Magic Johnson’s time as a player and an executive for the Los Angeles Lakers is well known, but did you know he was also briefly the team’s head coach? Johnson was the head honcho for the Lakers’ final 16 games of the 1993-94 season, but it wasn’t a very successful stint.
The Lakers finished 5-11 under Johnson, and a serial winner like him didn’t take all that losing too well. Nick Van Exel was on that team, and during an appearance on the Out The Mud podcast, he revealed a brutal message the coach sent to the players.
“So Magic was cool, dog,” Van Exel said. “We had a practice one day, and that motherf***er said, ‘Come on, y’all. Let’s go outside.’ We probably lost like 10 in a row. He’s like, ‘Come on, y’all. Let’s go outside. Everybody, let’s go outside.’ So we go outside, and we like, “Well, s***, what are we about to do?’… So we out there taking deep breaths and s***.
“And he was like, ‘Yeah,'” Van Exel continued. “He said, ‘That California air, it’s fresh and it’s good, ain’t it?’ He said, ‘Oh, yeah. Some of y’all, this going to be y’all last time getting some of this motherf***ing fresh air, ’cause we trading some of you motherf***ers tomorrow.'”
That was savage. Johnson has a smile that could light up the room, but he is a fierce competitor. He always hated losing and reached a boiling point with that group of players.
Now, those Lakers were led by coach Randy Pfund at the start of the season. Pfund had been hired in 1992 and went 39-43 in 1992-93. The 1993-94 campaign was going even worse, and he was fired with the team having a 27-37 record. Bill Bertka would serve as the interim head coach after Pfund’s departure and went 1-1.
Johnson was then brought in with the Lakers at 28-38. He would win five of his first six games, but everything went wrong after that. The Lakers lost 10 straight to end the season ninth in the West with a 33-49 record. It was five games into that losing streak that Johnson announced he would not return as the head coach next season. He was done.
Van Exel wasn’t going anywhere, though. The Lakers had selected him with the 37th pick in the 1993 NBA Draft, and he had a solid rookie season, averaging 13.6 points per game. He would be a Laker for five seasons and made the All-Star team in 1998.
Van Exel would also get to play with Johnson, not too long after he left his role as head coach. The icon came out of retirement in 1996, but then retired for good after the 1995-96 season.
As for Van Exel, he would play for the Denver Nuggets, Dallas Mavericks, Golden State Warriors, Portland Trail Blazers, and San Antonio Spurs after his stint with the Lakers. He retired in 2006 with career averages of 14.4 points, 2.9 rebounds, 6.6 assists, 0.8 steals, and 0.1 blocks per game over 13 seasons.
