The Los Angeles Lakers are arguably the NBA’s most storied franchise by virtue of their 17 world championships. They’ve been so successful over the decades that even when they haven’t won it all, they have had some impressive squads that were memorable, talented, star-studded and very competitive.
After the Lakers won the 1987 championship, head coach Pat Riley guaranteed they would win it again the following year and become the first NBA team to repeat as champs in 19 years. They did exactly that by defeating the Detroit Pistons in a close, hard-fought seven-game final series.
Buy Lakers TicketsAfter that, the challenge was to end the decade of the 1980s the way they started it — with a world title.
A scorching run ends in a self-imposed burnout
The 1988-89 season was the final one of Kareem Abdul-Jabbar’s incredible career. It was his 20th year in the NBA, something that was unthinkable back then, and across the nation, teams paid their respects to him during a farewell tour.
After years of brilliant play that extended all the way to his 40th birthday, the big fella, who turned 42 in April 1989, was a flimsy shell of what he had been just a few years earlier. He averaged 10.1 points a game, by far his career low, and he often seemed a liability.
As a whole, the Lakers were starting to show early signs of wear and tear after going deep into the playoffs almost every year of the decade. They looked inconsistent and even uninspired at times during the regular season. They finished 57-25, making it the first time in five years they didn’t reach 60 wins.
Once the playoffs started, they returned to form. Despite being expected to fade, the Lakers swept through the first three rounds of the playoffs. Suddenly, they were looking like their vintage selves again, and possibly better than ever. All that stood between them and a third straight championship was the Pistons, their opponents in the finals the previous year.
Los Angeles had a lengthy wait before the start of the championship series, which was a major advantage, given the high mileage the team had accumulated over the years. But Riley turned this lucky break into something that led to its demise, according to Jeff Pearlman, author of “Showtime.”
Via Forum Blue & Gold:
“Pat Riley could have waited. A day. Two days, perhaps. He could have taken some time to think about his players and his team; whether they would be best served by peace and solitude and a light work load; whether a veteran point guard who had endured 2,886 minutes in the regular season and a forty-two-year-old center and a battered roster would, perhaps, benefit from some time away from the court, sitting on a beach or inside a movie theatre or at home with the wife and kids.
“He could have. He chose not to. Following the series-clinching win over Phoenix to reach the 1989 NBA Finals, Riley was asked by Mark Zeigler of the San Diego Union-Tribune whether he would allow for a period of rest and relaxation. The coach didn’t pause to consider a reply. ‘Our players,’ he said, ‘will wish that this series went longer. It will be a very hard week for them. The practices will be tough. Now is no time to relax.’
“On the morning of May 31, the Lakers traveled ninety-five miles north to Santa Barbara, where they would spend much of the subsequent three days locked inside the Westmount College gymnasium (aka: the depths of basketball hell).
“… What ensued were three days of intense, hard-core, unyielding sessions that made the workouts in Hawaii (during training camp) feel like a day at the spa. Pummeling two- a-days and full-court scrimmages were the norm; sweat poured by the bucket.
“‘Pure hell,’ moaned [Michael] Cooper.
“‘The thing that upset us more than anything else was how hard we worked,’ said (Byron) Scott. ‘It was like training camp all over again. We didn’t feel that we really needed that.’
“‘I thought it was too much,” said Gary Vitti, the team’s trainer. “It was a boot camp, but I didn’t criticize him for it. Look at his track record. You had to assume he knew what he was doing. He almost always did.
“Riley barked and screamed like a man possessed. He was no longer merely a basketball coach trying to win. He was a flesh-eating hoops zombie, focused on killing off the Pistons and continuing his team’s world domination. He slept Pistons, ate Pistons, walked Pistons, talked Pistons.”
This second training camp was akin to driving an old Ford Mustang with 150,000 miles on its odometer cross-country from Los Angeles to New York City without any stops at all. It was simply asking for trouble.
Just before the start of the finals, Byron Scott tore his left hamstring and missed the entire series. Not surprisingly, the Lakers lost Game 1 in Detroit. They were in position to take Game 2 when Magic Johnson injured his hamstring in the third quarter. He tried to return in Game 3, but he exited after a few minutes when it was clear he was seriously crippled.
With their forces severely depleted, the Lakers were swept by Isiah Thomas and company in four games. There would be no glorious ending for Abdul-Jabbar, no “threepeat” for the team of the 1980s.
As it turned out, the break between the Western Conference finals and the 1989 NBA Finals was the beginning of the end for arguably the greatest team in NBA history. It was downhill from then on.
