When LA Lakers head coach Paul Westhead suspended Power Forward Spencer Haywood during the 1980 NBA Finals, he didn’t know that his life was about to change forever.
Not only did it change, but it almost ended as Haywood plotted to have him murdered for the infraction.
80% of the League Was Doing It
Cocaine is one hell of a drug and by some accounts, about 80% of NBA players were doing it in the 1970s.
This includes veteran center and self-professed freebaser Spencer Haywood, who by his tenth year in the league was snorting so much booga suga, that he passed out on the floor during stretching exercises before a team practice.
A scoring big man decades before it was a thing, Haywood averaged 20+ points in five consecutive seasons, including 29 points per game in 1972-73, and paved the way for undergrad college players to enter the NBA Draft.
After passing out, team trainers moved Haywood off to the side of the court and practice commenced as usual, but for Paul Westhead, who famously also clashed with star point guard Magic Johnson and would be dismissed just two years after winning the championship in 1980, this was the final straw.
He suspended Haywood for the remainder of the Finals following Game 2, which predictably didn’t sit right with Big Spence in his vacuuming-the-lawn state of mind.
Westhead Must Die
After Spencer’s meeting with Westhead where he was handed down his indefinite suspension, he left the Great Western Forum, and drove off in his Rolls Royce thinking one thing – Westhead must die!
What happened next reads like a movie script or in this case an HBO series that gets canceled after two seasons.
According to Spencer Haywood himself, “in the heat of anger and the daze of coke,” he called up a friend, who also happened to be a certified OG, to set up a meeting where they would hash out a plot to murder Paul Westhead.
Following some serious strategizing and scheming that likely also involved some Chinese takeout from Sze Chwan, the pair settled on a solid plan.
They obtained Westhead’s home address and would sabotage his car by cutting its brakes.
Alas, the plot never got to be carried out due to some last-minute interference run by Spencer Haywood’s mother, who threatened to snitch on everyone if they went through with it.
The Aftermath
Paul Westhead, who to this day remains the only coach to win a championship in both the NBA and WNBA, was oblivious to the whole thing until nearly a decade later when Haywood made the revelations public to a People Magazine reporter and he received a call for comment from the LA Times.
Upon learning about the plot that could have ended his life, he said “It’s kind of scary, but I would think, in a similar circumstance, I would respond the same way and suspend Haywood again.”
That Westhead was a hard-ass.
Fortunately, our story has a happy ending.
Despite their differences and the whole murder plot thing, Haywood is now clean, owns his own real estate company in Detroit, and has even reconciled with Westhead, who has since said “I’ve always had a good feeling about ‘Woody, that he was a good guy.”
If you liked this story, you may also like What Really Happened to John Brisker? Or Don’t Mess with The Dipper: The Time Mel Daniels Tried to Fight Wilt Chamberlain
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