time with us.
Speaker 1 (23:48):
That had to be special. By the way, he only
called one person coach, and that was coach John Wooden,
who coached Kareem when he was at UCLA. Let's talk
about out LMU Loyal and Merrymount University, which is a
small college not far from Lax Airport in Los Angeles.
(24:08):
You changed the way basketball was played. You also finally
had players who are going to buy into this thing
you called the speed game. Turns out, the NBA players,
they just didn't like all the work that it took
and all the energy. Break it down for us for
those of us who don't know much about basketball, what
is the speed game?
Speaker 2 (24:27):
Yeah? Well, when I was a LMU and I accumulated
some players who had the ability and the talent the
drive to follow this system, which is very hard. On
the one hand, on offense, you need to go as
fast as you can on every possession, let's say one
hundred times a game. And most players want to pick
(24:47):
and choose how fast they go. I mean, that's normal basketball.
My system said, no mixing it up. Speed and speed
and speed every possession down and shooting five seconds down
and shooting four seconds, we're going to be way ahead
of the shot, Clucker. So I found players who were
willing to do that. I also realized that teams that
(25:11):
we played against would do whatever they could not to
play fast and make the game under control. So I
came up with this system at LMU to full court
press defensively. So we did such erratic pressing and chance
taking trying to steal the ball and stop passing, that
(25:34):
the other team wound up shooting as quickly as we
were shooting. It became a five second game. We were
shooting five seconds. Defend in such a way that the
opposition was shooting five seconds, and we would get the
ball back and shooting five seconds. So it was a
five second game back and forth. And what we found
(25:56):
out was that we could sustain it. The opposition couldn't.
They never played like that. Their bodies just were not prepared,
so that somewhere in the game, sometimes early in the
first half, many times late, like with ten minutes ago
in the game, the teams were done. They almost came
(26:19):
to a halt and couldn't run, they could barely walk.
So we would break teams down. And therefore that's why
we could average one hundred and twenty two points a
game and be very successful.
Speaker 1 (26:33):
And you're listening to coach Paul Westead his book The
Speed Game, and the Speed Game was practiced to perfection
at LMU during the years he was there, and college
basketball fans from around the country were thrilled to watch.
This is literally everything Paul described happened. They were relentlessly
pursue their offensive schematic, and the other teams just got
(26:56):
worn down. He had the athletes and they could shoot,
would just run, race, race, race, race, and by the
third to fourth quarter, the other teams just died. It
couldn't handle the pace. A fascinating approach to basketball, revolutionized
the game, at least for a short time. When we
come back more of Paul Westhead's remarkable life in basketball
(27:18):
and beyond here on our American story, and we returned
to our American stories and Paul west Edd's story. Paul
(27:41):
has been the coach of many important and interesting basketball
teams in the United States, including the LA Lakers, the
Oregon Ducks women's basketball team, the Denver Nuggets, and LMU,
which is what we're talking about now. When we last
left off, you finally had a place to play the
speed game, and it was something that would alter basketball. Well,
you met two young men during this time who would
(28:03):
also change the team. Talk about Hank Gathers and Bo Kimball.
Speaker 2 (28:08):
Yeah, two Philly boys who are from my hometown. And
I finally meet them in Los Angeles. They're at USC
and wanting to transfer, and I'm at LMU, a little
school down by the Lax Airport. They come to visit,
walk them around campus, and the final thing I do
(28:28):
is I take him in my office and show them
about five minutes of game film to say, hey, this
is what we do here at LMU. And we walk
outside and go says me, come on, coach, we're from
Philly and you're from Philly. You made up that film,
you doctored that, you edited that, you did something to
that because nobody plays like that. And I said, no,
(28:48):
that's a real film. That's how we play, that's how
fast we play. And they looked at each other and
I said, well, we're coming. Everything I ever did change
from that moment on. They had the talent, the toughness
and the grittiness. They're the ones who, along with another transfer,
Corey Gains from UCLA They're the ones that brought the
(29:10):
rest of the players into playing fast and following my system.
And once your players buy in, then you have a chance.
They just wanted to run and shoot and show that
they could be great players, and they both had aspirations
of being professional players, and they would do anything to
(29:30):
follow the speed game.
Speaker 1 (29:32):
Indeed, you won a lot of games at LMU, and
you got a lot of attention, and these guys led
the nation in scoring, which was amazing considering your school
had not been getting much national attention at all up
until this point. But now you were winning, and it
seemed the players had really bought the speed game well
to a new level. Talk about that night at the
University of Portland that changed everything. Coach Hank had had
(29:56):
some heart troubles and then came that game, the game
with so many basketball fans remember it. Talk about that
night that so many of us remember.
Speaker 2 (30:05):
Well, this was the West Coast Conference playoff game. We
were playing University of Portland, and you know, we were
on our game. Everything was going as expected. We were
in the first half, we got a ten point lead,
and we were just ready to just explode. We stole
(30:25):
the ball through the ball to Hank Gathers, and he
went barreling down the lane and scored a thunderous slam
dunk and then turned to get back on defense and
barely got the half court and collapsed, and ultimately he
died and everything that we were doing change forever. The
(30:47):
loss of Hank Athers was something that players and myself
and people of the Loyal and Merrymouth were just totally devastated.
We just had a third year reunion. They put a
statue up at LMU a couple of months ago, and
it was thirty years ago. It seems like it was
three seconds ago. But for a young man who was
(31:09):
in the peak of his career, who the year before
he led the country in scoring and rebounding, which is
a feat that very few people have ever done. He
was an unstoppable basketball player and to see him and
his death in front of you was just unbearable.
Speaker 1 (31:27):
It was heartbreaking for everyone, Coach, but you had an
amazing run after that, with the team playing straight through
to the Elite eight in the NCAA Tournament. I think
the whole nation was rooting for you. Guys.
Speaker 2 (31:41):
Talk about that, Yeah, it was you know, after we
had a couple of funeral services, one at LMU the
for the community, and then the whole team flew back
to Philadelphia and we were at the church in North
Philadelphia for his funeral. At home, the players decided that
(32:01):
they wanted to keep playing, and I think they wanted
to do that because they just didn't want to sit
around all day and experience this overwhelming grief that at
least two hours a day, if they practice or they
play the game, it would be a sense of release
of the tension. So we did. We practiced, we played games,
(32:25):
and I can only say that when you're playing the tournament,
normally there's a lot of anks and nervousness about, well,
you have to win, because we don't win, you're eliminated.
Our players could have cared less about winning. They could
care less. They wanted to just play. They wanted to perform,
(32:47):
you know, in honor of Hank, but they just wanted
to do something to show that they cared. Winning was
not a high priority. So ironically that's why they played
so well. You know, Mexico State, we'd be Michigan, the
current NCAA champion. But they weren't like saying, oh yeah,
great win, great win. They were just saying, yeah, this
(33:09):
is another attempt for us to show that we cared
for Hank.
Speaker 1 (33:15):
Let's talk about your big decision to leave LMU and
go back to the NBA with the Denver Nuggets. I
guess you just wanted to see if speedball could make
a run in the big leagues. You once got a
phone call from the great Dale Brown, the coach at LSU,
and you said he called you and wished you good
luck in the NBA and said that if you'd stayed
at LMU, you would have changed college basketball forever. Do
(33:39):
you ever regret leaving college basketball and trying to bring
speedball to the professional league.
Speaker 2 (33:45):
I would have done a lot of things differently. If
if I know what was going to happen, I might
not have ever left Cheltenham High School if I had
figured out all of the ups and downs. But I
wanted to go back into the NBA, and I thought
there might have been a three strike rule. Like I
coached the Lakers and I got fired. I coached the
Chicago Bulls and I got fired. So I said, you know,
(34:09):
I only have one more strike left. I'd better take
this chance. So I took it, even though you Dale
Brown may have been right, and had I stayed in
college ball, then the game may have changed because it
was an exciting way to play. But I wanted to
try the NBA, and my experience in Denver was a
mixed bag. We didn't have the best group of players.
(34:33):
Most of the very good players in Denver either retired
or went elsewhere, so we pieced together some different kinds
of players and players at the end of their career.
Orlando Woolridge and Walter Davis, who were terrific players in
their day, but they were in their mid thirties and
their legs were breaking down, and they gave it their
(34:53):
best shot. I mean, I kind of was proud of
their attempts to run the fast break style. We didn't
win a lot of games in my first year, but
we did average one hundred and twenty points a game
in Denver, which is nothing to laugh about because it's
very hard to do. Even today, teams are scoring more,
but nobody's averaging one hundred and twenty points a game.
(35:16):
But it just couldn't work. Didn't work. The pro player
really has trouble buying into the speed game over and
over and over again for that amount of games and
The irony is, had they ran fast enough, they could
have beaten anybody. The opposition doesn't want to do it either,
(35:37):
so it's really a battle who wants to do it more,
your team or the opposition. I can guarantee the opposition
does not. The problem is can you get your own
team to do it? Many times my experience is that
I couldn't get my own team to commit like I
did the LW players.
Speaker 1 (35:58):
And you've been to Paul west Head and the book
is The Speed Game, and it's about so many things,
but you just heard it summed up right there. I
think it's why we're drawn to sports. In the end,
all things being equal, so often it's a question of
will and will the one team impose its will on
the other? Who will win? And why? And so much
(36:18):
of it just has to do with a commitment to
choose to win, and my goodness, the effort required to
play the speed game. I've seen some workout regimes for this.
There were these sand dunes that west Ed would take
his players to and they would just run up like
half a mile, come back down, run up, come back down.
And I watched that workout and I said I wouldn't
(36:40):
do that I wouldn't do the speed game because it
hurts and it's pain, and they were prepared, those great
LMU teams to inflict pain on people. And it was
like nothing any sports fan had ever seen. And I
watched all of them. I love all sports, but that
LMU team was doing something no one has ever done
(37:00):
since or before, and no one's really given it a
full shot, because again, getting a bunch of people to
commit to go all out, flat out hard all the time,
well that's just no duckwalk. The Life of Paul Westead,
and my goodness, what a life lived. The Speed Game
is the book. Pick it up if you have any
friend who's a basketball fan. The chapters on his time
(37:23):
at the Los Angeles Lakers are priceless, and you get
a glimpse into what it must be like to coach
these very high priced athletes with their agents and their posses.
And it's just no duckwalk. And this isn't a whining book.
It's not a kiss and tell book. Paul west d
has real class. He's a real coach, and I'm honored
to have gotten to spend some time talking to him
(37:45):
and let him tell his story. Paul west Head's story,
an epic and great coaching and love affair story with
a game and trying to get men in a row
and do the best they can. His story, the Speed
Games story here on our American Story
This is Lee Habib and this is our American Stories,
and we tell stories about everything here on this show,
from the arts to sports, and from business to history
and everything in between, including your story. Send them to
our American Stories dot com. That's Ouramerican Stories dot com.
And right now we're sitting down with coach Paul Westead.
Westad has a great book out called The Speed Game,
(00:31):
and he has coached the LA Lakers, the Denver Nuggets,
Loyola Marymounts Epic men's basketball team, and the Oregon women's
basketball team. Paul, let's talk about the beginning. Talk about
your childhood a bit.
Speaker 2 (00:45):
I grew up in a row house in West Philadelphia
in the summer. In Philadelphia, it's sweltering hot, and no
one had air condition and initially no one even had TVs.
So there wasn't much relief that was going on living there.
But there were a lot of good things happening.
Speaker 1 (01:05):
You know.
Speaker 2 (01:05):
I grew up around you know, thirty forty boys and
girls right on my own street. We played all kinds
of creative games, step ball, for example. You had a
tennis ball, actually a rubber ball, not a tennis ball.
We wouldn't know what tennis was at that time, and
we'd hit the ball on the step and try and
(01:26):
hit the corner of the step and make it go
high and across the street, and if it got hit
on the roof of the opposite street, it was a
home run. So we played baseball off the steps. I
do recall if the ball went down the sewer, they
would get the smallest kid to drop them down the sewer,
which happened to be me head first and grabbed the
(01:49):
ball out of the muck. So what skilly was? You know?
It was a tough lifestyle, but for a young boy
growing up, it was very satisfying because you were surrounded
by young boys and girls doing the same thing as
you and figuring things out and being creative. I mean,
(02:12):
somebody put up a peach basket up in the telegraph
pole and we would go and shoot hoops there reading
in the middle of the street. And good news I
guess is there wasn't nearly as much traffic then, you know,
and it wasn't wasn't that question they were going to
sit home and watch TV or sit home and play
video games. That was out the wind that no one
even thought of that. I do remember one time on
(02:36):
the row house. A family down the street got a TV.
They were like the envy of the whole neighborhood, and
kids would go by different times during the day in
the early evening and stand outside their porch area and
gaze in to see, you know, some objects moving around
on the TV screen, and you know, we were in awe.
(02:57):
That wow. But that's the outside entertainment. Everything you did.
My life in West Philadelphia was because you and others
created it.
Speaker 1 (03:09):
Let's talk about your brother Pete. You write about him
a lot in your book. Tell us about him.
Speaker 2 (03:14):
Yeah, Well, my brother Pete was five years older than me,
and literally before I was born, he contracted what they
then called infantile paralysis now we call it polio. He
was in the hospital for weeks just to kind of
get stabilized, and then the doctors made a decision to
(03:34):
wait until he was a teenager to do major surgeries
to kind of reconstruct his shoulders and his legs so
that he could have an adult life. So from a
very young boy, my brother Pete was my sidekick. He
was my guide. So when we would play these street games,
(03:55):
he couldn't really participate because he didn't have the arms
and leg movement that he needed. But he was a
friend of all the neighborhood guys, so they allowed me
to take his place. He would hit the ball and
I would run, so we were a good combo. That's
how we got through and the plus that eventually worked
(04:18):
for me. The boys who were friends of my brother
were five years older than me. They all then accepted
me as like their little brother. So even as I
went through my life, a couple of them helped me
in my young career. One fellow, Jack Savage, helped me
get a scholarship to Saint Joseph because he was a
(04:39):
player on the team. Paul Bernardo helped me get a
job as a lifeguard. So they treated me kindly because
of my brother.
Speaker 1 (04:50):
In your book, you say that despite your brother's illness,
your mom never babied him.
Speaker 2 (04:55):
Talk about that she never treated him any She, you know,
allowed him to flourish at his own pace. She took
care of him, but I think she realized that much
of what was in front of him he had to
figure out and do himself, and he did. I can
remember one time we were in our row house and
(05:19):
we were in our bedroom. My brother and I were
in one bedroom. My parents were in the what you
would call the master bedroom, which was paper thin and
three feet apart. They were listening to the radio and
we would listen, you know, lying in bed, and we
were messing around, and my father said, hey, don't stop
(05:39):
messing around. I'm going to come in and get after you.
And we kept messing around. So here comes my father
into our bedroom. You know, I don't know what he's
going to try to get, but as he's coming in,
I'm taking off. So we're going around and kind of
a circle. I'm going from my bedroom to their bedroom
to my bedroom, and he trying to catch me. My
(06:01):
brother is lying in bed laughing. He knows that he's
not going to get spanked. He's kind of like protected.
So finally my mother grasps me and says, all right,
now leave them alone, meaning me. So she was my
protector and we quieted down and went to.
Speaker 1 (06:22):
Bed, and we're listening to Paul west Head, the former
Los Angeles Lakers coach. He coached Magic Johnson's first year
in the NBA. An epic time for the NBA. Actually,
as the NBA matured and became a real national professional
league again, and it had struggled through the nineteen seventies,
and he's on to talk about his life and his
(06:43):
book called The Speed Game and listening to west Head
describe life in the West Philly streets when he was young,
before video games, before Instagram, heck, before TV. I was
back when kids had to just make up their own
entertainment and go out on the streets unsupervised for hours
at a time. And it's sounding like such a good
(07:03):
thing just listening to it, and I think all of
us are wondering why did we used to live like that?
And hopefully at least some places we're going to try
and continue to live like that, because what a thing
for kids to be able to do hang around unsupervised
and just play for days at a time. When we
come back more with Paul WestEd his life and his
book The Speed Game. Here on our American Story Folks,
(07:31):
if you love the great American stories we tell and
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(07:51):
to the donate button and help us keep the great
American stories coming. That's our American Stories dot Com. And
we returned to Our American Stories and our interview with
(08:13):
coach Paul west Ed, who coached the LA Lakers, the
Oregon Ducks women's basketball team, the Royola Marymounts men's basketball
team when it was one of the best in the country,
and he's written a book called The Speed Game. When
we last left off, Paul, you were talking about your
childhood in West Philly and that's West Philadelphia, your brother,
the row house you grew up in. Let's pick up there.
(08:35):
Talk about your high school career in basketball. You got
cut a lot, but that helped shape you. Talk about that.
Speaker 2 (08:42):
I got cut every year and I was a pretty
good player. I wasn't a great player, but I probably
could have made ninety percent of high school teams. But
West Catholic High School that I went to had twenty
six hundred boys and they were all aspiring leads. And
basketball in Philadelphia was the sport of choice. When I
(09:06):
went as a freshman, I was a pretty good player,
but you know, they were two hundred freshmen going after
the team like me, so I didn't make the team.
I didn't make the team as a sophomore. I still
remember they would make lists. You would go from eighty
people to sixty people to forty to twenty, and then
they'd finally picked the final twelve, and I many times
(09:30):
would make the top twenty, but then the last day
or two, my name would not be on the list.
So then I go into my senior year, and sure enough,
from junior year to senior year, I grew from like
five to two to six two. And my last year
I go after the team and now at least I
have the size to be a player. I get to
(09:52):
the last day and the coach, who hadn't talked to
me in three prior years, come over and say, you're
actually good enough to be on my team now, but
you're a senior and you don't have any experience, and
I have players who have been with me, so you're
good enough, but I'm not going to keep you on
(10:13):
the team. Thanks for your effort. So my high school
career came to a close. Even though I was good enough,
fast enough and tall, enough.
Speaker 1 (10:22):
Obviously, you move on from this, Paul, and you attend
college with the intention of becoming a teacher, but you
also want to coach, and you end up doing both.
After a setback, talk about all that, you.
Speaker 2 (10:34):
Know, it was spinning around on me. I think I've
mentioned in the past my grade point average as a
student was better than my points per game average as
a player. I really wasn't destined for the NBA or
any kind of professional team. So I actually got a
fellowship to Villanova University. They gave out the fellowship, say
(10:54):
you can get your master's degree, and I was my
major with English literature, and during that time I was
totally removed from basketball, and I felt very comfortable, you know.
I spent three four hours a day in the library
and consulting with different professors. I said, yeah, this is
going to be my life. I'm going to be a teacher.
(11:15):
And then at the end of my second year, I
looked for jobs and there was a teaching coaching position
at a local high school, Cheltenham High School, so I
applied for it. They interviewed me and they were very
impressed with my academic credentials. They said, yes, we can
hire you. Right now as an English teacher at Cheltenham High. However,
(11:38):
you want to be the basketball coach. We have an opening,
but you have no experience. Ultimately said you want to
be a teacher, you can and I turned them down.
I said no, I want to do both. So from
there I went to the University of Dayton. I had
five classes. I was an acting assistant professor, and all
of a sudden, the basket ball team head coach became
(12:02):
very ill. They only had one other assistant. His name
was Don Donaher, who was the freshman coach. He heard
I had played basketball, so he came to me and said,
could you help us out? I said sure, So I
became the freshman coach for that year and Donaher became
the acting head coach, and subsequent to that, Donnaher was
(12:23):
the head coach for the next twenty five years. As
that year comes to an end, I hear that the
Cheltenham High coaching position opened up again. So I get
in touch with them and I said, this is Paul
West had I interviewed last year and now I'm at
Dayton and they see my credentials as a freshman coach
(12:46):
and they say, yes, you can be our teacher and
coach at Cheltenham High. So how life changes in one
year that I then went back to Cheltenham and became
their basketball coach and English teacher for five years and
in some ways the happiest five years of my career.
Speaker 1 (13:07):
And around this time of coaching around Philadelphia, you end
up going to Puerto Rico, a trip that would eventually
change your life. Talk about that.
Speaker 2 (13:16):
I kind of stumbled into this. In your life, you
always need somebody to give you a helping hand or
give you a break. I became a college coach in
Philadelphia Saint Joseph's because Jack McKinney hired me as his
freshman coach. And then McKinney, during his coaching went down
to Puerto Rico to coach in the summer. One year,
(13:40):
he was to go back and he couldn't do it.
He had some other responsibilities. So he asked me if
I would go down and I did so. Once I
got down there and I saw the scene, I mean,
it was an incredible basketball league and the players were
just pure basketball players. Loved the game and they love
(14:01):
to play fast. So that was kind of my introduction
to the speed game. I saw a group of young
men coming down the court and shooting within four or
five seconds. They didn't they didn't run plays back in
the States. If you're a coach, if you're a college
coach and you're any good, you have ten different plays
(14:22):
and everybody has to work them and practice them and
pass the ball five, six, seven times before you take
a shot. Well, the Puerto Rican players say, well, let's
passing the ball. If I'm hoping, I'll shoot it, and
they were making them. Ironically, the more you pass the
ball and work to get a good shot, it puts
a very high priority on that shot and therefore it's
(14:45):
harder to make, whereas the fast break system of the
Puerto Rican style is, they didn't have a lot of
priority on the shot. They said, if I'm oping, I
shoot it, and if I missed, so what, I'll get
another shot and make that. These are the things that
got ingrained into my coaching background that led me to
become a fast break choke coach.
Speaker 1 (15:07):
And from there. You moved to Los Angeles at a
very interesting time, but you didn't start out as a coach.
Talk about that and talk about magic Johnson, Kareem Abdul
Jabbar This was a time that people really started to
pay attention to the LA Lakers. Talk about that and
how you became the head coach and your time in
(15:28):
Los Angeles.
Speaker 2 (15:29):
It was Jack McKinney. McKinney wasn't assistant with the Portland
Trailblazers under Jack Ramsey when Jerry Buss is the brand
new owner. Magic Johnson was just drafted and they hired
Jack McKinney to be their coach. And he calls me
and says, I'd like you to be my assistant. Do
you want to think it over? I said, yeah, I
just thought it over. I'll be there tomorrow. Started the season,
(15:53):
and then about ten games into the season, we had
a day off and Jack said, do you want to
play some tennis? I said sure, and I went to
the court and waited half an hour. He didn't show.
I waited an hour. He didn't show, and so I
just went home and just thought maybe something came up.
And his wife called hours later and said Jack has
(16:14):
not been around, and she searched and they opimately found
him in the hospital. He had a bicycle accident and
was seriously injured. And the next day we had a game,
so I went to the shoot around practice and people say, well,
why'd they pick you as the coach? Well, it was
either me or the trainer. That was the staff. I
(16:35):
remember Jerry Buss saying, yeah, you're in charge for tonight.
I knew I had to be because they couldn't find anyone.
In five hours. Miraculously we won the game for a
kind of fall away jump shout by Jamal Wilkes and
you know, out a little bit out of the fault.
I was the interim head coach of his team in
(16:56):
Los Angeles, the Lakers with Jermam and Magic.
Speaker 1 (17:00):
Can't make that up, folks. I mean getting to Los
Angeles starting and his assistant and the head coach gets hurt.
And by the way, that's the last thing he wanted.
He was real friends with Jack McKenny and it broke
his heart that that's how he got the job. But
he had a job to do. Jack had to get better.
Paul had to coach the team, and as he put it,
it was him or it was the trainer. And when
we come back, we're going to hear more from this
(17:21):
remarkable life story. From the streets of West Philly to
the Golden lights and big city lights, of Los Angeles
coaching well Magic and Kareem, two of the greatest of
all time and one of the greatest teams of all time.
What will happen next? How does he handle all this?
And in the end, how does this change his life?
More with Paul Westead his book The Speed Game. Here
(17:45):
on our American stories, and we continue with our American
(18:11):
stories and with Paul west Head's story. He's also the
author of a fantastic book, The Speed Game. If you're
a sports fan, pick it up. Heck, if you're not
a sports fan, pick it up. It's a heck of
a life story. When we last left off, Paul had
managed to become the head coach of the Los Angeles Lakers,
a position he really didn't expect to have. You were
(18:31):
just sort of thrown into the middle of things, Paul,
Did that make it any easier for you?
Speaker 2 (18:36):
Something? You know, when necessity is rate in front of you,
you almost have no choice. I had to coach the
game that night, and the next day they said, well,
we have another two games at home, we're going to
keep you and I just went literally from game to game.
So on the one hand, I was an experienced basketball coach,
(18:58):
I mean I knew the game, I didn't know the
pro game, and I didn't know all the ins and
outs of what professional players think about. I mean, they
think about their contracts, they think about money, they think
about their family. My experience with players who thought about
going to class, and.
Speaker 1 (19:18):
You learn a lot about egos and salaries and all
the things that come with coaching a pro team. And
of course none of these problems in baggage come with
coaching college or high school. But you make it all
the way to the NBA Championship in your first year.
Talk about that ride. Talk about that final game. Magic
Johnson becomes the center because Kareem is hurt and you
(19:39):
managed to win. Anyway, talk about that.
Speaker 2 (19:42):
We had good success leading up to the championship round.
Were just seemed to be getting better and better as
we got into the playoffs. Magic had a terrific rookie year.
And what I learned about Kareem Abdul Jabbar is that
whatever he gave you in the regular season of eighty
two games, he up the level in the playoffs. So
(20:06):
with that going forward, you know, we had a terrific
series with the Sixers, and Kareem was very instrumental in
us winning Game five that put us up. And now
we have to go back to Philadelphia and Kareem is
in the hospital. His ankle is blown up and he's
not going to play for sure. A little bit out
(20:28):
of default. I talked to Magic Johnson and said, did
you play center? And he said, sure, you know I
can do that. I played center in high school and
that was only two years ago. We had a little
shoot around practice. We ran our routine with Magic at center.
I do remember that at the start of the game,
we're in the team huddle about to go out in.
(20:49):
My biggest player, Jim Chenones. He's like six eleven to
fifty strong guy. So Starry coach, I'm jumping right and
I said, no, Magic's going to jump because we wanted
to send age to the Sixers that we felt good.
But Magic went into the low post shot some jump books.
Like Kareem, he shot outside jump shots. He handled the
(21:12):
ball like a guard and scores forty two points and
we win the championship. Ironically, in my hometown, very few
fans are there. A couple of my friends I got
some tickets for my wife. Was their interesting stories. They
realized at the end of the game who she was,
(21:33):
and Philadelphia fans, who are have a reputation of being brutal,
stood up and applauded her. It was a nice touch
of Philadelphia.
Speaker 1 (21:42):
And by the way, a Philly boy goes all the
way to LA returns to Philly where he beats the
Philadelphia seventy six ers away wins the national championship. And
even the folks, diehard Philadelphia basketball fans that they are
know the Paul west Ed and his wife are Philly people.
And that's why the bride gets the applause. And Paul,
let's talk about your firing. You just won an NBA
(22:04):
championship and not long after you found yourself out of
a job. And the thing about getting fired in professional
sports is, well, when we get fired, our family and
friends know those ordinary folks, But when an NBA or
professional sports coach gets fired, the entire world knows. How
did you manage that?
Speaker 2 (22:22):
Before I had the meeting, I had lunch with my
daughter who was a student at LMU and Loyal Marymount,
and she heard the story and she said, Dad, you're
going to get fired. Oh no, don't worry about it. No,
you go back to class honey, and everything's going to
be fine. So I walked into the meeting and I
got fired. But as you said, getting fired, especially for
(22:44):
the first time going home, you know, I was devastated
to know my wife and my kids are looking at
me like there's something really bad you must have done,
or something bad happened, because there's TV cameras peering through
the windows and all that stuff. So that was hard.
It was hard to get through a day or two
or a week. Ultimately you move on and you get
(23:05):
another job. I would say my reflection now is the
first time you get fired, it's personal. After that you
realize that it's business. You're hired, and they don't like you,
they'll they'll find someone else to take over the team.
And you know, in my career of twenty coaching jobs,
I probably got fired in about fourteen of them. So
(23:27):
I became a pro getting fired. I know how to
handle that now. But the first time it was very hard,
and I will say an hour after I got home,
I did get a call from Kareem ab Bill Jabbar
and said, sorry this happened, coach, or no, you can't
call me coach, you call me Paul. I'm sorry. This happened, Paul,
and thanks for your time with us.
Speaker 1 (23:48):
That had to be special. By the way, he only
called one person coach, and that was coach John Wooden,
who coached Kareem when he was at UCLA. Let's talk
about out LMU Loyal and Merrymount University, which is a
small college not far from Lax Airport in Los Angeles.
(24:08):
You changed the way basketball was played. You also finally
had players who are going to buy into this thing
you called the speed game. Turns out, the NBA players,
they just didn't like all the work that it took
and all the energy. Break it down for us for
those of us who don't know much about basketball, what
is the speed game?
Speaker 2 (24:27):
Yeah? Well, when I was a LMU and I accumulated
some players who had the ability and the talent the
drive to follow this system, which is very hard. On
the one hand, on offense, you need to go as
fast as you can on every possession, let's say one
hundred times a game. And most players want to pick
(24:47):
and choose how fast they go. I mean, that's normal basketball.
My system said, no mixing it up. Speed and speed
and speed every possession down and shooting five seconds down
and shooting four seconds, we're going to be way ahead
of the shot, Clucker. So I found players who were
willing to do that. I also realized that teams that
(25:11):
we played against would do whatever they could not to
play fast and make the game under control. So I
came up with this system at LMU to full court
press defensively. So we did such erratic pressing and chance
taking trying to steal the ball and stop passing, that
(25:34):
the other team wound up shooting as quickly as we
were shooting. It became a five second game. We were
shooting five seconds. Defend in such a way that the
opposition was shooting five seconds, and we would get the
ball back and shooting five seconds. So it was a
five second game back and forth. And what we found
(25:56):
out was that we could sustain it. The opposition couldn't.
They never played like that. Their bodies just were not prepared,
so that somewhere in the game, sometimes early in the
first half, many times late, like with ten minutes ago
in the game, the teams were done. They almost came
(26:19):
to a halt and couldn't run, they could barely walk.
So we would break teams down. And therefore that's why
we could average one hundred and twenty two points a
game and be very successful.
Speaker 1 (26:33):
And you're listening to coach Paul Westead his book The
Speed Game, and the Speed Game was practiced to perfection
at LMU during the years he was there, and college
basketball fans from around the country were thrilled to watch.
This is literally everything Paul described happened. They were relentlessly
pursue their offensive schematic, and the other teams just got
(26:56):
worn down. He had the athletes and they could shoot,
would just run, race, race, race, race, and by the
third to fourth quarter, the other teams just died. It
couldn't handle the pace. A fascinating approach to basketball, revolutionized
the game, at least for a short time. When we
come back more of Paul Westhead's remarkable life in basketball
(27:18):
and beyond here on our American story, and we returned
to our American stories and Paul west Edd's story. Paul
(27:41):
has been the coach of many important and interesting basketball
teams in the United States, including the LA Lakers, the
Oregon Ducks women's basketball team, the Denver Nuggets, and LMU,
which is what we're talking about now. When we last
left off, you finally had a place to play the
speed game, and it was something that would alter basketball. Well,
you met two young men during this time who would
(28:03):
also change the team. Talk about Hank Gathers and Bo Kimball.
Speaker 2 (28:08):
Yeah, two Philly boys who are from my hometown. And
I finally meet them in Los Angeles. They're at USC
and wanting to transfer, and I'm at LMU, a little
school down by the Lax Airport. They come to visit,
walk them around campus, and the final thing I do
(28:28):
is I take him in my office and show them
about five minutes of game film to say, hey, this
is what we do here at LMU. And we walk
outside and go says me, come on, coach, we're from
Philly and you're from Philly. You made up that film,
you doctored that, you edited that, you did something to
that because nobody plays like that. And I said, no,
(28:48):
that's a real film. That's how we play, that's how
fast we play. And they looked at each other and
I said, well, we're coming. Everything I ever did change
from that moment on. They had the talent, the toughness
and the grittiness. They're the ones who, along with another transfer,
Corey Gains from UCLA They're the ones that brought the
(29:10):
rest of the players into playing fast and following my system.
And once your players buy in, then you have a chance.
They just wanted to run and shoot and show that
they could be great players, and they both had aspirations
of being professional players, and they would do anything to
(29:30):
follow the speed game.
Speaker 1 (29:32):
Indeed, you won a lot of games at LMU, and
you got a lot of attention, and these guys led
the nation in scoring, which was amazing considering your school
had not been getting much national attention at all up
until this point. But now you were winning, and it
seemed the players had really bought the speed game well
to a new level. Talk about that night at the
University of Portland that changed everything. Coach Hank had had
(29:56):
some heart troubles and then came that game, the game
with so many basketball fans remember it. Talk about that
night that so many of us remember.
Speaker 2 (30:05):
Well, this was the West Coast Conference playoff game. We
were playing University of Portland, and you know, we were
on our game. Everything was going as expected. We were
in the first half, we got a ten point lead,
and we were just ready to just explode. We stole
(30:25):
the ball through the ball to Hank Gathers, and he
went barreling down the lane and scored a thunderous slam
dunk and then turned to get back on defense and
barely got the half court and collapsed, and ultimately he
died and everything that we were doing change forever. The
(30:47):
loss of Hank Athers was something that players and myself
and people of the Loyal and Merrymouth were just totally devastated.
We just had a third year reunion. They put a
statue up at LMU a couple of months ago, and
it was thirty years ago. It seems like it was
three seconds ago. But for a young man who was
(31:09):
in the peak of his career, who the year before
he led the country in scoring and rebounding, which is
a feat that very few people have ever done. He
was an unstoppable basketball player and to see him and
his death in front of you was just unbearable.
Speaker 1 (31:27):
It was heartbreaking for everyone, Coach, but you had an
amazing run after that, with the team playing straight through
to the Elite eight in the NCAA Tournament. I think
the whole nation was rooting for you. Guys.
Speaker 2 (31:41):
Talk about that, Yeah, it was you know, after we
had a couple of funeral services, one at LMU the
for the community, and then the whole team flew back
to Philadelphia and we were at the church in North
Philadelphia for his funeral. At home, the players decided that
(32:01):
they wanted to keep playing, and I think they wanted
to do that because they just didn't want to sit
around all day and experience this overwhelming grief that at
least two hours a day, if they practice or they
play the game, it would be a sense of release
of the tension. So we did. We practiced, we played games,
(32:25):
and I can only say that when you're playing the tournament,
normally there's a lot of anks and nervousness about, well,
you have to win, because we don't win, you're eliminated.
Our players could have cared less about winning. They could
care less. They wanted to just play. They wanted to perform,
(32:47):
you know, in honor of Hank, but they just wanted
to do something to show that they cared. Winning was
not a high priority. So ironically that's why they played
so well. You know, Mexico State, we'd be Michigan, the
current NCAA champion. But they weren't like saying, oh yeah,
great win, great win. They were just saying, yeah, this
(33:09):
is another attempt for us to show that we cared
for Hank.
Speaker 1 (33:15):
Let's talk about your big decision to leave LMU and
go back to the NBA with the Denver Nuggets. I
guess you just wanted to see if speedball could make
a run in the big leagues. You once got a
phone call from the great Dale Brown, the coach at LSU,
and you said he called you and wished you good
luck in the NBA and said that if you'd stayed
at LMU, you would have changed college basketball forever. Do
(33:39):
you ever regret leaving college basketball and trying to bring
speedball to the professional league.
Speaker 2 (33:45):
I would have done a lot of things differently. If
if I know what was going to happen, I might
not have ever left Cheltenham High School if I had
figured out all of the ups and downs. But I
wanted to go back into the NBA, and I thought
there might have been a three strike rule. Like I
coached the Lakers and I got fired. I coached the
Chicago Bulls and I got fired. So I said, you know,
(34:09):
I only have one more strike left. I'd better take
this chance. So I took it, even though you Dale
Brown may have been right, and had I stayed in
college ball, then the game may have changed because it
was an exciting way to play. But I wanted to
try the NBA, and my experience in Denver was a
mixed bag. We didn't have the best group of players.
(34:33):
Most of the very good players in Denver either retired
or went elsewhere, so we pieced together some different kinds
of players and players at the end of their career.
Orlando Woolridge and Walter Davis, who were terrific players in
their day, but they were in their mid thirties and
their legs were breaking down, and they gave it their
(34:53):
best shot. I mean, I kind of was proud of
their attempts to run the fast break style. We didn't
win a lot of games in my first year, but
we did average one hundred and twenty points a game
in Denver, which is nothing to laugh about because it's
very hard to do. Even today, teams are scoring more,
but nobody's averaging one hundred and twenty points a game.
(35:16):
But it just couldn't work. Didn't work. The pro player
really has trouble buying into the speed game over and
over and over again for that amount of games and
The irony is, had they ran fast enough, they could
have beaten anybody. The opposition doesn't want to do it either,
(35:37):
so it's really a battle who wants to do it more,
your team or the opposition. I can guarantee the opposition
does not. The problem is can you get your own
team to do it? Many times my experience is that
I couldn't get my own team to commit like I
did the LW players.
Speaker 1 (35:58):
And you've been to Paul west Head and the book
is The Speed Game, and it's about so many things,
but you just heard it summed up right there. I
think it's why we're drawn to sports. In the end,
all things being equal, so often it's a question of
will and will the one team impose its will on
the other? Who will win? And why? And so much
(36:18):
of it just has to do with a commitment to
choose to win, and my goodness, the effort required to
play the speed game. I've seen some workout regimes for this.
There were these sand dunes that west Ed would take
his players to and they would just run up like
half a mile, come back down, run up, come back down.
And I watched that workout and I said I wouldn't
(36:40):
do that I wouldn't do the speed game because it
hurts and it's pain, and they were prepared, those great
LMU teams to inflict pain on people. And it was
like nothing any sports fan had ever seen. And I
watched all of them. I love all sports, but that
LMU team was doing something no one has ever done
(37:00):
since or before, and no one's really given it a
full shot, because again, getting a bunch of people to
commit to go all out, flat out hard all the time,
well that's just no duckwalk. The Life of Paul Westead,
and my goodness, what a life lived. The Speed Game
is the book. Pick it up if you have any
friend who's a basketball fan. The chapters on his time
(37:23):
at the Los Angeles Lakers are priceless, and you get
a glimpse into what it must be like to coach
these very high priced athletes with their agents and their posses.
And it's just no duckwalk. And this isn't a whining book.
It's not a kiss and tell book. Paul west d
has real class. He's a real coach, and I'm honored
to have gotten to spend some time talking to him
(37:45):
and let him tell his story. Paul west Head's story,
an epic and great coaching and love affair story with
a game and trying to get men in a row
and do the best they can. His story, the Speed
Games story here on our American Story
Host
Lee Habeeb
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