From Eugene, Ore. — While Phil Jackson and the Lakers chase another NBA championship, the coach who guided Magic Johnson's memorable rookie playoff run toils in virtual anonymity.
Paul Westhead's circuitous coaching journey has taken him to the University of Oregon, where in March the former Lakers and Loyola Marymount coach was hired to lead the struggling women's basketball program.
If this seems a curious choice for a veteran NBA coach who also once commanded the Chicago Bulls and Denver Nuggets, Westhead doesn't see it that way.
Given a five-year contract that reportedly will pay him about $3 million, he says he looks forward to the task of turning around a team that lost a school-record 21 games last season.
"This is what I do," he says.
Recently turned 70 and a grandfather 10 times over, the well-traveled Westhead coached in the NBA as recently as last November -- as an assistant to P.J. Carlesimo with the Oklahoma City Thunder until Carlesimo and his staff were fired.
This won't be Westhead's first time coaching women.
Two summers ago, he guided Diana Taurasi and the Phoenix Mercury to the WNBA championship, making Westhead the one person with NBA and WNBA titles on his head-coaching resume.
"The fact that it was the women's team, I found that attractive because of my experience with the Mercury," Westhead says during an interview in his office near Autzen Stadium. "I liked the way they played. I liked the way they just went after it."
He also liked the fact that Oregon, scheduled to open a new arena late next year, pursued him, encouraging him to implement the unorthodox, run-and-gun "speed game" that was so successful for Westhead's Hank Gathers-Bo Kimble teams at Loyola but was less rewarding at some of the coach's other stops.
"They kind of gave me free rein and said, 'Come on in and do what you do,' " Westhead says. "You don't get many of those opportunities."
Westhead was given the career opportunity of a lifetime 30 years ago, when the Lakers asked him to take over as coach 14 games into the 1979-80 season. An assistant to Jack McKinney, his closest friend, he was promoted after McKinney suffered a near-fatal head injury in a bicycle crash.
Westhead deftly shepherded the Lakers' drive to the NBA championship, a run capped by Johnson's legendary performance in the Game 6 clincher against the Philadelphia 76ers when Kareem Abdul-Jabbar was sidelined because of an ankle injury.
