Fansided

The NBA sidekick Hall of Fame

By Bryan Harvey

Lakers' (l to r) Pau Gasol, Lamar Odom, Kobe Bryant and Shannon Brown during the game. LA Lakers vs San Antonio Spurs at Staples Center on Apr. 12, 2011. (Photo by Lawrence K. Ho/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images)
Lakers' (l to r) Pau Gasol, Lamar Odom, Kobe Bryant and Shannon Brown during the game. LA Lakers vs San Antonio Spurs at Staples Center on Apr. 12, 2011. (Photo by Lawrence K. Ho/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images) /
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Jamaal Wilkes and Norm Nixon

The Showtime Lakers won five championships in a decade. The Showtime Lakers were not good; they were very, very good. Very, very good teams get remembered. The Showtime Lakers featured three players who are considered among the top 50 to ever play the game. Magic Johnson and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar are regularly named on people’s top-five and top-10 lists.

James Worthy was the perfect third star because he just ran and ran and ran, but he wasn’t running anywhere near the Pacific coast when Magic and Kareem won their first title together. In fact, Pat Riley wasn’t the head coach, and while the Lakers were well on their way to being the Showtime standard, one could argue they weren’t yet there in 1980.

A 26-year-old Jamaal Wilkes and a 24-year-old Norm Nixon were the No. 2 and No. 4 leading scorers on the team that defeated the Philadelphia 76ers in the NBA Finals and signified a rising tide of purple and gold.

Wilkes especially deserves mentioning. When Kareem missed Game 6 of that classic NBA Finals with injury and Magic responded by manning the post and scoring a legendary 42 points, Wilkes matched the rookie almost point for point, netting an impressive 37 points. In fact, Wilkes made two more field goals than Magic over the course of the game’s 48 minutes. Together he and Johnson outscored Philadelphia’s entire starting five by seven points.

Nixon, on the other hand, was not spectacular in Game 6, scoring only four points, but he did average 15.5 per game for the series. When the teams met again in the 1982 NBA Finals, he would average 17.7 points per game. Of note in that second Finals against Julius Erving’s Sixers, not once did the Lakers have the game’s top scorer. Andrew Toney and Dr. J split those honors throughout the series’ six games. The Lakers won with depth and breadth and even more depth.

Lastly, Wilkes also served as Rick Barry’s running mate in Golden State from the day he was drafted in 1974 up to the day he signed with the Lakers in 1977. While Barry carried much more of the scoring weight in their lone championship together, that weight became more evenly distributed with time. Plus, playing alongside Barry didn’t necessarily unfold with the same ease and amusement as running up and down the court alongside Magic. Magic just wanted to be friends with everyone Barry offended, and Barry offended everyone.

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