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Catching Up With . . .
Gail Goodrich, Los Angeles Lakers
guard
December 13,
1971
Posted: Tue April 21, 1998
The president
of National
Fairways, Inc., a golf course
acquisition and management company, leans back in a plush
leather chair in his Greenwich, Conn., office. On his walls
are diagrams and photos of some of the company's 15
courses; on the floor lies a carpet the color of a putting
green. That Gail Goodrich,
a self-described hack with a 15 handicap, has an air of
success about him isn't surprising. As a
6'1" guard, he scored a team-high
25.9 points per game for the 1971-72 NBA champion Los Angeles
Lakers, whose 33-game winning streak remains a record for
professional sports. "I'm not sure that will be broken
for a while," he says.
Goodrich weighed just 135 pounds when he led Poly High in
the San Fernando Valley to the Los Angeles city
championship in 1961. He was called Twig at UCLA, where he
helped the Bruins to the first two of their 11 NCAA titles,
setting a then
championship-game record with 42 points against Michigan in 1965. When
Goodrich joined the Lakers that year, he
was given an even less flattering nickname. "Elgin
Baylor called me
Stumpy,"
he
says, "because I had short legs and long
arms."
The moniker may have described his stature but not his
game. With a hair-trigger, lefthanded release, Goodrich had
a gift for cutting taller players down to size. Along with
Jerry West, he formed one of the finest backcourts in NBA
history. "We
complemented each other so well," says
Goodrich,
55. "If Jerry went one way with the ball,
I knew exactly what he was going to
do."
Goodrich made five All-Star appearances over 14
seasons—nine with the Lakers, two with
the Phoenix Suns and three with the New Orleans
Jazz—before being inducted into the
Hall of Fame in 1996. He got involved in golf course
development through contacts he made while helping to run
the basketball venue during the '84 Summer Olympics in L.A.
Six years ago he moved to Greenwich, where he lives with
his second wife, Toni.
Goodrich has three children from his first
marriage: Brien, 25, and twin daughters Jaime and Linsay, 21.
On Nov. 20, 1996, the Lakers retired Goodrich's number 25.
An eight-foot-high copy of his jersey hangs from the
ceiling at The Forum alongside those of former teammates
Baylor, West, Kareem
Abdul-Jabbar and Wilt Chamberlain and fellow greats Magic
Johnson and James Worthy. Not bad company for a lefty named
Stumpy.
—by Kelvin C.
Bias
photographs by Sheedy & Long (cover); Manny Millan
Issue date: April 27, 1998
Past Editions of Catching Up With...
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