June 9th: "The Lakers Really Threw This One Away"

Phil · Retired Joined: 03 Aug 2001 Posts: 10007

The Lakers Really Threw This One Away
By Larry Stewart, Times Staff Writer
June 10, 2006

Now it can be told. When the Chicago Bulls defeated the Lakers in the 1991 NBA Finals, they had some inside information, according to Phil Jackson, who was then the coach of the Bulls.

He said on his Sirius Satellite radio show this week that Mike Dunleavy, then the coach of the Lakers, and his staff would diagram plays on a notepad, tear the pages off and throw them underneath the bench.

"Our ball boy, who was actually 65 years old, brought them to an assistant coach I had, Johnny Bach, and said, 'Is this any value to you?' " Jackson said.

The Bulls had lost Game 1, and after an assistant coach deciphered the notes, some strategic changes were made, Jackson said. A key one was having Scottie Pippen guard Magic Johnson. The Bulls won the next four games and their first title.

Just goes to show that one man's trash can be another man's treasure.

Phil · Retired Joined: 03 Aug 2001 Posts: 10007

HYDE: Imagine if Riley had left
Published June 10, 2006

DALLAS · Ah, yes, the phone calls now pour in. E-mails, too. Heat fans alternately fret and attack from all sides after the Heat's Game 1 performance.

Beyond the anger over Shaquille O'Neal not getting the ball enough anywhere except the free-throw line, where he got it too much, there's a more basic, borderline-hysterical fear in the messages: The Heat is overmatched against Dallas. This, after one game.

OK, you want to scare yourselves, Heat fans? Don't do it over something correctable like this series opener. Let's tell a really scary Heat story.

Let's talk about 14 hours two summers ago: Pat Riley chartered a jet for $27,000. He flew to California. He visited the Pacific-side home of Los Angeles Lakers owner Jerry Buss. He drank bottles of Opus One wine with Lakers officials, talked about their vacant coaching job, said he'd get O'Neal and Kobe Bryant back together again and probably came within a 20-minute conversation of leaving the Heat.

"Maybe," Riley said.