(This is the fourth and final installment in a series about Detroit Public School League basketball legend, Spencer Haywood. Please find Part 1 here, Part 2 here, and Part 3 here.)
Spencer Haywood spent the next four seasons with Seattle and was an All-Star in each of them. He was a first-team All-NBA performer the first two seasons and a second-teamer the next two. His scoring, however, dwindled from a high in 1972-73 of 29.2 points per game to 22.4 in 1974-75. His rebounding fell off too, from a high of 13.4 in 1973-74 to 9.3 in 1974-75. Haywood grew increasingly discontented with the Seattle organization and eventually demanded a trade. His choice for a destination was New York and the Knicks. Seattle obliged with an October 24, 1975, deal for a draft pick – which wound up being Eugene Short – and $2 million in cash.
Haywood’s career would never again reach the heights he had reached in his first six seasons as a professional. Sure, while in New York he lived the jet-set life and married supermodel Iman. But the high life also led him to his first dalliance with cocaine. In his autobiography he claims it was merely recreational, but it was – as the future soon told – a dangerous first step.
Much like there had been in Seattle four seasons prior; there was a falling out in New York, though this one came primarily from the Knicks’ perspective. So, on January 5, 1979, Haywood headed from the Big Apple to the Big Easy for journeyman center Joe C. Meriweather and was immediately revived – averaging 24 points per game for the Jazz as opposed to the 17.8 in New York. He also averaged 9.6 rebounds compared with 6.1.
New Orleans announced that off-season the franchise was relocating to Salt Lake City, UT. Haywood insisted he couldn’t exist in Utah and forced another trade, this one to the Los Angeles Lakers for Adrian Dantley. At age 30 he was to be the missing piece to a Lakers’ puzzle that included Kareem Abdul-Jabbar in the pivot and rookie Earvin “Magic” Johnson at the point. What Haywood wound up becoming was a 3D player: disruptive, distracted, drug addict.
Once in Los Angeles it didn’t take Haywood long to discover freebasing cocaine and he smoked crack every chance he could. His troubles are well-chronicled in his autobiography. As his crack intake increased his minutes per game decreased. He went from the starting power forward on an NBA title contender at the beginning of the season to a reserve that rarely saw his season average of 20 minutes per game by the end of it. He finished the season with career lows in points (9.7 ppg) and rebounds (4.6 ppg). His drug problem became so severe that he actually passed out stretching before practice in preparation of Game 1 of the NBA Finals against the Philadelphia 76ers. The former Olympic hero and college All-American was eventually suspended for the remainder of the series for “Disruptive Actions” after he came forward with his drug problem to Lakers’ officials following a locker room scuffle after Game 2.
Paranoid and in a tailspin, Haywood called in a favor from an old Detroit buddy who flew out to Los Angeles to begin plotting the assassination of Lakers’ coach Paul Westhead – the man Haywood felt was to blame for his troubles. Fortunately Haywood’s friends and family intervened and Westhead lived to be ousted by Magic Johnson the next season.
Haywood spent a season convalescing and playing basketball in Venice, Italy. He returned to the NBA for a season-and-a-half in Washington, but again succumbed to the lure of cocaine.
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A lot can be discovered about a person by looking at his obituary or reading the epitaph on his gravestone. Haywood’s will no doubt include husband, father, All-American, Olympic gold medalist, and NBA champion. But what will one of the most talented players ever to come from the city of Detroit be most-remembered for?
That’s right, taking on the NBA and NCAA in court – and winning.
But did he? Win that is.
Perhaps feeling guilty for begetting the current system that sees middle schoolers featured on the pages of Sports Illustrated, finds college coaches courting seventh-graders, and NBA scouts not only visiting college campuses on Saturday afternoons but also high school gymnasiums on Friday nights, Haywood has come out in recent years sounding an awful lot like someone who’s siding with present NBA commissioner David Stern’s suggestion of a 20-year age minimum for draft eligible players.
“You got the kids that say, ‘Screw college, when I’m 18, I’m going to the NBA,’ ” Haywood told the Akron Beacon-Journal in May 2003. “Almost none of these kids are ready.”
He’s right, of course. For every LeBron James there’s a Korleone Young – a player who overestimated his potential, wasn’t drafted in the first round (where the guaranteed money is), and has never been seen around the NBA again. In a candid moment you might even get Haywood to admit that he wasn’t ready either. Sure, he could hang on the court, but emotionally it might have been too much too soon.
In a September 2003 interview with the East Carolinian Haywood notes: “I was going to schools talking about substance abuse and they were looking at me, saying, ‘I’m going to be the first one to make it in the 11th grade, and then the 10th grade.’ They had dropped the idea of education and were starting to just play ball.
“I thought, ‘Oh God, what have I done?’ I created a monster.”
*So, the one Detroit player coaches Will Robinson and Henry Iba called the best ever, will likely never get beyond the front door of the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame without purchasing a ticket. Many might call that fitting and just punishment for the man who enacted the single greatest change on the game of basketball – at every level. Others might call it a shame.
Perhaps, as Haywood considers his epitaph, he should borrow the words of the legendary and late Los Angeles Times columnist Jim Murray who once wrote: “If you measure an athlete by his effect on the game he plays, (Haywood) goes directly to the Hall of Fame. … He called a technical foul on the whole game. There should be a statue of him in the home of every athlete who ever pried a multimillion-dollar contract and the indisputable rights to his own services out of sports management. …”
*-Post Script: At the time this piece was originally written (circa 2008), the chances of Haywood becoming enshrined in the Hall of Fame seemed remote. Then, in 2015, the Hall call arrived. Haywood was enshrined along with 10 others. His acceptance speech is found below.
