May 5, 2021 • 39 mins
Westward chronicles the history of basketball in the NBA and how the city of Los Angeles not only saved the fledgling league by bringing the Lakers from Minneapolis, but gave birth to the modern NBA with “Showtime.” Told through the lens of Jerry West, who helped build the dynasty of the Lakers, “Westward” now follows the former Hall Of Famer as he attempts to build a dynasty with L.A.’s other NBA franchise, the Clippers. Narrator – Keith David, Tim Livingston, Bobby Glanton-Smith A production of The Dan Patrick Podcast Network, Joy Road Entertainment, and iHeartRadio in association with Workhouse Media and Sugar23.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
We interrupt your usual stream of DP show content to
bring you a special episode of a new podcast on
the Dan Patrick Show Network. It's called Westward. Westward chronicles
the history of basketball in the NBA and how the
city of Los Angeles not only saved the fledgling league
by bringing the Lakers from Minneapolis, but gave birth to
the modern NBA. With showtime told through the lens of
(00:24):
the great Cherry West, who helped build the dynasty of
the Lakers. Westward now follows the former Hall of Famer
as he attempts to build a dynasty with LA's other
NBA team, the Clippers. Narrators are Keith David, Tim Livingston,
Bobby Glanton Smith. I hope you enjoy Hi. I'm sports
(00:45):
journalist Tim Livingston and I'm Bobby Glanton Smith. Westward is
a podcast about the birth of professional basketball in Los
Angeles and how the Lakers and Clippers have become one
of the most compelling and complicated rivalries in sports. It's
sold through the man who has been at the center above,
the great Jerry West. But Westward is also the story
(01:07):
of why the city of Los Angeles has had such
an effect on the game and more importantly its influence
on American culture, from Elgin Baylor to Kobe, from the
Buffalo Braves to the La Clippers. This is Westward. Westward
is the production of the Dan Patrick podcast network and
(01:29):
iHeartRadio episode one Jerry West The Phantom Threat. American culture
has always been inextricably linked to the sports it has loved,
and for over a century, the sported loved most was baseball.
(02:05):
Filled with sentimentality and passed down from fathers to sons,
the game represented America's heart. Today, I consider myself the
luckiest man on the face. If baseball represented the birth
of the American sport, the game of football was its baptism.
(02:29):
Although team oriented, the game was about power, and it
was violent. Baseball may have been in our blood, but
it was in the game of football where Americans found
their spirit. However, by the end of the twentieth century,
another American sport would come of age. Unlike the two
other major sports, which were firmly rooted in East Coast acculturation,
(02:52):
rich in American myth and lord, the game of basketball
has always been regional. New York basketball is different than
Indiana basketball. James Nasmith invented the game in Massachusetts, but
don't tell that to Kansas. For Kentucky, every region has
its own way of playing, its own quirks, it's own style,
and that's what makes the game great. No other sport
(03:14):
allows for that kind of expression. Basketball games can resewn,
ballet or assemble. Boxing just depends on where the game's
taking place. No longer regional, the game of basketball now
belongs to the world, and right now the center of
(03:35):
the basketball world is in downtown Los Angeles, where a
battle for supremacy is taking place between the two NBA
teams that call this home. As franchises go, the two
Los Angeles teams could not be more different. One has
won the NBA's Western Conference thirty times, taken home sixteen
(03:56):
World Championships, posted twenty seven Hall of Famers, and has
retired nine jersey numbers. The other is the Los Angeles Clippers.
The Clippers could not only be the worst franchise and
professional basketball, but in all professional sports. It is an
organization whose former owner had to be forcibly removed and
(04:18):
boasts the league's all time lowest winning percentage. The Clippers
have never been to a Western Conference final, have never
had a Hall of Fame player, nor have ever retired
a former player's number. But for the first time in
the organization's history, AILA's other team isn't showing a heart meat,
It's showing a clenched fist. Because if the Staples Center
(04:40):
represents the center of the basketball world, then the center
of that center is the man who helped build the
dynasty of one and is now responsible for building the
one to topple it. Jerome Allan West, thank whing, you're
one more sound by just for contact for the dance,
(05:00):
Can you just say my name is Jerry West and
um and that's up to you, hope you don't want
to describe yourself. My name is Jerry West, and just
describe yourself for the audience as quickly or as for
both of these you want describe myself. I'm an old motherfucker. Okay,
here's okay. I mean, I don't have to talk about myself. Guys,
(05:21):
I don't okay, you can just be your title for
the Clippers. I know we can't. You can't helps me anyway,
do you? Man? You Hi? I'm Jerry West, longtime basketball player,
long time executive, very proud of my association with the
Los Angeles Lakers for numerous years, and now I'm with
(05:42):
the Los Angeles Clippers, working for Steve Baumber, who hopes
to change the landscape of basketball and Los Angeles. It's perfect, man,
that's a round quick. I'm not taking any fucking pictures
with you. Man. Well, obviously to me, I don't think
(06:03):
I'm the lakers favorite person anymore. I don't know why,
but I'm not. This is not about the Clippers unrooting
the Lakers from their pedestal. That will never happen. Historical
greatness of the Lakers for years has been remarkable, but
for seven straight years, the Clippers had the best team
(06:24):
in Los Angeles. What I'm watching and I always try
to be objective, I don't try to because I like
one team better than the other. Clipper fans will never
be Laker fan, and Laker fans are never going to
be a Clipper fan. Jerry West loves basketball and it
has been the better part of his life for seventy years.
(06:45):
But the underlying and defining characteristic of that love, and
the singular driving force that he believes is the cornerstone
of every business, hobby, and pastime in Americana, is competition.
And this is a force that has possessed Jerry West
for his entire life. I fucking hate losing. I hate
(07:07):
giving end to people who think you're smarter than other people.
Life is about competition. The most competitive people played the
most competitive game. If you're not going to be a
competitive don't do it. As perceptions go, Jerry West isn't
your prototypical Los Angeleano. Born and raised in Canawa County,
(07:28):
West Virginia, He's straight laced, modestly dressed, and quiet. But
a closer look at the man and the city that
has adopted him reveals that his spirit and drive are
as much a part of Los Angeles as Hollywood itself.
Jerry West has always been enigmatic because of his background.
(07:49):
He was raised in an abusive household. Moreover, he's a
white dude who excelled at a black sport. He grew
up in the now. He lives in Los Angeles, and
in a way, LA is really a city for outsiders,
which is why he has been so revered and embraced
(08:11):
in the city of Angels. You know, I think in
my life and I can explain to you folks better,
I grew up like a dog, very much like a
lot of people I played with, you almost feel disenfranchise.
Self worth is always a big issue, a huge issue,
and you grew up feeling like, you know, fuck, I'm
(08:33):
gonna get hip today and whatever, I've done nothing wrong
and in your own home. A home is supposed to
be a place when you're growing up, a place where
you feel safe. You're hoping for some guidance and encouragement.
Where I never saw that in my life. Okay, so
I've been defying all my life. Probably have never changed.
(08:57):
Having spent the first forty years of his career as
a Laker and the last three as a Clipper, Jerry
West has become an icon for fans of both and
a personification of the phantom thread that runs through this
city and the sported loves, one that includes both the
old and the new, one that has managed to bind
(09:20):
both style and substance, and one that has weaved the
tapestry responsible for the seismic shift in sports and culture
from the East Coast to Los Angeles. I was born
in la in nineteen eighty six, at the height of
the Showtime era. This is a basketball town, but it's
not a basketball town without Jerry West. The Clippers and
(09:40):
Lakers played the same building, but they were never rivals.
The Lakers were the class the league. The Clippers were
a laughing stock. But now that Jerry West is with
the Clippers building a contender, not only has it become
a rivalry, now it's personal. And if you talk to
some fans, like comedian George Lopez, it's more than personal.
It's blood. It's almost like, you know, if you ever
(10:03):
have a stepbrother, he's not a full brother, he's your stepbrothers.
So when your mom's saying, like, you know, make peace
with your brother, you always remind us as stepbrothers, stepbrother
But you know, coming to Los Angeles and then coming
into Staples Center and covering our championship banners with posters
of their players, is it's unfathomable to me that we
(10:26):
would allow even that to happen because and no other
arena does that happen, And you know, in Hollywood, you
would figure. You know, these guys probably went there and said,
you know, when we're playing, you know, we don't want
to look up there and see sixteen banners and retired numbers,
and you know, I say, fucking play better. And Cherry West,
(10:48):
you know, being a Laker and being brilliant mind as
a general manager helped us in that, and I thought
that he should have stayed our general manager forever, almost
like you know, almost like being a Supreme Court justice.
You're in, man like you're in. Because he's put together
great teams everywhere that he's gone, and he's a fucking
with the Clippers. I will not go to a Clipper game.
(11:11):
I wouldn't go to if Jack Nicholson went to a
Clipper game, I would probably go to the highest point
of this house and jump off. While they have never
been rivals on the basketball court, the two teams presence
in Los Angeles has come to symbolize a deeper social
rift that has divided Los Angeleos since the Clippers arrived
in nineteen eighty four. Hollywood writer an avid Clipper fan
(11:32):
Chris Lloyd has seen his work garner more Emmy's than
any writer in the history of television, and the Emmy
goes too Modern Family and Modern Family wins Best Comedy
for a fourth time in a row. But he's never
seen his favorite NBA team compete for a championship. Most
people who live in Los Angeles aren't from here, they're
from somewhere else. My family moved to California when I
(11:53):
was a teenager. I was lifelong basketball fan, grew up
a Knicks fan. I was a Laker fan in the
early mid seventies, even before showtime. Remember NBA Finals being
shown on tape delay. I mean, the NBA was not
at all the juggernaut it is today. But yeah, I
moved back East for a while, so right into adulthood,
(12:14):
I came to see the character of teams a little
bit more. I think, so you come here, you got
a choice of who you can be a fan. You
can be a fan of Lakers, you can be a
fan of the Clipperson. So if you're coming here and
you have a choice, to go with the dying canon
Jack Nicholson Laker girl, Like, no one would blame you.
Who would ever be a fan of the Clippers. They're terrible.
(12:36):
They're not just terrible every year they started, but they
come in with just a whiff of terrible. For the
prolific writer and creator, becoming a full time Clipper fan
was an evolution. It did for a while have seats
to both teams, and then I sort of gradually shed
my Laker affiliation. It became a full time Clipper fan
(12:56):
season ticket holder, have been now for about twenty five years.
If you ask me why I stopped being a Laker
fan because of the asshole with the rolled up program.
He emblematizes the Laker fandom and the Laker or to me,
he sits courtside and every game he comes with a
rolled up program in his hand and he spends half
(13:18):
the game on his feet banging that program against his hand. Now,
why would a guy need a trademark? Because you want
people to pay attention to you and not the players.
And that's, to me, is half of the Laker crap.
They come to be seen. They come to do little
things or check their phones, or I mean the Clipper
fans they're still like wiping the grease off their hands
(13:39):
because they were mechanics during the day or whatever. So
I think I found myself going, like, I think I
want to be in the seats with those people, the
people that are going to root for that awful team.
We don't come with a program rolled up to draw
attention to ourselves. We come to see the team on
the floor. It is early July twenty nineteen in the
(13:59):
movie at the Staples Center is tense. The NBA's free
agent season is in full swing. This offseason's crop of
free agents is said to be one of the best ever,
highlighted by two of the game's top players. But in
today's NBA, it's not enough for a franchise to win
over just one of them. To win a championship, a
(14:21):
team has to have at least two. You start the
Lakers in two thousand with Shack n Kobe. There has
been a couple of anomalies, but for the most part,
if you look at the Warriors, the Lakers, the Celtics,
the Heat, and even the Caps with Kyrie and Lebron,
most teams have at least two star players. And I
think if you look at the NBA today in twenty twenty,
(14:43):
it really start with the Miami Heat. It was Lebron,
Chris Bosh and Dwayne Wade, three buddies, all deciding to
link up in Miami. Star players today they all know
each other, they all play together in the summer. They're
all part of USA Basketball All Star teams. It's a
fraternity and they want to play together. Having signed the
game's pre eminent superstar, Lebron, Jay it's just a year early.
(15:05):
The Los Angeles Lakers already have won, and in one
of the worst kept secrets in league history, they have
already snatched up one of the players at the top
of the new list, Anthony Davis, before the off season
had even begun. But the crown jewel of the free
agent class is two time NBA Finals MVP Kawhi Leonard.
You're twenty nineteen, Bill Russell Finals MVP is Kawhi Leonard.
(15:30):
Kawhi might be the NBA's last great mystery. Clippers, Lakers, Nets, Nicks,
and the Raptors. Those are the five teams that will
be involved in the Kawhi Leonards. So when it comes
to Kawa, it's so close to the best. Front officers
throughout the league are working furiously in an attempt to
change their team's destiny through buying, selling, or trading. The
(15:53):
Clippers are trying to do all three, but the odds
are not in their favor. Chrisperus are just flat out
wrote Whippers out. But I'm ninety nine. Here is that
Kawa Leonard will be returning to Toronto. But this being
(16:13):
Los Angeles, there's a pluck twist. You are listening to
Westward on the Dan Patrick Podcast Network, We'll be right back.
A year ago, Paul George is standing on a stage
(16:34):
in Oklahoma City and he's telling a crowd of people
that he's here to stay in A year later, he's
requesting a trade. Another superstar is thrown into the mix
and as a matter of course, meeting destiny. Both players
grew up in Los Angeles and have expressed interest in
coming home. Superstars returning to their home. They have been
popularized by Lebron James. But there's one thing that superstars
(16:56):
like more than returning home, and that's to play with
other superstars. And the Clippers don't have any Clippers never
going to steal La. Let me make that very clear.
Why in the world would you want to go to
the Clippers? And just two years ago, the notion that
any player in the league would choose the Clippers over
the Lakers was an absurdity. The thing that sucks most
(17:18):
about being the Clippers is that they're in the same
office building. Think about New England Patriots sharing an office
building with the Cleveland Brands, right. But now there's something
within the organization that wasn't ever there before, and it's
the thing that gives the Clipper faithful hope and what's that?
Jerry West, Well, I didn't know what to expect when
(17:39):
I first met mister Bamber. I had breakfast with him
and we were talking and asked a bunch of questions.
You know, he trying to get a feel for who
you're dealing with, and he'd asked me questions about what
I thought. I said, you're gonna have to build your
own image of what you want with the Clippers. And
then we had another meeting and I got a call
from him that afternoon. He wanted me to be involved
(17:59):
with him, and I started thinking about it. I knew
Doc Rivers a coach, and I've always liked and cared
about him. All of a sudden, I said, well, this
might be fun. It's been said that home is where
the hatred he is. And when Jerry West returned to
Los Angeles and set up shop in the Clippers locker room,
(18:21):
the city turned upside down. It wasn't a rivalry before
the logo returned. But to understand what it really means
and how it came to this, you first have to
study the history of Los Angeles and his relationship to
sports and entertainment, and how the game of basketball evolved
(18:43):
in the city of Angels. Basketball may not have been
created in Los Angeles, but a strong argument can be
made that it did create the fertile soil in which
the modern NBA would take root. And though the city
may be known for Hollywood, beneath its amalgam of hip
hop and surf cultures, industry and progressive ideas lies a sportstown,
(19:07):
says NPR essayist and Los Angeles historian Dj Waldy. When
people look at Los Angeles region from outside, and most
of the interpreters of Los Angeles for most of its
history have been outsiders, they'd often only see Hollywood, and
they make the mistake of thinking that Los Angeles is
(19:29):
Hollywood or Hollywood is Los Angeles, and it's simply not true.
Los Angeles was always a sportstown, just in a different
way because for most of the history of Los Angeles,
what a sportstown met was who had a major league
baseball team. We didn't have a major legue baseball team. Therefore,
we weren't a sports minded town. College university sports were
(19:50):
much of the game for much of the twentieth century.
It took a while for Angelinos to shift their loyalties
from the college teams they followed to the professional teams.
The city of Los Angeles had already cultivated a deep
and abiding love with basketball, due in large part to
an innovation that could have only come from Los Angeles.
(20:10):
One of the characteristics of Southern California in the postwar
period was an explosion of innovation. It was taking materials
and processes that had been developed in the warriors to
make things for the war effort and turning those war
industries and war materials into new products. One such product
(20:31):
came from the Void Rubber Company on Harbor Boulevard, and
it would change the game of basketball. It's an amazing story.
What it's about is taking an industrial product and transforming
what had been a kind of elite sport using a
lot of hand crafted materials, and turning that into something
(20:52):
that kids played on the apron of their parents' driveway.
And we're talking about the development of the inexpensive synthetic
material basketball, which became something every kid, certainly every boy,
in every Lakewood house in the late nineteen fifties, half
(21:13):
and everyone played some kind of pickup game in the
driveway with a hoop holding to the front of the garage.
One can see how talent would arise from that explosion
of participation. The invention was an accidental civil rights triumph.
Until the creation of the Void, basketball could only be
(21:34):
played indoors and the cost of a basketball was the
equivalent of over two hundred dollars. The price of the
new Boyd was under a dollar. The invention of the
void basketball became a gateway for people like me in
four neighborhoods around the United States. Boy had made it
(21:58):
financially feasible for like me around the nation to have
the ball. There was attainable. Suddenly all throughout Los Angeles,
from the driveways of South Central to the Covi sacts
of suburban Covid City, and all the way to Venice Beach,
basketball rooms started sprowsing up like the palm trees along
San Vincenti. So you had all these elements. You had Hollywood,
(22:22):
you had a love of basketball. You had a Rabbit
fan base. So you had all these sports fans. But
there was no one professional team in Los Angeles that
really captured the identity of the city. The Dodgers there
from Brooklyn, the Rams, they came and then they left.
The Angels. They came and then they left. Fans are competitive,
and big cities don't just want teams, they want teams
(22:44):
that reflect who they are, right Pittsburgh and Steeve kurtin Philadelphia,
Broad Street Bulleys Cincinnati, the Big Red Machine. LA sports
fans wanted that they were starving for that, and then,
as if it was written in Hollywood itself, the Lakers
literally fell from the sky. Long before they would fall
(23:05):
from the sky, the team that would ultimately become the
Lakers were the Detroit Gems. The Detroit Gems probably should
become the LA Clippers because they were the worst team
to ever play professional basketball. They played their home games
at a high school on the city's southwest side, Their
best player averaged nine points a game, and they went
one in twenty seven in their final year in nineteen
(23:27):
forty seven. But despite this, the team drew the attention
of the current businessmen from Minnesota named Ben Burger Maurice Chappan,
who wanted to bring the team in Minneapolis and offered
to buy the Gems to avoid the association with the
Gem's failure. The new owners would rename the team to
honor Minnesota and its land of ten Thousand Lakes, and
(23:48):
on November third, nineteen forty nine, the Minneapolis Lakers were born. Man,
where do you look to find the world's greatest basketball team, Well,
look for the land of ten Thousand Lakes. On any
(24:09):
given day during his boyhood summers of nineteen fifty seven,
a young Brian Short would walk out of the house
he shared with his six brothers and sisters, and there
grazing in his front yard of the Short family home
in Adena, Minnesota, where a small herd of Shetland ponies.
The animals were yet another inexplicable purchase by their wealthy father,
who bought them as part of an even larger inexplicable purchase,
(24:32):
the Minneapolis Lakers. My dad was a promoter, if nothing else,
and he was always trying to figure out ways to
get people to come in. One of his many contests
was withdrawing for a Shetland pony at a Lakers game,
and he thought that would be great because what kid
didn't want a pony? And my dad figured if he
could get the kids to want to come, the parents
(24:53):
would have to come and life would be good. And
so every time he ran that promotion, we ended up
with a pony at our house. A matter of fact,
some kid living in the city would be hard pressed
to find a place to put the dam pony. Bob
Short may have enjoyed promotion, but the business in which
he made his money was transportation. And though it may
have been difficult to bring fans to home games, a
(25:16):
far greater problem was getting his Lakers to away games.
I or this is hard for us to understand a
pushy for you guys, I bet it was kind of
the westernmost part of the United States almost My dad
was always an aviation guy. Frankly, you know, he served
on an aircraft carrier in the war and business, so
he's always opened to aviation as a form of transportation.
(25:38):
Bob Short then bought a fixed wing propeller driven DC
three through a company called Gopher Aviation that had been
built in the nineteen thirties. The plane was so old,
in fact, that some of the employees who worked for
Gopher Aviation were actually taught by the Right brothers. This
(26:00):
is what fell from the sky. It was Saturday night,
January eighteenth, nineteen sixty and Bob Short's Minneapolis Lakers were
on the tarmac of Lambert Field in Saint Louis, Missouri,
waiting for takeoff in the middle of a dismal season
in which they would finish twenty one games out of
first place. They had just lost their fifth game in
a row to the Saint Louis Hawks and wanted to
(26:23):
go home. But there was a problem. And here's the
latest weather reform. Rain changing to snow. What had originally
been forecast as light rain was now being described as
an ice storm. Ninety seven year old Harold Gifford, the
Team Planes pilot, remembers the night well oiler wasps for Garding.
(26:52):
I had the father of sig Wana. We go to
the Ryan at eight Clark. We took off, had he
After less than five minutes into the flight, the plane
(27:21):
lost power right after fear the life. They went frightened
and dim and out. The only indication I had rod
a couple of the Lookmaders and they both registered zeros
and ad in trouble. Fortunately for those aboard, Harold Gifford,
(27:42):
the former World War Two pilot, had been accustomed to
flying in trouble. By nine pm that night, where it
had already reached Bob Short in Minnesota, that his team
was in trouble that evening, and my mother was pretty strict.
But before I went to bed, I remember there was
a lot of tension in the house. Dad was running around.
He was a big phone guy. He was talking on
(28:02):
the phone all the time. But you know, a lot
of tensions. I don't think I understood the significance of
it at the time because I'm nine years old, right.
But these were all people that he knew, all friends,
you know. He considered the players fans. Unable to ascend
above the storm or navigate around the storm, pilot Harold
Gifford was left with only one option or try to
(28:24):
go through it. So I followed the North Star initially,
and now he headed north on our my own compass,
and so now we're fresh from the problem. So I said,
I think we'd better consider going down to find the
pressure or contact with the ground. Her cousin, ifore you
run out of fuel world, we're at four thousand, end
(28:47):
of cause we're there. You are listening to Westward on
the Dan Patrick podcast network. We be right back. The
ground below was barely visible through the blizzard and had
(29:08):
been covered by the torrent of sleet, columns of snow
and insurance policies. All players of that for US didn't
make anywhere near enough money playing as a basketball player
to survive. So they all had offseason jobs. And I'm
pre sure Dick Garmakers was as a life insurance salesman
or some kind of insurance. And so they know they've
(29:31):
lost all electrical power, they don't know how they're going
to land. They're all convinced they're going to die. Garmaker
walks up and down the aisle of the airplane, selling
insurance and filling out the form. And the plan was
they knew the plane was going to crash and burn
on impact, so they had to take these little scraps
of paper and throw them out the window. Hopefully somebody
(29:52):
would find them, and then they would find that player
air player B had life insurance. The company would have
to pay on the insurance. While some of the players
dropped their signed policies to the ground below, others, along
with their pilot, Harold Gifford, sought out a higher insurance policy.
Prayers sent above the Fred Barness watches us very sure
(30:15):
could drives help bunch your blave that comes Highers seventy
one and say a lighted Hams beer standing on the side,
and I know that we had a recast the build.
As we circled this town, I daughter start the edge
of town of Corkfield. The scene of an ice covered
(30:35):
Midwestern earth and the impending collision of what came from
the sky was an eerie reminder of what had happened
less than a year prior, when the red Beechcraft B
thirty five, carrying three of rock and roll's biggest stars,
slammed into another frozen cornfield in clear Lake, Iowa, less
than a hundred miles away. We interrupt this problem from
our special news bulletin three young singers who soared to
(30:57):
the heights of show business on the current rock and
roll craze or killed today in the crash of a
light plane in an iOS No flurry. The singers were
identified as Richie Valin seventeen, Bubby Holly twenty two, and J. P. Richardson,
known professionally as the Big Boppers. That was starting a
life in my mind, the first thing in my mind
is oh, I going to get this shirt place to
(31:20):
the gloves. But it had most certainly been on the
minds of dozens of locals who had lived in the
wake of that tragedy, many of whom poured out of
their homes at one ten am after hearing local station
Kseim's Clarion Cole, including the family of Eric Niswanger. Everyone
was awakened with the loud engines of the DC three
(31:41):
plane buzzing the town about nine times. Many jumped into
their cars to help guide the way. I've heard many
of the proud stories from my parents and the city forefathers.
Iowans are very caring people, and with the history of
Buddy Holly's plane crash only eleven months earlier in the Sunel,
no one wanted to have another tragedy like the day
the music died. Nobody wanted to have that happen again.
(32:03):
Not much as we touched down because hearing a car
hit the earth player and as soon as I shut
the edges had ever heard such a lot scrubs and hollers,
and the first rust barkers are coming from the road thereby,
(32:25):
and they hear all those hollers. This is going to
be a terrible hollers. Was picked up by a hearse
or the guy and said, I thought we were going
to ask for business today. We had a guy he'd
been a church at but he called his wife and
told him and hut him. She said, to be a
(32:45):
call when you're solder up. One of the players who
knows the story of the plane's unscheduled landing but was
not on the flight is Jerry West. A lot of
people thought I was in it. I was not. Of course,
I was aware of the story because I was with
them the next year. They were talking about these guys
(33:06):
were making promises. They never drink again, they never do this,
They're going to go to church every day. I don't
think all those promises were kept, because I saw a
bunch of guys who drank a lot when I got there.
If that plane crashes, not only does the entire team die,
the NBA most likely dies with it. And had nothing happened,
they say Minneapolis and go bankrupt with the rest of
(33:28):
the league. It was the incident that pushed the team
to LA and forever changed the history of professional basketball.
As a coda to the event, in two ten, the
Laker organization donated twenty five thousand dollars to the Carol
Chamber of Comers for the construction of an outdoor court
(33:49):
in honor of the team and the city's unexpected connection
on that snowy night in January of nineteen sixty. Now
outside carol in the midst of these rules world Farmlands,
half cyclone, half Hawkeye Country, a basketball court can be
found just feet from where the team's airplane successfully ladened.
Perhaps in any other place, the bright, purple and gold
(34:12):
floor located in the middle of nowhere would stand out
as one of the many oddities checkered throughout the Midwest,
But here it doesn't. Two thousand miles away, in Los Angeles,
late Friday night on July fifth, just minutes ago, Adan
Award Zanowski reporting that Kawhi Leonard is going to join
(34:33):
the Clippers. The Clippers have also made a deal to
acquire Paul George from the Oklahoma City thunder Stunned. Stunned
to say the lead Jerry West this weekend ran the NBA.
He's eighty one. Kawhi Leonard. Got a phone call from
Cool Magic, not interested, got a phone call from Lebron,
not interested. Yet he went to dinner with eighty one
year old Jerry West at a steakhouse, sat across from
(34:56):
him and said, I like you, but a high school
gym in south central Los Angeles Professional Basketball's most accomplished executive,
Jerry West, can be found doing what he does best, teach.
I'm right, all right. What makes Jerry so special? It's
(35:20):
Jerry truly cares about people first, and right behind that
is his furious competitive nature. The man got to win.
It's just in his DNA, and I have no doubt
that this team he's put together is going to come
(35:40):
out on top in this batoty for La. Jerry West
is from the rugged foothills of Canada County, West Virginia.
He is eighty two years old and dis white. The
prospect he teachers is from the streets of south central California,
is twenty two years old and it's black. Watching the
younger wrapped in attention and the older, honored to pass
(36:03):
along his wisdom, both found by their mutual love of
the game, one comes to understand that while baseball may
be in the American heart and football may be in
the American spirit, it is the game of basketball that
occupies the American soul. And for that reason, just for now,
(36:24):
the Battle of Los Angeles will have to wait. Next time.
On Westward, just months after he had nearly lost his
entire team, to a plane crash in carol Isole. Bob
Short formerly asked permission from NBA owners to relocate his
(36:46):
Laker team to Los Angeles. In a resounding unanimous vote
of seven to zero, the NBA said no. Long before
there was a battle four LA. There was a battle
to LA. At the time, owners were preoccupied with just surviving,
so that meant constantly moving to bigger markets. But it
(37:08):
wasn't actually the move that saved the Lakers. It was
something else. There had been word of a legend from
the streets of Washington, DC, a local athlete whose ability
was almost midi. They called him the rabbits. Elgian Daylor
was a magician on the court. If he was playing today,
(37:31):
I mean people talked about him and Michael Jordan and
Michael Jordan's early date. That was pretty good athlete. No,
I could play all sports, but mothers talk about you
can playing football, and you know, she said, no, you're
not going to do something like that. So it's a
basketball if you want to play play basketball. Elgian Daylor
literally saved the franchise. The revolution is not always televised,
(37:57):
and the action of courage and willingness to sacrifice many
times is not publicized. What Elson Baylor did is one
of the most significant stories yet to be told. Westward
is a production of the Dan Patrick podcast Network, Joy
(38:19):
Road Entertainment and iHeartRadio in association with Workhouse Media and
Sugar twenty three. Executive produced by Paul Anderson and Nick
Pinella for Workhouse Media and by Michael Sugar and Mike
Mayer for Sugar twenty three. Joy Road Entertainment is pg Cuscieri,
Jim Young, Matthew Hatchett, Bobby Glantone Smith, and Tim Livingston,
(38:42):
Produced by Casey Whalen and edited by Charlie Magdaleno by
Whalend Productions. Westward is narrated by Emmy Award winner Keith David.
Producers would like to thank Chris Lloyd, George Lopez, Harold Gifford,
and NPRS DJ Waldy for their contributions. Our most sincere
gratitude also goes family of Bob Short, Eric Niswanger and
the good people of Carol, Iowa, and of course, the
(39:06):
great Jerry West. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the
iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Thanks for listening.
We interrupt your usual stream of DP show content to
bring you a special episode of a new podcast on
the Dan Patrick Show Network. It's called Westward. Westward chronicles
the history of basketball in the NBA and how the
city of Los Angeles not only saved the fledgling league
by bringing the Lakers from Minneapolis, but gave birth to
the modern NBA. With showtime told through the lens of
(00:24):
the great Cherry West, who helped build the dynasty of
the Lakers. Westward now follows the former Hall of Famer
as he attempts to build a dynasty with LA's other
NBA team, the Clippers. Narrators are Keith David, Tim Livingston,
Bobby Glanton Smith. I hope you enjoy Hi. I'm sports
(00:45):
journalist Tim Livingston and I'm Bobby Glanton Smith. Westward is
a podcast about the birth of professional basketball in Los
Angeles and how the Lakers and Clippers have become one
of the most compelling and complicated rivalries in sports. It's
sold through the man who has been at the center above,
the great Jerry West. But Westward is also the story
(01:07):
of why the city of Los Angeles has had such
an effect on the game and more importantly its influence
on American culture, from Elgin Baylor to Kobe, from the
Buffalo Braves to the La Clippers. This is Westward. Westward
is the production of the Dan Patrick podcast network and
(01:29):
iHeartRadio episode one Jerry West The Phantom Threat. American culture
has always been inextricably linked to the sports it has loved,
and for over a century, the sported loved most was baseball.
(02:05):
Filled with sentimentality and passed down from fathers to sons,
the game represented America's heart. Today, I consider myself the
luckiest man on the face. If baseball represented the birth
of the American sport, the game of football was its baptism.
(02:29):
Although team oriented, the game was about power, and it
was violent. Baseball may have been in our blood, but
it was in the game of football where Americans found
their spirit. However, by the end of the twentieth century,
another American sport would come of age. Unlike the two
other major sports, which were firmly rooted in East Coast acculturation,
(02:52):
rich in American myth and lord, the game of basketball
has always been regional. New York basketball is different than
Indiana basketball. James Nasmith invented the game in Massachusetts, but
don't tell that to Kansas. For Kentucky, every region has
its own way of playing, its own quirks, it's own style,
and that's what makes the game great. No other sport
(03:14):
allows for that kind of expression. Basketball games can resewn,
ballet or assemble. Boxing just depends on where the game's
taking place. No longer regional, the game of basketball now
belongs to the world, and right now the center of
(03:35):
the basketball world is in downtown Los Angeles, where a
battle for supremacy is taking place between the two NBA
teams that call this home. As franchises go, the two
Los Angeles teams could not be more different. One has
won the NBA's Western Conference thirty times, taken home sixteen
(03:56):
World Championships, posted twenty seven Hall of Famers, and has
retired nine jersey numbers. The other is the Los Angeles Clippers.
The Clippers could not only be the worst franchise and
professional basketball, but in all professional sports. It is an
organization whose former owner had to be forcibly removed and
(04:18):
boasts the league's all time lowest winning percentage. The Clippers
have never been to a Western Conference final, have never
had a Hall of Fame player, nor have ever retired
a former player's number. But for the first time in
the organization's history, AILA's other team isn't showing a heart meat,
It's showing a clenched fist. Because if the Staples Center
(04:40):
represents the center of the basketball world, then the center
of that center is the man who helped build the
dynasty of one and is now responsible for building the
one to topple it. Jerome Allan West, thank whing, you're
one more sound by just for contact for the dance,
(05:00):
Can you just say my name is Jerry West and
um and that's up to you, hope you don't want
to describe yourself. My name is Jerry West, and just
describe yourself for the audience as quickly or as for
both of these you want describe myself. I'm an old motherfucker. Okay,
here's okay. I mean, I don't have to talk about myself. Guys,
(05:21):
I don't okay, you can just be your title for
the Clippers. I know we can't. You can't helps me anyway,
do you? Man? You Hi? I'm Jerry West, longtime basketball player,
long time executive, very proud of my association with the
Los Angeles Lakers for numerous years, and now I'm with
(05:42):
the Los Angeles Clippers, working for Steve Baumber, who hopes
to change the landscape of basketball and Los Angeles. It's perfect, man,
that's a round quick. I'm not taking any fucking pictures
with you. Man. Well, obviously to me, I don't think
(06:03):
I'm the lakers favorite person anymore. I don't know why,
but I'm not. This is not about the Clippers unrooting
the Lakers from their pedestal. That will never happen. Historical
greatness of the Lakers for years has been remarkable, but
for seven straight years, the Clippers had the best team
(06:24):
in Los Angeles. What I'm watching and I always try
to be objective, I don't try to because I like
one team better than the other. Clipper fans will never
be Laker fan, and Laker fans are never going to
be a Clipper fan. Jerry West loves basketball and it
has been the better part of his life for seventy years.
(06:45):
But the underlying and defining characteristic of that love, and
the singular driving force that he believes is the cornerstone
of every business, hobby, and pastime in Americana, is competition.
And this is a force that has possessed Jerry West
for his entire life. I fucking hate losing. I hate
(07:07):
giving end to people who think you're smarter than other people.
Life is about competition. The most competitive people played the
most competitive game. If you're not going to be a
competitive don't do it. As perceptions go, Jerry West isn't
your prototypical Los Angeleano. Born and raised in Canawa County,
(07:28):
West Virginia, He's straight laced, modestly dressed, and quiet. But
a closer look at the man and the city that
has adopted him reveals that his spirit and drive are
as much a part of Los Angeles as Hollywood itself.
Jerry West has always been enigmatic because of his background.
(07:49):
He was raised in an abusive household. Moreover, he's a
white dude who excelled at a black sport. He grew
up in the now. He lives in Los Angeles, and
in a way, LA is really a city for outsiders,
which is why he has been so revered and embraced
(08:11):
in the city of Angels. You know, I think in
my life and I can explain to you folks better,
I grew up like a dog, very much like a
lot of people I played with, you almost feel disenfranchise.
Self worth is always a big issue, a huge issue,
and you grew up feeling like, you know, fuck, I'm
(08:33):
gonna get hip today and whatever, I've done nothing wrong
and in your own home. A home is supposed to
be a place when you're growing up, a place where
you feel safe. You're hoping for some guidance and encouragement.
Where I never saw that in my life. Okay, so
I've been defying all my life. Probably have never changed.
(08:57):
Having spent the first forty years of his career as
a Laker and the last three as a Clipper, Jerry
West has become an icon for fans of both and
a personification of the phantom thread that runs through this
city and the sported loves, one that includes both the
old and the new, one that has managed to bind
(09:20):
both style and substance, and one that has weaved the
tapestry responsible for the seismic shift in sports and culture
from the East Coast to Los Angeles. I was born
in la in nineteen eighty six, at the height of
the Showtime era. This is a basketball town, but it's
not a basketball town without Jerry West. The Clippers and
(09:40):
Lakers played the same building, but they were never rivals.
The Lakers were the class the league. The Clippers were
a laughing stock. But now that Jerry West is with
the Clippers building a contender, not only has it become
a rivalry, now it's personal. And if you talk to
some fans, like comedian George Lopez, it's more than personal.
It's blood. It's almost like, you know, if you ever
(10:03):
have a stepbrother, he's not a full brother, he's your stepbrothers.
So when your mom's saying, like, you know, make peace
with your brother, you always remind us as stepbrothers, stepbrother
But you know, coming to Los Angeles and then coming
into Staples Center and covering our championship banners with posters
of their players, is it's unfathomable to me that we
(10:26):
would allow even that to happen because and no other
arena does that happen, And you know, in Hollywood, you
would figure. You know, these guys probably went there and said,
you know, when we're playing, you know, we don't want
to look up there and see sixteen banners and retired numbers,
and you know, I say, fucking play better. And Cherry West,
(10:48):
you know, being a Laker and being brilliant mind as
a general manager helped us in that, and I thought
that he should have stayed our general manager forever, almost
like you know, almost like being a Supreme Court justice.
You're in, man like you're in. Because he's put together
great teams everywhere that he's gone, and he's a fucking
with the Clippers. I will not go to a Clipper game.
(11:11):
I wouldn't go to if Jack Nicholson went to a
Clipper game, I would probably go to the highest point
of this house and jump off. While they have never
been rivals on the basketball court, the two teams presence
in Los Angeles has come to symbolize a deeper social
rift that has divided Los Angeleos since the Clippers arrived
in nineteen eighty four. Hollywood writer an avid Clipper fan
(11:32):
Chris Lloyd has seen his work garner more Emmy's than
any writer in the history of television, and the Emmy
goes too Modern Family and Modern Family wins Best Comedy
for a fourth time in a row. But he's never
seen his favorite NBA team compete for a championship. Most
people who live in Los Angeles aren't from here, they're
from somewhere else. My family moved to California when I
(11:53):
was a teenager. I was lifelong basketball fan, grew up
a Knicks fan. I was a Laker fan in the
early mid seventies, even before showtime. Remember NBA Finals being
shown on tape delay. I mean, the NBA was not
at all the juggernaut it is today. But yeah, I
moved back East for a while, so right into adulthood,
(12:14):
I came to see the character of teams a little
bit more. I think, so you come here, you got
a choice of who you can be a fan. You
can be a fan of Lakers, you can be a
fan of the Clipperson. So if you're coming here and
you have a choice, to go with the dying canon
Jack Nicholson Laker girl, Like, no one would blame you.
Who would ever be a fan of the Clippers. They're terrible.
(12:36):
They're not just terrible every year they started, but they
come in with just a whiff of terrible. For the
prolific writer and creator, becoming a full time Clipper fan
was an evolution. It did for a while have seats
to both teams, and then I sort of gradually shed
my Laker affiliation. It became a full time Clipper fan
(12:56):
season ticket holder, have been now for about twenty five years.
If you ask me why I stopped being a Laker
fan because of the asshole with the rolled up program.
He emblematizes the Laker fandom and the Laker or to me,
he sits courtside and every game he comes with a
rolled up program in his hand and he spends half
(13:18):
the game on his feet banging that program against his hand. Now,
why would a guy need a trademark? Because you want
people to pay attention to you and not the players.
And that's, to me, is half of the Laker crap.
They come to be seen. They come to do little
things or check their phones, or I mean the Clipper
fans they're still like wiping the grease off their hands
(13:39):
because they were mechanics during the day or whatever. So
I think I found myself going, like, I think I
want to be in the seats with those people, the
people that are going to root for that awful team.
We don't come with a program rolled up to draw
attention to ourselves. We come to see the team on
the floor. It is early July twenty nineteen in the
(13:59):
movie at the Staples Center is tense. The NBA's free
agent season is in full swing. This offseason's crop of
free agents is said to be one of the best ever,
highlighted by two of the game's top players. But in
today's NBA, it's not enough for a franchise to win
over just one of them. To win a championship, a
(14:21):
team has to have at least two. You start the
Lakers in two thousand with Shack n Kobe. There has
been a couple of anomalies, but for the most part,
if you look at the Warriors, the Lakers, the Celtics,
the Heat, and even the Caps with Kyrie and Lebron,
most teams have at least two star players. And I
think if you look at the NBA today in twenty twenty,
(14:43):
it really start with the Miami Heat. It was Lebron,
Chris Bosh and Dwayne Wade, three buddies, all deciding to
link up in Miami. Star players today they all know
each other, they all play together in the summer. They're
all part of USA Basketball All Star teams. It's a
fraternity and they want to play together. Having signed the
game's pre eminent superstar, Lebron, Jay it's just a year early.
(15:05):
The Los Angeles Lakers already have won, and in one
of the worst kept secrets in league history, they have
already snatched up one of the players at the top
of the new list, Anthony Davis, before the off season
had even begun. But the crown jewel of the free
agent class is two time NBA Finals MVP Kawhi Leonard.
You're twenty nineteen, Bill Russell Finals MVP is Kawhi Leonard.
(15:30):
Kawhi might be the NBA's last great mystery. Clippers, Lakers, Nets, Nicks,
and the Raptors. Those are the five teams that will
be involved in the Kawhi Leonards. So when it comes
to Kawa, it's so close to the best. Front officers
throughout the league are working furiously in an attempt to
change their team's destiny through buying, selling, or trading. The
(15:53):
Clippers are trying to do all three, but the odds
are not in their favor. Chrisperus are just flat out
wrote Whippers out. But I'm ninety nine. Here is that
Kawa Leonard will be returning to Toronto. But this being
(16:13):
Los Angeles, there's a pluck twist. You are listening to
Westward on the Dan Patrick Podcast Network, We'll be right back.
A year ago, Paul George is standing on a stage
(16:34):
in Oklahoma City and he's telling a crowd of people
that he's here to stay in A year later, he's
requesting a trade. Another superstar is thrown into the mix
and as a matter of course, meeting destiny. Both players
grew up in Los Angeles and have expressed interest in
coming home. Superstars returning to their home. They have been
popularized by Lebron James. But there's one thing that superstars
(16:56):
like more than returning home, and that's to play with
other superstars. And the Clippers don't have any Clippers never
going to steal La. Let me make that very clear.
Why in the world would you want to go to
the Clippers? And just two years ago, the notion that
any player in the league would choose the Clippers over
the Lakers was an absurdity. The thing that sucks most
(17:18):
about being the Clippers is that they're in the same
office building. Think about New England Patriots sharing an office
building with the Cleveland Brands, right. But now there's something
within the organization that wasn't ever there before, and it's
the thing that gives the Clipper faithful hope and what's that?
Jerry West, Well, I didn't know what to expect when
(17:39):
I first met mister Bamber. I had breakfast with him
and we were talking and asked a bunch of questions.
You know, he trying to get a feel for who
you're dealing with, and he'd asked me questions about what
I thought. I said, you're gonna have to build your
own image of what you want with the Clippers. And
then we had another meeting and I got a call
from him that afternoon. He wanted me to be involved
(17:59):
with him, and I started thinking about it. I knew
Doc Rivers a coach, and I've always liked and cared
about him. All of a sudden, I said, well, this
might be fun. It's been said that home is where
the hatred he is. And when Jerry West returned to
Los Angeles and set up shop in the Clippers locker room,
(18:21):
the city turned upside down. It wasn't a rivalry before
the logo returned. But to understand what it really means
and how it came to this, you first have to
study the history of Los Angeles and his relationship to
sports and entertainment, and how the game of basketball evolved
(18:43):
in the city of Angels. Basketball may not have been
created in Los Angeles, but a strong argument can be
made that it did create the fertile soil in which
the modern NBA would take root. And though the city
may be known for Hollywood, beneath its amalgam of hip
hop and surf cultures, industry and progressive ideas lies a sportstown,
(19:07):
says NPR essayist and Los Angeles historian Dj Waldy. When
people look at Los Angeles region from outside, and most
of the interpreters of Los Angeles for most of its
history have been outsiders, they'd often only see Hollywood, and
they make the mistake of thinking that Los Angeles is
(19:29):
Hollywood or Hollywood is Los Angeles, and it's simply not true.
Los Angeles was always a sportstown, just in a different
way because for most of the history of Los Angeles,
what a sportstown met was who had a major league
baseball team. We didn't have a major legue baseball team. Therefore,
we weren't a sports minded town. College university sports were
(19:50):
much of the game for much of the twentieth century.
It took a while for Angelinos to shift their loyalties
from the college teams they followed to the professional teams.
The city of Los Angeles had already cultivated a deep
and abiding love with basketball, due in large part to
an innovation that could have only come from Los Angeles.
(20:10):
One of the characteristics of Southern California in the postwar
period was an explosion of innovation. It was taking materials
and processes that had been developed in the warriors to
make things for the war effort and turning those war
industries and war materials into new products. One such product
(20:31):
came from the Void Rubber Company on Harbor Boulevard, and
it would change the game of basketball. It's an amazing story.
What it's about is taking an industrial product and transforming
what had been a kind of elite sport using a
lot of hand crafted materials, and turning that into something
(20:52):
that kids played on the apron of their parents' driveway.
And we're talking about the development of the inexpensive synthetic
material basketball, which became something every kid, certainly every boy,
in every Lakewood house in the late nineteen fifties, half
(21:13):
and everyone played some kind of pickup game in the
driveway with a hoop holding to the front of the garage.
One can see how talent would arise from that explosion
of participation. The invention was an accidental civil rights triumph.
Until the creation of the Void, basketball could only be
(21:34):
played indoors and the cost of a basketball was the
equivalent of over two hundred dollars. The price of the
new Boyd was under a dollar. The invention of the
void basketball became a gateway for people like me in
four neighborhoods around the United States. Boy had made it
(21:58):
financially feasible for like me around the nation to have
the ball. There was attainable. Suddenly all throughout Los Angeles,
from the driveways of South Central to the Covi sacts
of suburban Covid City, and all the way to Venice Beach,
basketball rooms started sprowsing up like the palm trees along
San Vincenti. So you had all these elements. You had Hollywood,
(22:22):
you had a love of basketball. You had a Rabbit
fan base. So you had all these sports fans. But
there was no one professional team in Los Angeles that
really captured the identity of the city. The Dodgers there
from Brooklyn, the Rams, they came and then they left.
The Angels. They came and then they left. Fans are competitive,
and big cities don't just want teams, they want teams
(22:44):
that reflect who they are, right Pittsburgh and Steeve kurtin Philadelphia,
Broad Street Bulleys Cincinnati, the Big Red Machine. LA sports
fans wanted that they were starving for that, and then,
as if it was written in Hollywood itself, the Lakers
literally fell from the sky. Long before they would fall
(23:05):
from the sky, the team that would ultimately become the
Lakers were the Detroit Gems. The Detroit Gems probably should
become the LA Clippers because they were the worst team
to ever play professional basketball. They played their home games
at a high school on the city's southwest side, Their
best player averaged nine points a game, and they went
one in twenty seven in their final year in nineteen
(23:27):
forty seven. But despite this, the team drew the attention
of the current businessmen from Minnesota named Ben Burger Maurice Chappan,
who wanted to bring the team in Minneapolis and offered
to buy the Gems to avoid the association with the
Gem's failure. The new owners would rename the team to
honor Minnesota and its land of ten Thousand Lakes, and
(23:48):
on November third, nineteen forty nine, the Minneapolis Lakers were born. Man,
where do you look to find the world's greatest basketball team, Well,
look for the land of ten Thousand Lakes. On any
(24:09):
given day during his boyhood summers of nineteen fifty seven,
a young Brian Short would walk out of the house
he shared with his six brothers and sisters, and there
grazing in his front yard of the Short family home
in Adena, Minnesota, where a small herd of Shetland ponies.
The animals were yet another inexplicable purchase by their wealthy father,
who bought them as part of an even larger inexplicable purchase,
(24:32):
the Minneapolis Lakers. My dad was a promoter, if nothing else,
and he was always trying to figure out ways to
get people to come in. One of his many contests
was withdrawing for a Shetland pony at a Lakers game,
and he thought that would be great because what kid
didn't want a pony? And my dad figured if he
could get the kids to want to come, the parents
(24:53):
would have to come and life would be good. And
so every time he ran that promotion, we ended up
with a pony at our house. A matter of fact,
some kid living in the city would be hard pressed
to find a place to put the dam pony. Bob
Short may have enjoyed promotion, but the business in which
he made his money was transportation. And though it may
have been difficult to bring fans to home games, a
(25:16):
far greater problem was getting his Lakers to away games.
I or this is hard for us to understand a
pushy for you guys, I bet it was kind of
the westernmost part of the United States almost My dad
was always an aviation guy. Frankly, you know, he served
on an aircraft carrier in the war and business, so
he's always opened to aviation as a form of transportation.
(25:38):
Bob Short then bought a fixed wing propeller driven DC
three through a company called Gopher Aviation that had been
built in the nineteen thirties. The plane was so old,
in fact, that some of the employees who worked for
Gopher Aviation were actually taught by the Right brothers. This
(26:00):
is what fell from the sky. It was Saturday night,
January eighteenth, nineteen sixty and Bob Short's Minneapolis Lakers were
on the tarmac of Lambert Field in Saint Louis, Missouri,
waiting for takeoff in the middle of a dismal season
in which they would finish twenty one games out of
first place. They had just lost their fifth game in
a row to the Saint Louis Hawks and wanted to
(26:23):
go home. But there was a problem. And here's the
latest weather reform. Rain changing to snow. What had originally
been forecast as light rain was now being described as
an ice storm. Ninety seven year old Harold Gifford, the
Team Planes pilot, remembers the night well oiler wasps for Garding.
(26:52):
I had the father of sig Wana. We go to
the Ryan at eight Clark. We took off, had he
After less than five minutes into the flight, the plane
(27:21):
lost power right after fear the life. They went frightened
and dim and out. The only indication I had rod
a couple of the Lookmaders and they both registered zeros
and ad in trouble. Fortunately for those aboard, Harold Gifford,
(27:42):
the former World War Two pilot, had been accustomed to
flying in trouble. By nine pm that night, where it
had already reached Bob Short in Minnesota, that his team
was in trouble that evening, and my mother was pretty strict.
But before I went to bed, I remember there was
a lot of tension in the house. Dad was running around.
He was a big phone guy. He was talking on
(28:02):
the phone all the time. But you know, a lot
of tensions. I don't think I understood the significance of
it at the time because I'm nine years old, right.
But these were all people that he knew, all friends,
you know. He considered the players fans. Unable to ascend
above the storm or navigate around the storm, pilot Harold
Gifford was left with only one option or try to
(28:24):
go through it. So I followed the North Star initially,
and now he headed north on our my own compass,
and so now we're fresh from the problem. So I said,
I think we'd better consider going down to find the
pressure or contact with the ground. Her cousin, ifore you
run out of fuel world, we're at four thousand, end
(28:47):
of cause we're there. You are listening to Westward on
the Dan Patrick podcast network. We be right back. The
ground below was barely visible through the blizzard and had
(29:08):
been covered by the torrent of sleet, columns of snow
and insurance policies. All players of that for US didn't
make anywhere near enough money playing as a basketball player
to survive. So they all had offseason jobs. And I'm
pre sure Dick Garmakers was as a life insurance salesman
or some kind of insurance. And so they know they've
(29:31):
lost all electrical power, they don't know how they're going
to land. They're all convinced they're going to die. Garmaker
walks up and down the aisle of the airplane, selling
insurance and filling out the form. And the plan was
they knew the plane was going to crash and burn
on impact, so they had to take these little scraps
of paper and throw them out the window. Hopefully somebody
(29:52):
would find them, and then they would find that player
air player B had life insurance. The company would have
to pay on the insurance. While some of the players
dropped their signed policies to the ground below, others, along
with their pilot, Harold Gifford, sought out a higher insurance policy.
Prayers sent above the Fred Barness watches us very sure
(30:15):
could drives help bunch your blave that comes Highers seventy
one and say a lighted Hams beer standing on the side,
and I know that we had a recast the build.
As we circled this town, I daughter start the edge
of town of Corkfield. The scene of an ice covered
(30:35):
Midwestern earth and the impending collision of what came from
the sky was an eerie reminder of what had happened
less than a year prior, when the red Beechcraft B
thirty five, carrying three of rock and roll's biggest stars,
slammed into another frozen cornfield in clear Lake, Iowa, less
than a hundred miles away. We interrupt this problem from
our special news bulletin three young singers who soared to
(30:57):
the heights of show business on the current rock and
roll craze or killed today in the crash of a
light plane in an iOS No flurry. The singers were
identified as Richie Valin seventeen, Bubby Holly twenty two, and J. P. Richardson,
known professionally as the Big Boppers. That was starting a
life in my mind, the first thing in my mind
is oh, I going to get this shirt place to
(31:20):
the gloves. But it had most certainly been on the
minds of dozens of locals who had lived in the
wake of that tragedy, many of whom poured out of
their homes at one ten am after hearing local station
Kseim's Clarion Cole, including the family of Eric Niswanger. Everyone
was awakened with the loud engines of the DC three
(31:41):
plane buzzing the town about nine times. Many jumped into
their cars to help guide the way. I've heard many
of the proud stories from my parents and the city forefathers.
Iowans are very caring people, and with the history of
Buddy Holly's plane crash only eleven months earlier in the Sunel,
no one wanted to have another tragedy like the day
the music died. Nobody wanted to have that happen again.
(32:03):
Not much as we touched down because hearing a car
hit the earth player and as soon as I shut
the edges had ever heard such a lot scrubs and hollers,
and the first rust barkers are coming from the road thereby,
(32:25):
and they hear all those hollers. This is going to
be a terrible hollers. Was picked up by a hearse
or the guy and said, I thought we were going
to ask for business today. We had a guy he'd
been a church at but he called his wife and
told him and hut him. She said, to be a
(32:45):
call when you're solder up. One of the players who
knows the story of the plane's unscheduled landing but was
not on the flight is Jerry West. A lot of
people thought I was in it. I was not. Of course,
I was aware of the story because I was with
them the next year. They were talking about these guys
(33:06):
were making promises. They never drink again, they never do this,
They're going to go to church every day. I don't
think all those promises were kept, because I saw a
bunch of guys who drank a lot when I got there.
If that plane crashes, not only does the entire team die,
the NBA most likely dies with it. And had nothing happened,
they say Minneapolis and go bankrupt with the rest of
(33:28):
the league. It was the incident that pushed the team
to LA and forever changed the history of professional basketball.
As a coda to the event, in two ten, the
Laker organization donated twenty five thousand dollars to the Carol
Chamber of Comers for the construction of an outdoor court
(33:49):
in honor of the team and the city's unexpected connection
on that snowy night in January of nineteen sixty. Now
outside carol in the midst of these rules world Farmlands,
half cyclone, half Hawkeye Country, a basketball court can be
found just feet from where the team's airplane successfully ladened.
Perhaps in any other place, the bright, purple and gold
(34:12):
floor located in the middle of nowhere would stand out
as one of the many oddities checkered throughout the Midwest,
But here it doesn't. Two thousand miles away, in Los Angeles,
late Friday night on July fifth, just minutes ago, Adan
Award Zanowski reporting that Kawhi Leonard is going to join
(34:33):
the Clippers. The Clippers have also made a deal to
acquire Paul George from the Oklahoma City thunder Stunned. Stunned
to say the lead Jerry West this weekend ran the NBA.
He's eighty one. Kawhi Leonard. Got a phone call from
Cool Magic, not interested, got a phone call from Lebron,
not interested. Yet he went to dinner with eighty one
year old Jerry West at a steakhouse, sat across from
(34:56):
him and said, I like you, but a high school
gym in south central Los Angeles Professional Basketball's most accomplished executive,
Jerry West, can be found doing what he does best, teach.
I'm right, all right. What makes Jerry so special? It's
(35:20):
Jerry truly cares about people first, and right behind that
is his furious competitive nature. The man got to win.
It's just in his DNA, and I have no doubt
that this team he's put together is going to come
(35:40):
out on top in this batoty for La. Jerry West
is from the rugged foothills of Canada County, West Virginia.
He is eighty two years old and dis white. The
prospect he teachers is from the streets of south central California,
is twenty two years old and it's black. Watching the
younger wrapped in attention and the older, honored to pass
(36:03):
along his wisdom, both found by their mutual love of
the game, one comes to understand that while baseball may
be in the American heart and football may be in
the American spirit, it is the game of basketball that
occupies the American soul. And for that reason, just for now,
(36:24):
the Battle of Los Angeles will have to wait. Next time.
On Westward, just months after he had nearly lost his
entire team, to a plane crash in carol Isole. Bob
Short formerly asked permission from NBA owners to relocate his
(36:46):
Laker team to Los Angeles. In a resounding unanimous vote
of seven to zero, the NBA said no. Long before
there was a battle four LA. There was a battle
to LA. At the time, owners were preoccupied with just surviving,
so that meant constantly moving to bigger markets. But it
(37:08):
wasn't actually the move that saved the Lakers. It was
something else. There had been word of a legend from
the streets of Washington, DC, a local athlete whose ability
was almost midi. They called him the rabbits. Elgian Daylor
was a magician on the court. If he was playing today,
(37:31):
I mean people talked about him and Michael Jordan and
Michael Jordan's early date. That was pretty good athlete. No,
I could play all sports, but mothers talk about you
can playing football, and you know, she said, no, you're
not going to do something like that. So it's a
basketball if you want to play play basketball. Elgian Daylor
literally saved the franchise. The revolution is not always televised,
(37:57):
and the action of courage and willingness to sacrifice many
times is not publicized. What Elson Baylor did is one
of the most significant stories yet to be told. Westward
is a production of the Dan Patrick podcast Network, Joy
(38:19):
Road Entertainment and iHeartRadio in association with Workhouse Media and
Sugar twenty three. Executive produced by Paul Anderson and Nick
Pinella for Workhouse Media and by Michael Sugar and Mike
Mayer for Sugar twenty three. Joy Road Entertainment is pg Cuscieri,
Jim Young, Matthew Hatchett, Bobby Glantone Smith, and Tim Livingston,
(38:42):
Produced by Casey Whalen and edited by Charlie Magdaleno by
Whalend Productions. Westward is narrated by Emmy Award winner Keith David.
Producers would like to thank Chris Lloyd, George Lopez, Harold Gifford,
and NPRS DJ Waldy for their contributions. Our most sincere
gratitude also goes family of Bob Short, Eric Niswanger and
the good people of Carol, Iowa, and of course, the
(39:06):
great Jerry West. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the
iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Thanks for listening.
Hosts And Creators
Todd "Fritzy" Fritz
Dan Patrick
Patrick "Seton" O'Connor
Paul Pabst
Marvin Prince
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