Pfund Can Chalk One Up to Perseverance

The year was 1981. The scene was Salt Lake City. The night was tense.

After a game against the Jazz, the Lakers’ Magic Johnson had announced he was going to ask owner Jerry Buss to trade him.

There seemed little doubt that Coach Paul Westhead would be fired. Then-assistant coach Pat Riley sat in the hotel bar several hours later and cursed the fates, assuming he would be fired, too.

Bill Bertka, then a Jazz assistant, put his arm around Riley and said, “Don’t worry, Pat. You never know how things are going to turn out.”

It turned out very well for Riley, who was named to succeed Westhead. And it turned out well for Bertka, too, who quickly was hired as Riley’s top assistant.

Actually, it was only fitting that Bertka was the one providing hope. With the exception of Westhead and Jack McKinney, Bertka has served every coach since the Lakers came to Los Angeles, as an assistant or a scout or both.

But in the case of Randy Pfund, the Lakers’ newest coach, Bertka has done more than provide an arm for support.

Bertka found Pfund on his doorstep one day. Working as an assistant coach at Westmont College in Santa Barbara, Pfund knew that Bertka, a fellow Santa Barbara resident, had a highly regarded scouting service.

Pfund had stopped by to offer his services. Once Bertka learned that Randy’s father was Lee Pfund, a contemporary coach of Bertka’s, the younger Pfund was in.

But Pfund had much more going for him.

“Scouting is X’s and O’s and individual characteristics,” Bertka said. “But a lot of people are not able to put their observations into writing. I saw immediately that Randy could do that in his reports. He had a very analytical approach to the game.”

By 1985, Pfund had been at Westmont for eight years. Having lost assistant coach Dave Wohl to the New Jersey Nets, Riley, then the Lakers’ head man, was looking for a replacement.

He and Bertka were interviewing several possible successors to Wohl.

It was Bertka’s wife, Solveig, his partner in the scouting service, who suggested that they interview Pfund.

Bertka agreed, but Riley still had to be persuaded.

So what advice did Bertka give his young protege?

“I told Randy to press hard on the chalk when he was diagraming on the blackboard,” Bertka said. “Pat liked people who were aggressive. He doesn’t like people who don’t press hard.”

And what was the determining factor in Riley’s decision?

Said Bertka: “He liked the way Randy pressed the chalk.”