“I called an old friend, a genuine certified gangster…” Spencer Haywood hired a Mobster to take out the Lakers head coach
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Spencer Haywood
The previous Olympic star has conceded to plotting the death of Westhead with a known criminal.
Nicknamed “The Professor”, Paul Westhead was the lead trainer for a considerable length of time teams and WNBA teams. He drove youngster Magic Johnson and the Lakers to the NBA title in his first year as a mentor.
Westhead has come out on top for titles in both the NBA and the WNBA and is known for his flighty, run-and-weapon style, named “The System.” He has trained the Los Angeles Lakers, Chicago Bulls, Golden State Warriors, and Denver Nuggets, among others.
Haywood played for the Lakers in the 79-80 season bringing home the main NBA championship of his profession. Westhead and Haywood conflicted during the NBA finals.
Spencer Haywood admits plotting the murder of his head coach
Paul Westhead had driven the Los Angeles Lakers to the NBA finals during his first season as mentor. The Lakers were confronting Wilt Chamberlain and the Philadelphia 76ers.
Haywood had dropped during work on following an evening of freebasing during the NBA finals. Following a contention with teammates Jim Chones and Brad Holland, Westhead suspended Haywood after Game 3.
“A lot of guys around the league were doing coke, and it was getting rave reviews,” Haywood recalled of his first forays into the drug in 1979. “If you were an NBA player, leeches would line up after the game to stuff coke in your gym bag.”
In a first-individual record of his cocaine enslavement, Spencer Haywood claims he recruited a Detroit mobster to kill Paul Westhead after the then-Los Angeles Lakers mentor suspended him during the 1979-80 NBA finals.
“I left the Forum and drove away in my Rolls that night thinking one thought — that Westhead had to die,” Haywood says in an article published in People magazine on June 13.
“In the midst of my rage and the haze of coke, I called an old friend, a genuine certified gangster… We sat down and discussed it. We got Westhead’s address because he lived in Palos Verdes. We’d sabotage his car, mess with his brake lining, and so on,” Haywood reflected.
The previous Olympic basketball star’s mother, nonetheless, convinced him not to complete the plot, taking steps to hand him over, he wrote in the magazine. Luckily for Haywood, he was kept from perpetrating an intolerable wrongdoing.
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Mohnish Sabharwal
(342 Articles Published)