2007-8-10 11:50
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Paul Westphal (born November 30, 1950 in Torrance, California) is a former basketball player and coach in the NBA. A native of California, Westphal has had a storied career in the NBA, both as a player and as a head coach. He was most recently the head coach at Pepperdine University. Westphal is currently a studio analyst for Fox Sports Net West/Prime Ticket for Los Angeles Clippers and Los Angeles Lakers games, first joining them during the Clippers' 2006 playoff run. In 2007, Westphal called the locally broadcast USC basketball games with Jim Watson on FSN Prime Ticket. Paul Westphal was also a studio analyst along with Don Maclean for the 2007 Pacific 10 Men's Basketball Post Season Tournament games that aired on FSN.
Westphal was drafted in 1972 by the Boston Celtics out of USC. After three seasons there, including a championship ring in 1974, he was traded to the Phoenix Suns, the team that he helped get to the 1976 NBA Finals. In Game 5 of that series, called by many the greatest game ever played in basketball, Westphal made a critical play: With one second to go and the Suns down 111 to 110 but in possession of the ball and trapped by the Celtics' defense, Westphal called for a time-out. He knew the Suns had no time-outs left, so a technical foul was called on him. The Celtics made a free throw, taking a two point lead, but the timeout call allowed Phoenix to inbound the ball at midcourt, rather than go the full length of the court. (As a result of this play, the NBA changed the rules prior to the following season.) Garfield Heard then made a shot for the Suns that sent the game into triple-overtime. The Suns ended up losing the game and the series.
After the 1979-1980 season, he was traded again, to the Seattle SuperSonics, where he played one season before heading to the New York Knicks. In 1983, he returned to Phoenix for a last hurrah. Injured, he only played in 59 of the 82 games of his final season.
He scored a total of 12,809 NBA points for an average of 15.1 points per game, with 3,591 assists for a total of 4.4 assists per game. He also had 1,580 rebounds, for an average of 1.9 per game.
In 1992 he resurfaced in the NBA, as head coach of the Phoenix Suns. With players such as Kevin Johnson, Dan Majerle, Richard Dumas, and the newly-acquired Charles Barkley and Danny Ainge, the Suns made it to the Finals on Westphal's first season as a coach, but they lost to the Chicago Bulls on the sixth game 98 to 99. Coincidentally, Game 3 between the two teams went to a triple overtime and is likewise considered one of the greatest games ever played.
While the Suns made the playoffs during each of Westphal's seasons as coach, the Suns did not make it back to the Finals and Westphal was replaced during the 1995-1996 season. He served as an Assistant Coach for a high school team in Arizona for two years before he returned to the NBA as a coach with the SuperSonics for the 1998-1999 season. He coached in Seattle until he was fired during the 2000-01 season. He returned to the college ranks in the fall of 2001 at Pepperdine. At Pepperdine, Westphal lead the team to NCAA Tournament in his first season, but after a 7-20 season in 2005-2006, Westphal was fired from the Pepperdine head coaching job on March 15, 2006.
In the book Tough Enough: How the Suns Conquered the West (1993), Barkley was quoted saying He (Westphal) can't worry about being our friend; (if) we need a friend, we get a dog! Barkley was, apparently, hinting that he favored Westphal's way of coaching the Suns.
Westphal should not be confused with another NBA coach, Paul Westhead.
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