Word: laker
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Which is not to underestimate another Laker superstar, Jerry West. Shrewd playmaker, quick-handed defender and usually sharp shooter, West is probably the best guard ever to play basketball. His fellow guard, completing what may be the finest pairing ever, is Gail Goodrich, who is barely over 6 ft. tall but long on shotmaking skill. As one starting forward, the Lakers have Harold ("Happy") Hairston, a rugged rebounder who complements Wilt in controlling the backboards. The other is Second-Year Man Jim McMillian (rhymes with villain), who is deadly from the corner and scored a career high of 42 points...
...players seem to be able to do whatever is necessary," says Los Angeles Laker Coach Bill Sharman. Those words may well qualify as the classic understatement of the 1971 sports season...
What is the Lakers' secret? Guard Jerry West says that it is not the $5 bonus that Sharman doles out for each blocked shot or ball-stealing play. "I don't know what it is, really," confesses West, whose Laker salary is a reported $200,000 a year. "But whatever it is, we like it." Sharman knows exactly what it is, and he has printed the answer on the dressing room blackboard in large letters: RUN. The fast-breaking Lakers have read the word and reacted by outhustling all comers...
...record while playing at home, he explains that "it's harder to sustain a winning streak in basketball. We have tougher travel conditions and have to fight the other teams' home court advantage, which doesn't mean as much in baseball." That argument does not impress Laker Center Wilt Chamberlain, who remembers his days with the Harlem Globetrotters' traveling basketball show. "I played with them when they won all their games," he says, "and they were all on the road...
...Lakers rolled to their 23rd consecutive win at week's end, there was even talk that they could go all the way against Kareem Jabbar (formerly Lew Alcindor) and the vaunted Milwaukee Bucks, the overwhelming preseason favorites to win their second straight N.B.A. title. If conditioning alone determined the winner, the Lakers would be shoo-ins. Last week, when Laker Owner Jack Kent Cooke jubilantly broke out the champagne to celebrate the team's record-breaking victory, most of the players drank their toasts in Gatorade...