Game 77: James Worthy - Pan Fried Fish

The Lakers’ 1985-1986 season ended in disaster… or at least what counts as disaster for this storied franchise. For most teams, they would love the quote-unquote catastrophic result of the 1986 Western Conference Finals, when the Houston Rockets, led by the combined 14’4” height of Hakeem Olajuwon and Ralph Sampson, ended the Lakers’ quest for their fifth straight NBA Finals appearance. Sure, the Lakers lost in heartbreaking fashion when Sampson heaved a miracle buzzer beater to win in five games, the so-called Gentleman’s Sweep. But most franchises wouldn’t be looking to make drastic changes to a roster that had just won two titles. Not Jerry Buss. Known for being hands-off when it came to roster decisions, Buss uncharacteristically went behind general manager Jerry West’s back in an attempt to trade budding superstar James Worthy at the height of his value. 

And it almost happened. On the day of the 1986 NBA Draft, Buss had a deal with the Dallas Mavericks. Then it fell apart. It’s one of the NBA’s great What Ifs, not just for the disastrous consequences it would’ve had for Lakers in the back half of the 1980s. but also for the future acquisition of Kobe Bryant a decade later.

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For much of the 1980s, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar vacillated between hinting at retirement to outright threatening it. It’s hard to blame him. While the all-time leader in points scored loved basketball, the shy bookworm hated the fame and celebrity that came with it. Factor in his alarmingly lanky 7’2” body that was in constant pain from cross-country flights and the physical NBA typical for his era and you can begin to understand why he wanted to quit well before his actual retirement in 1989. This Kansas City Kings ticket from 1985 shows how close he was to hanging up his sneakers for good.

From The Athletic’s From despised GM to missing on Magic: The story behind the Kings’ demise in K.C.

As one Laker began his decline, another’s star was on the rise. Four seasons after being drafted #1 overall in the 1982 NBA Draft, Worthy had his breakout season in 1985-1986 with a 20 points / 5.2 rebounds / 2.7 assists / 1.1 steals / 1.0 blocks per game average. Worthy made his first of seven consecutive All-Star teams that year. And while the Lakers fell to the Houston Rockets in the playoffs, Worthy was stellar. In fact, he ended his career with higher points and rebounds per game in the postseason than the regular season. The one knock against him was that he was a below average rebounder for his size. But Worthy wasn’t regularly getting beaten to the boards; it’s that his natural instinct was to start the fast break after an opponent’s missed shot. If you YouTube a highlight reel of the mid-to-late ‘80s Lakers, many of those flashy Magic Johnson passes end with a thundering one-handed dunk by Big Game James.

Sensing the end of Kareem’s career, Jerry Buss wanted to fill the inevitable size gap in the Lakers’ front court. The Lakers had tried to trade Worthy in the past, once for Ralph Sampson and once for several Indiana Pacers big men. But this time, Magic Johnson was the one pulling the strings, not Jerry Buss. For years, Magic tried to get his close friend Mark Aguirre, a buckets-raining small forward on the Dallas Mavericks, to join the team. Aguirre wouldn’t fix the size problem -- he was 6’6”, three inches shorter than Worthy -- and he wasn’t better than Worthy without the ball. But the 1986 NBA Draft, in which the Dallas Mavericks held the #7 pick, was rich with with 6’10” and 7’ centers. Worthy and Magic were not especially close -- according to Jeff Pearlman’s Showtime, he wasn’t even an automatic invite to Magic’s parties -- so Magic’s behind the scenes machinations were both personal and business.

General manager Jerry West would never go for this trade. He liked all-around players and just spent years trying to jettison Mike McGee, a one-dimensional forward who was drafted over his objections. So Buss personally reached out to Dallas Mavericks owner Donald Carter, even if it meant potentially destroying his relationship with West. The two owners came to an agreement: Worthy for Aguirre and the #7 pick, whom the Mavs would use to select big man Roy Tarpley out of the University of Michigan. Buss had already listened to Magic once before in 1981, when he demanded that coach Paul Westhead be fired. That worked out perfectly, why wouldn’t this one?

When West found out, he told Buss straight-up that if the deal went through, he would quit on the spot. Realizing that he had overstepped his boundaries, the part-time poker player decided against calling West’s bluff. He phoned Carter, who was by his mother’s death bed, to tell him the trade was off. When Aguirre’s mother died two weeks later at just 41, the deaths bonded the player and owner together and Aguirre was taken off the trade block.

Things were decidedly less sentimental in Laker Land. While the draft was still transpiring, Worthy started receiving phone calls from friends and journalists with the news. According to Showtime, Worthy went on a rant trashing Buss and the Lakers organization for the way he was being treated despite his superstar numbers. It tooks months of damage control within the team until Worthy, Magic, and Buss all cooled down and got back on the same page. 

In the three seasons that followed, the Lakers would make three straight NBA Finals and win two of them. Worthy, fueled with resentment, earned the nickname Big Game James for his game 7 performance (36 points, 16 rebounds, 10 assists) in the 1988 NBA Finals against the Pistons. As for Aguirre, he continued to put high-scoring numbers for the Mavericks until they shipped him off to the Pistons in the middle of the 1988-1989 season. In Detroit, he took much fewer shots and helped the Pistons get their revenge on the Lakers in 1989.

While a straight-up Aguirre-for-Worthy trade might not have been disastrous for the Lakers, the addition of Tarpley and the quitting of Jerry West would’ve reverberated throughout the franchise for decades. Though Tarpley won Rookie of the Year and 6th Man of the Year in his first two seasons, his career became a cautionary tale when, in 1989, he was arrested for DWI and suspended by the NBA. Following two more suspensions in 1991 due to drug and DWI charges, he was banned from the NBA. In 1994, he was reinstated and signed a $20 million contract with his old team. But his demons continued to haunt him and after violating a court-imposed order by drinking alcohol, the NBA permanently banned him for life. Tarpley died of liver failure in 2015 at just 50 years old.

Then there’s Jerry West. Had Buss gone along with the trade that Magic Johnson orchestrated, West would’ve left the organization he joined in 1960 as a player and continued with as its head coach and general manager. It was his job to draft, trade, and sign players, not the owner’s job and certainly not its star player. Buss knew the value of West, somebody who put as much work into this executive position as he did as a player. And it paid off ten years later, when Jerry West worked so hard over the summer of 1996 to sign Shaquille O’Neal and trade for Kobe Bryant that it put him in the hospital for exhaustion.

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Pan Fried Fish

2 medium size red snappers, cleaned

½ cup yellow corn meal

Vegetable oil

1 cup milk

½ cup ground macadamia nuts

Combine corn meal and nuts. Set aside. Dip the fish in the milk, then roll in the cornmeal and nut mixture. Allow the coating to set for about 5 minutes. Cook in heavy skillet with about 2 inches of vegetable oil. Drain each fish on paper towels. Salt and pepper may be desired for additional seasoning.

This is a classic frying mistake. You can’t just dip your meat or fish into the liquid ingredient (egg or milk) and then roll it around in the coating. You have to dip it in flour first. Otherwise the coating is just going to fall off. I knew that was going to happen with this pan fried fish -- cooked with Alaskan cod instead of red snapper since I made this during the early days of the pandemic/quarantine -- but following the recipe is the rules. Them’s the self-imposed rules of this extremely dumb project that I sometimes break if there’s a pandemic-related food shortage

What I ended up with was poorly made fish n’ chips without the chips. This dish wouldn’t be that bad with said chips, but it’s also in dire need of some kind of dipping sauce. When “salt and pepper may be desired for additional seasoning” ends a recipe, you know you’re in for something with the flavor profile of a postcard.