Game 53: Bill Sharman - Amaretto Cheese Dessert Platter
The Lakers are synonymous with winning. Annoyingly so. When we missed the playoffs six years in a row in the 2010s, many people, including yours truly, felt that it was akin to decades or even century-long sports curses that affected franchises like the Cleveland Cavaliers or Chicago Cubs. So it might come as a surprise to some that the Los Angeles Lakers were once known as losers. The worst kind of losers: Constant runner-ups in the championship series.
Just like the Dodgers, their fellow transplants to L.A. who lost the World Series eight times in Brooklyn before being crowned champions in 1955, the Lakers were synonymous with finishing in 2nd place. After moving to L.A. in 1960, the Lakers lost seven NBA Finals before finally bringing SoCal a title in 1972. And the man who deservedly took much of the credit was their 1st year head coach, Bill Sharman, the man who would set the Lakers’ win-or-else mentality for the rest of the franchise’s history.
Sharman was a California boy from the Central Valley who was destined for sports greatness at a young age. He lettered in five sports in high school before serving two years in the Navy during WWII. Following the end of the war, he returned to California where he was named an All-American on USC’s basketball team and won a College World Series title as a member of their baseball team. This precursor to Deion Sanders was drafted by both the NBA, with the short-lived Washington Capitols, and MLB, with the Brooklyn Dodgers. He hit .294 with 16 home runs for the Dodgers' AAA team in 1951, good enough to be a September call up who watched Bobby Thompson hit the Shot Heard ‘Round the World from the bench. But the bench was where he stayed, as he didn’t get an at-bat that year and never got back to The Show in his five years with the Dodgers. Basketball was his true calling and his time in the NBA meant that he was late getting his “eyes tuned for some of those curve balls.”
After the Capitols folded in 1951, Sharman ended up teaming with Bob Cousy of the Boston Celtics to form the NBA’s first great backcourt duo. The guard was known for his accurate shooting and hard-nosed defense, with Jerry West once saying “He got into more fights than Mike Tyson.” Sharman became the first guard to average 40% shooting in a year, which is impressive but also an indictment of the league at the time. It’s like celebrating the first catcher to bat over .260 in a season. Nonetheless, Sharman and Cousy, under the leadership of coach Red Auerbach, turned the Celtics into perennial contenders in the 1950s. And once Bill Russell joined the team in 1957, the dominant trio won 4 championships in Sharman’s last 5 years. He retired in 1961 with 8 All-Star team selections, 7 All-NBA team selections, and the record for most times (7) leading the league in free throw percentage. In 1997, he was named by the NBA as one of the league’s 50 greatest players.
But let’s go back a bit. Immediately after hanging up his shorts, he picked up a whistle and became head coach of the American Basketball League’s Cleveland Pipers. It was here that Sharman invented the now standard practice drill called the shootaround. You know how before each half, the team comes out in their warm-ups and just starts raining down shots? It seems like a no brainer way for players to get loose and burn off any nervous energy they might have. But no teams did that until Sharman brought the drill he did as a player to teams like the Pipers, the ABA’s Utah Stars, and Cal State Los Angeles.
In 1971, Sharman finally returned to the NBA as head coach of the Lakers. The team had spent the last decade losing in the NBA Finals, almost always to Sharman’s old team, the Celtics. And many thought that Jerry West, Gail Goodrich, Elgin Baylor, and Wilt Chamberlain had missed their window of opportunity. But after Sharman instituted "a more team-oriented concept" to the gameplan, the team got off to a hot start. After Baylor retired mid-season due to a recurring knee injury, the team racked up a still-record 33 wins in a row on their way to the Lakers’ first championship in Los Angeles. That team averaged 121 points per game and held the record for most wins in a season, 69, until the Chicago Bulls broke it in 1996. Sharman led the Lakers to another NBA Finals appearance in 1973 and retired three years later when his voice was “reduced to a whisper from all that shouting” he did as a coach.
But he wasn’t done yet. Sharman, who was inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame in 1976, stayed with the Lakers as an executive. From 1976 to 1991, as either general manager or president, Sharman oversaw the formation of the Showtime Lakers. A lot of (deserved) credit goes towards Jerry Buss, Jerry West, and Pat Riley for the Lakers’ dominance in the 1980s, but that winning mentality started with William Walton Sharman. When Kobe Bryant, Jeanie Buss, or a random Lakers fan calling into AM 570 talks about EXPECTING the Lakers to win a title each year, you can trace it all back to Bill.
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Amaretto Cheese Dessert Platter
1 8-ounce package cream cheese
2 egg yolks
¼ cup sugar
3 tablespoons Amaretto (or Grand Marnier, cognac, etc.)
1 ½ teaspoon Knox gelatin
Whirl softened cream cheese in food processor or blender and add egg yolks. Soften gelatin in 2 tablespoons water. Warm to dissolve and add to cheese mixture. Add Amaretto and sugar and blend to a smooth, creamy texture. Pour into 1-cup mold and chill several hours or overnight. Unmold on platter and surround with sliced fruits, grapes, strawberries, plain crackers, and pecans.
Serve one platter to each couple after dinner or double recipe for larger groups.
Finally, the classic ‘50s suburban Jell-O mold recipe.
I didn’t have a 1 cup Jell-O mold and wasn’t able to find one for sale on Amazon, so I improvised by pouring the white goopy mix into a measuring cup. Turns out it’s hard to dump out a perfect mold from a glass container. It didn’t really matter. Looked like shit, tasted like shit. A strong contender for bottom 5 Goldstein and Gasol so far.
