The Speed Game
My Fast Times in Basketball
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- £23.99
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- £23.99
Publisher Description
Paul Westhead was teaching high school in his native Philadelphia when he was named La Salle University’s men’s basketball coach in 1970. By 1980 he was a Los Angeles Lakers assistant, soon to be hired as head coach, winning an NBA title with Hall of Fame center Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and rookie guard Magic Johnson. After compiling a 112-50 record, he was fired in November 1981. After a short stay as coach of the Chicago Bulls, Westhead reemerged in the mideighties as a coach at Loyola Marymount in California, where he designed his highly unusual signature run-and-gun offense that came to be known as “The system.”
The Speed Game offers a vibrant account of how Westhead helped develop a style of basketball that not only won at the highest levels but went on to influence basketball as it’s played today. Known for implementing an up-tempo, quick-possession, high-octane offense, Westhead is the only coach to have won championships in both the NBA and WNBA. But his long career can be defined by one simple question he’s heard from journalists, fellow coaches, his wife, and, well, himself: Why? Why did he insist on playing such a controversial style of basketball that could vary from brilliant to busted?
Westhead speaks candidly here about the feathers he ruffled and about his own shortcomings as he takes readers from Philadelphia’s West Catholic High, where he couldn’t make varsity, to the birth of the Showtime Lakers and to the powerhouse he built nearly ten years later at Loyola, where his team set records likely never to be approached.
Westhead says he always found himself telling prospective bosses, “My speed game is gonna knock your socks off!” So will his story and what it could do to bring back a popular style of play.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Former NBA coach Westhead, who coached the L.A. Lakers to an NBA championship in 1980, provides a cursory look at his professional life in this underwhelming memoir. Westhead grew up in Philadelphia and became an assistant coach at St. Joseph's College in 1961. When his boss, Jack McKinney, was hired by the Lakers in 1979, Magic Johnson's rookie year, he brought Westhead along. Westhead soon became the acting head coach after McKinney suffered a serious injury, and was at the helm when Johnson and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar brought home the title. The championship clinched Westhead the permanent coach position, but due to an early playoff exit in 1981 and criticism from Johnson, Westhead was fired. He subsequently coached in college, the NBA, and the WNBA. Westhead provides exhaustive details on his jobs but is strangely casual when recalling a plan by disgruntled former player Spencer Haywood to have him killed. ("That was the last time I saw Spencer Haywood for several years, until he came to my office at Loyola Marymount to apologize for attempting to have me killed"). Readers won't get a very good sense of Westhead's non-professional life, and the overall feel of the work is one of a superficial career overview. Only die-hard hoops fans need apply.