—At 95 years old, the longest-tenured employee of the team, and still equipped with one of the sharpest basketball minds, Bill Bertka has agreed to honor the franchise's 75th anniversary season by sharing stories on what he’s seen throughout Lakers History—
Everyone loves the story about the path to success. We’ve heard the story so many times. The renditions are endless, but still after all this time, it’s never gotten old.
What’s the fascination?
Is it the persistence past failure? The allure of transformation? Is it just the sheer relatability of it all?
When we watch someone succeed, something inside us is provoked— we’re shown that we have it in us to succeed too. Sometimes that provocation is big, sometimes it’s small, but it’s always a beautiful thing to be reminded that it’s there.
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The name Dr. Jerry Buss always comes to mind when thinking about the Lakers' success. He was lured to Los Angeles by possibility; the same reason the Lakers traveled west in 1960.
“One of my favorite sayings to use around him was ‘there ain't nothing like winning,’” Bertka said.
“There ain't nothing like winning, and he loved to win. Whatever it was. That's why he was a poker player. And when he took the Lakers over. You know, he wanted us to be like the Boston Celtics, win, win, win.”
Dr. Buss examined every lived experience and found the lesson in it, whether it was from his stepdad having him dig ditches in frozen ground for three hours before school in the middle of a Wyoming winter or his high school science teacher who showed him the value of an education. He didn’t waste his time deciphering the good from the bad in life, everything had value if you could boil it down to the lesson.
That’s what I’ve gathered from the stories Coach Bertka has told me too. He made it his life’s work to examine the criteria of success for a team and then he went out to find those missing pieces and devise a plan. Sometimes the team would reach the goal, sometimes they’d fall short. Regardless, Coach would move on to the next game, the next season, the next goal.
That’s success—carrying on no matter what. Regardless of if you win or lose, pass or fail, what are you going to do next? Unlike most people, they both knew this, and they recognized it in one another.
After every home game at the Forum, Dr. Buss would come down to the locker room. Coach Bertka had a cubicle like the players, and he would be in his cubicle finalizing game notes. Dr. Buss would sit down next to him, and they’d talk.
“That became sort of a ritual over the years,” Bertka said.
“I knew he was gonna come down and we were gonna talk, and he always asked a lot of very analytical questions about the game and enjoyed any kind of information you gave him. And it was, it was a nice relationship.”
When the Lakers had their training camp in Hawaii, they’d stay at the Hilton Hotel in Honolulu. Adjacent to the hotel was the Kobe Japanese Steak House and every year they were there, the team would have dinner with Dr. Buss. Just the coaches, the players, and Dr. Buss.
“It was one of his favorite events,” Bertka said. “It was for everybody to introduce themself and what they did and what their hopes were for the coming year. And it was a very nice, very nice evening.”
In the 1981-82 season, Pat Riley became the official Head Coach of the Lakers. He asked Bertka to rejoin the team as his assistant. Ten years later, Pat left the Lakers to become Head Coach of the New York Knicks. Bertka stayed.
Before Riley left, Dr. Buss told him, “Don't worry about Bill. I’ll take care of Bill.”
Riley replied, “Bill deserves the best.”
Dr. Buss gave Coach a multi-year contract. “Which for an assistant coach was unheard of,” Coach said. “And he made me the highest paid assistant coach in the league at that time.”
“He was a very, very special man in my life. One of the greatest human beings that I've ever worked with. And certainly, the respect that he gave me, I'll always cherish it, you know?”
Dr. Buss had told Bertka, “you’re one of the best acquisitions I ever made.”
In 34 years of owning the team, Dr. Buss saw his team go to an astounding 16 NBA Finals and win 10 championships. Now, was Dr. Buss a byproduct of the Lakers or were the Los Angeles Lakers a byproduct of him?
It’s almost as if they found each other and brought out the parts of one another that were needed to succeed.
Dr. Buss was called unrealistic. And the Lakers, they were just another sports team. But neither of them accepted that.
That’s what the Lakers do to people, they ask you to be more. And Bertka’s been answering the ask for 48 seasons.
“We were on top of the world and then we dropped down. Then we came back, then we dropped down,” Coach explained about his time with the team. “It's been like this: success, lose, win, lose, win. And then in the nineties, when Del Harris was Head Coach, that's when we acquired Kobe and Shaq. And I said, well, I just want to see us on top one more time and then I'll maybe I'll retire, you know?”
“So, they got it done,” he said alluding to the three-peat. But he didn’t retire.
And more than 30 years ago, Jerry West, the Lakers General Manager at the time, called Bertka. During the lockout seasons in ’98, ’99, and 2011, Dr. Buss had asked members he trusted among the organization if they’d be willing to take a pay cut until the team was back on their feet. Coach always graciously accepted. When Jerry West called, he told Coach, “‘Dr. Buss wants you to know he's very appreciative of your cooperative spirit, and that when you retire, he's going to give you a Rolls Royce.”
“And you’ve never retired?!” I asked him.
“I haven't retired,” he answered.
“I’d like to see us back up,” he said.
