Game 32: Gary Vitti - Logie Trail Salmon

““I’ve been in Italy and Americans walk up to me and say, “I know exactly who you are.” It’s amazing, because I’m not famous. Kobe is famous. He has facial recognition anywhere he goes. He can’t walk down the street... I always say to people, “If you know who I am, you are real Lakers fans.” - Gary Vitti”

It’s true. Whether your memory of Gary Vitti is of the curly-haired, porn-stached doctor sitting next to Pat Riley or the baldhead with the meticulously trimmed white goatee sitting next to Phil Jackson, multiple generations of Laker fans have grown up watching Vitti seated next to some of the most successful coaches in NBA history. But all facetiousness aside, the Lakers head athletic trainer from 1984-2016 was much more than the omnipresent bench doctor, always armed with a clipboard and a frown. Vitti was arguably the most successful person to ever serve as an NBA head trainer because he was so much more than “just” the trainer. Not just a doctor, Vitti was a pioneering nutritionist, an extra assistant coach, a loyal friend, a trusted confidant, and the man that players called at 3am when their children were sick. 

Vitti joined the Lakers at a time when locker rooms were supplied with pre-game sodas and post-game beers. It was 1984 and nutrition was the last thing on athlete’s minds. I’m sure trainers like Vitti tried to push players to eat healthier -- in the World Champion Lakers Are Cookin’ Family Cookbook, most of the interviewed players were at least somewhat cognizant of in-season nutrition. But with chubbsters like Shaquille O’Neal and Charles “The Round Mound of Rebound” Barkley winning MVP votes in the ‘80s, ‘90s, and early 2000s, healthy-eating habits were likely not on the minds of bruising power forwards and centers playing in an era where a key offensive strategy was to dump the ball to the big man in the paint. Even suggesting that players lift weights was considered “taboo” back when he started. “We had people in the organization telling him that he was going to ruin a lot of the players,” Byron Scott told the LA Times. “Because he was going to get them too bulked up and things like that.”

Basic nutrition and exercise weren’t the only obstacles Vitti faced in trying to keep players healthy. The Lakers may have given off an aura of Hollywood flash and spectacle, but like Tinsel Town itself, it wasn’t as glitzy behind the curtain. The Lakers had no training facility when Vitti started out, meaning that the Lakers often got kicked off the Loyola Marymount courts by the college’s volleyball team. And when he was first hired, Jerry West informed him that he’d need to buy his own van to transport the team’s equipment. As he told the Times, he finagled a deal with one of the Lakers’ sponsors for a cheap van and installed a TV and VHS player in the trunk so that the team could watch scouting reports and practice footage. And the training staff was just Vitti; the team could only afford one trainer. That was the norm back then. At the time of his retirement, the team had a dedicated “equipment manager, strength and conditioning coach, assistant trainer, massage therapist and physical therapist” all under Vitti’s management. And in 2017, the Lakers opened the $80 million UCLA Health Training Center in El Segundo that not only serves as their dedicated practice facility, but the home court for the South Bay Lakers of the NBA G-League.

Vitti was a good luck charm for the Lakers, as the team finally defeated the Boston Celtics in the NBA Finals in his first year. But by the end of his run, the longest tenure of any head trainer with one team, the Lakers were in shambles. Vitti, a history buff, compared the team to the Roman Empire in the Times. “After the fall of the Roman Empire were the Dark Ages. That’s where we’ve been... I got us through the Dark Ages but now somebody’s got to take over. There will be a rebirth. This franchise will come back.” When Vitti left, his final years were spent rehabbing Kobe Bryant’s torn Achilles and Julius Randle’s broken leg. He was replaced by one of his assistants, Marco Nunez, and retained as an executive consultant for three years. But Vitti’s run officially came to an end at the same time as his protege. Nunez was fired after the 2018-2019 Lakers season, when Lonzo Ball’s 4-6 week ankle injury turned into a season-ending injury and LeBron James sat out a month due to injury for the first time in his lengthy career. 

Vitti was right to compare the Lakers to the Roman Empire. Wins, losses, and ownership squabbles aside, when you take a thorough look at the health, nutrition, diet, and training of Lakers over his tenure, Vitti presided over a Pax Romana. He was Marcus Aurelius, the last of the Five Good Emperors. But even the Philosopher Emperor took breaks every now and then. Not Vitti:

““You can’t check out at the end of the day. You go home, your phone’s on, you talk to players, you talk to management, coaches, agents, you talk to all of their families because if somebody’s kid gets sick, they don’t call the pediatrician, they call me.” - Gary Vitti”

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Logie Trail Salmon

½ cup olive oil

½ cup wine - any kind

3 tablespoons soy sauce

¼ cup lemon juice

1 clove garlic pressed

Dash of italian seasonings

Dash of pepper

Whole salmon, fresh or frozen

Clean off salmon with damp cloth. Lay fish in between 2 layers of aluminum foil. Mix remaining ingredients together and brush marinade over fish every 30 minutes for 3 to 4 hours. Seal foil by folding edges together. Place on barbecue ready grill. Turn twice (turn entire foil contents. It won’t leak out). Length of cooking time may vary with type of barbecue style. Plan 10 minutes per 1 inch of thickness.

This recipe has the honor of being the 2nd (and hopefully last) meal I prepared while passing a kidney stone. On Monday December 2nd, the morning I started a new job, I woke up at 6AM with what can only be described as a tingle at the tip of my dick. I thought that my second kidney stone, the one still lodged in my kidney, might’ve passed the day before unnoticed by me. It was 3.5mm, .5 smaller than the one that destroyed me two weeks earlier. Maybe it slipped through my ureter like a greased pig. And maybe I peed it out my urethra without even realizing it.

That was wrong. Very wrong. An hour later as I was doing the dishes, I got hit with a wave of pain in my lower right back that was unmistakable. The kidney stone was evacuating my kidney and I had two hours before leaving for my first day on the job. This time, I was a pro. I stood in front of our heater, chugged water and a Flomax, and vomited when needed. 30 minutes later, the pain had subsided enough for me to start Gary Vitti’s logie trail salmon marinade! Little did I know that three days later, that same stone (or maybe a different one, who knows?!) would cause the worst pain I have ever felt in my entire life.

I took some liberties with Gary’s recipe. The first was that I baked the salmon instead of grilling it. The second was that I only marinated it for 2 hours instead of 4 because I didn’t want to eat dinner at 11pm. So while the end result wasn’t as flavorful as I hoped, I can’t properly judge Gary’s marinade named after one of the oldest trails in Oregon. I also admit that the plating is a little pathetic. I was feeling residual pain and didn’t have time to cook up some rice after a long first day of work. Can I have a pass, just this one time? Yes? Thank you, reader.