The best NBA novelist on the planet — Roland Lazenby — has a new book coming out in a few weeks on the life of Jerry West. Of course, the first parts of the book to get leaked publicly are the most salacious.
That brings us to Bob Wolfley of the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel (as picked up by Sports by Brooks), talking about the Magic Johnson-era Lakers
“The team’s locker room, and its sauna, had been a place where the star and other players had entertained women, even right after games. Johnson would retire to the sauna after a game, have sex, then put on a robe and return to the locker room for his postgame media interviews.”
So it was Showtime off the court too? Big shock. This is Magic, a guy who admitted to having more than 300 sexual partners a year for a stretch and who contracted HIV because of it. Everyone has moved on from this. Aside being titillating, this tells us nothing new.
I have and am reading an advanced copy of Lazenby’s “Jerry West: The Life and Legend of a Basketball Icon.” Interviews and a review will come. But this book is the opposite of titillation — it is the story of a hardscrabble boy who has a career that many would dream of (Gold medal, NBA title, 50 greatest players of all time) but that was driven by his failures. West lost an NCAA title game and the seemingly countless times to the Celtics in the NBA Finals. Those haunt West to this day, the successes were fleeting to him.
It’s a great read, but if you are picking it up as a Kitty Kelly tell-all, you are going to be very disappointed.
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- phaktor333 - Dec 15, 2011 at 7:48 AM
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Magic got HIV, Tiger got toppled off of his Nike/Buick/Gatorade manufactured pedestal. It’s all chopped and screwed up how both matters were handled and the prevalence of intense media scrutiny is different from ’91 to 2010. Helicopters were hovering around Tiger’s crashed car…Magic didn’t have paparazzi eyeballing him as he emerged from his hot tub of love after the games. It does not matter how it happened and who is the ‘victim’. These chump stains merely serve as examples for all of us as to what happens when you are a celebrity and you do what us ‘common folk’ do…you are not afforded the same anonymity, especially if you are messy about it. But the race issue has me thinking…Brady left a pregnant woman, upgraded and married a wealthy supermodel, but Tiki Barber gets killed when he does the same, albeit with a lowly intern. I guess whether one upgrades or downgrades holds weight, eh? Or IS it a race issue? Barber can’t even get back in the league because of this; if he left his wife for Rihanna (or other suitable upgrade), would he be in this same situation?
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- djhtruth - Mar 7, 2012 at 4:45 PM
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Tiger was homing on an icon’s record in a sport still dominated by a certain class of people.It was a foregone conclusion that Tiger would win just about every tournament he wanted to. So many others were relegated to also rans! Somebody had to find a chink in his armor because he was invincible. Mission accomplished! Shame, doubt, mediatic ridicule, incessant criticism, tore apart his iron psyche and rendered him mortal again. No approval of his acts here, just assessment of the repercussions and the events following, Was it a conspiracy?. I doubt it but one never knows these days. I feel his armor replenishing itself once again and the Tiger returns to prey on the weak and defy the young Lion who invaded his jungle during his hiatus.
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- simplekatt - May 9, 2012 at 9:11 AM
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Seems like some of you are so passionate about defending when he acquired HIV, but the real question is how? No one at the time would dare question how he contracted HIV and still today it’s the elephant in the living room.
