Spencer Haywood, the NBA star who took a hit man to kill his manager and destroy the first Showtime Lakers title

From Spencer Haywood (Silver City, Mississippi, 1949) dozens of stories can be told. He was, for example, the first basketball player to want to hit NBA without graduating from college. And he succeeded, beyond having a stopover at the extinct ABA for a season. It was only after winning Olympic gold with the hitherto unrivaled United States team Mexico in 1968. She is also the second wife of Zara Mohamed Abdulmajid, the Somaliland -born supermodel better known as Magnetwho later became a partner of David Bowie. He was also known for the myth, which was later confirmed, about circumcision when he was young. It’s a star. He finished his career with more than 20 points and 10 rebounds on average. A bestiality. However, despite being one of the great figures of the league in the 70s, he spent a huge amount of money to get his championship ring. It only came out in 1980 with the first version of Showtime Los Angeles Lakers on the downward curve of his career. The detail is that he will soon be gone because he has almost descended into the history of mankind as the intellectual author of the murder. Paul Westhead. Who is Westhead? Your own coach.

Some of these Haywood stories are part of the story arc of the series. “Lakers, it’s time to win”, from HBO, which just finished its first season. The key personnel are Earvin magic Johnson Y jerry buss, the eccentric franchise owner favorite of Hollywood stars. However, Haywood stole the limelight in the final chapters when, shocked by the drug use problem, he was separated from the coach’s squad — and not his teammates — in the finals against the Philadelphia 76ers of the great. Julius Ervinthe amazing Doctor J.

First Article: The Beginnings of the NBA

Haywood is a league veteran who roams every team. After the United States Supreme Court ruled against the rule requiring players to reach basketball mecca they must have graduated from university, the patrons of the great circus groups vacated him and should have signed for the Denver Rockets by the ABAthe league that competed hand-in-hand in the NBA and where the story deserves to be told later.

He shone there so he became irresistible for the NBA and so did a season later and left the lawsuits. join the Seattle Supersonics -franchise that in these years became the Oklahoma City Thunder-. There, on the Washington state team -which became champion in 1979-, Haywood showed his best performance and he was even able to retire his number. But then he went to the New York Knicks, traded for Bob McAdoo, and began his downward career. The numbers began to weaken, the physical also and The rest was made up of cocaine and heroin addiction. He went through the New Orleans Jazz and when the franchise moved to Utah he found a place to replace the Lakers.

At the time, as the book -inspired series says Showtime, by Jeff Pearlman, with hundreds of stitches to explore, Buss became the owner and started a revolution that, with many hurdles, ended up taking the franchise to another dimension and also to the NBA. The thing is the rivalries between the Lakers of Magic and the Celtics by Larry Bird they allowed the league to begin to cross borders and gradually became an international consumer product until Michael Jordan came along and transformed it into a large and successful global company.

But it’s missing for that and the NBA is more artisanal. And that’s how Buss, with Bill Sharman and Jerry West as sports brains, laid the Lakers ’first foundations. The coach they chose was key — the second option because the first was left after his representative was killed by the mafia—: jack mckinney. He imposed the game based on immediate offense. However, the coach not finishing the season after an incredible accident while cycling and being replaced by Westheadhis assistant, who in addition to playing and teaching basketball was a teacher of English literature and fond of William Shakespeare.

Westhead oversaw the team and was hired as an assistant Pat Riley, who at that time did not think he could be like he is now and was just looking for how to earn an honest living after his interesting career as a player. They, to return to the original thread, were the ones who began to doubt Haywood’s positive influence, whose knees were beginning to feel sore. But the damaged menisci are worthless compared to his addictions.

Second act: Haywood against allang

“I felt without hands, as if I had no fingers. Magic gave me good passes, and I didn’t catch them. I refuse to believe these are drugs, even though I use Quaalude, Valium, alcohol and other things to suppress the cocaine rush. I thought maybe Magic was spinning too many passes, maybe even doing me bad, ”he told People magazine in 1988.

He added: “Everything fell apart during the 1980 Finals against the Sixers. After my brain burned in a bar, I went to training. In the warm-up, I lay down and they noticed I wasn’t moving. My teammates were shouted at me: ‘Wood! Wake up!’. And nothing. They shook me and nothing. The whole team gathered around me, thinking I was dead. They finally kicked me out of there and Westhead sent me home. “

Although he escaped the move, Haywood began to lose minutes and added a consumption problem. Ayes, Westhead and Riley decided to definitely exclude him from the team after fighting Jim Chones and Brad Holland. Buss and West informed him that he would not play for the rest of the postseason.

That’s when the breakdown took place. The player, out of his mind, contacted a gangster he had known from his teenage years in Detroit to ask him to kill Westhead. In the series, they talk “kill the Lakers”. But in reality, Haywood wants to end his coaching. And he is convinced it must happen.

Third act: how to kill your trainer

“I pointed out all my anger at Westhead. I left the Forum and drove my Rolls Royce all night and the only thing I thought was that westhead should die. I planned how he would end. In anger and after making cocaine, I called a friend in Detroit, a man named Gregory, a true certified gangster, and said: ‘Come on, I need someone to take care of you’. The next day we sat down to plan. We went to his house and planned to sabotage the brakes of his car. “

Then the homicidal plan mutated and the idea was to poison the coach’s drink. “We went to Palos Verdes, where I live. When I got home, I went up again. My mother called me. The paranoia I went through – I saw people coming out of the lights – I thought my mother knew I know what. He’s planning. I rose again and then I hit the bottom of the rock. Then I wondered what he was thinking. I didn’t try but my intentions were bad. God is watching over me. I didn’t know where I really lived, but the drug talked to me. “

Final action: a moment of clarity

But fortunately, in a flash of clarity, he saw the light. “I called my mother back in Mississippi. She was dying of cancer at the time. I didn’t tell her what I was planning, I was just angry. She told me: ‘You’re doing something bad, right? If you have done something wrong, I will give myself to you. I didn’t raise a fool. He started calling me every 15 minutes, and we talked a lot. It made me see reason, “he revealed in the same interview with People. At umatras siya.

The Lakers finally won. Haywood only played three minutes in Game 1 of the Finals and two more minutes in Game 2 before he was suspended. He also got his ring thanks to Kareem Abdul Jabbar, the group leader. And most of all thanks to Magic Johnson’s superb performance in the sixth and final period where he played pivot to cover the loss due to injury to the captain.

Haywood’s following season he moved to Italy, but he eventually returned to say goodbye to the NBA as a player for the Washington Bullets. Westhead, now 83, was not hurt by his player’s demonic plans and he continued the training although he never had such success again, moreover he maintained the use of the system of run and gun (run and shoot) which was characteristic of the Lakers in those years.

Meanwhile, Haywood went on with his life and eventually won the battle against addiction. He is 73 years old and lives in Las Vegas with Linda, his second wife, with whom he had three other daughters -he had already had one from marriage to Iman-. Since 2015, he has been a member of the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame, the same one entered by Manu Ginóbili. As you can see, the story has a happy ending. It may have ended in the worst way.