After Magic Johnson was forced to retire from the NBA because he tested HIV positive in November 1991, the Los Angeles Lakers went into purgatory. They had an aging roster, and they decided to start over and rebuild rather than fight to hold onto a shred of respectability.
They managed to miss the playoffs once in 1994 before returning there the following year and upsetting the Seattle SuperSonics in the first round. But they weren’t championship contenders and didn’t have a superstar, and late executive Jerry West knew that merely being good wouldn’t be good enough for their spoiled fan base.
In the summer of 1996, they had the opportunity to snag the biggest of superstars this side of Michael Jordan. Shaquille O’Neal wasn’t fully content with being on a strong Orlando Magic team, and he became a free agent that summer. Better yet, he was just 24 years of age and a bigger-than-life personality who seemed tailor-made for Los Angeles.
West managed to land O’Neal, and in the process, he also landed the draft rights to a 17-year-old prodigy named Kobe Bryant. But bidding against the Magic for O’Neal pushed him to the limit emotionally, and once the job was done, he was spent.
He admitted in an interview with Graham Bensinger that he was hospitalized after he won the bidding war for the dominant center.
“After that was done and the draft was done, I had to go in the hospital for three days,” West said. “I was just emotionally spent and exhausted. … One day, I went to see the doctor, and he said, the day after that, he said, ‘we’re going to have to put you in a hospital.’ And I was there for three days. I was absolutely listless. I had no energy at all.”
As brilliant as West was as the main man in the Lakers’ front office, he was often a nervous and anxious man. He likely thrived off of that type of energy, but the growing pains the Lakers had as they rebuilt throughout the 1990s took a toll on him. In fact, he seriously considered quitting his front office role in 1998.
He did end up leaving his post in 2000 after they had finally won it all. Two more championships would follow in the next two years, and after a very rocky retooling process in the middle of the 2000s, they won two more world titles with Bryant and Hall of Fame big man Pau Gasol in 2009 and 2010.
It’s pretty safe to say that the emotional and physical toll West went through in 1996 was worth it.
