Game 65: Frank Brady - Marinated Chicken Strips
According to Jeff Pearlman’s Showtime, sportswriter Frank Brady was the person who informed Lakers head coach Jack McKinney that he was out of a job. Or rather, he was the person who told Jack’s son. Less than a year earlier, the murder of new Lakers coach Jerry Tarkanian’s best friend, Vic Weiss, led to his resignation after only a week. This still-unsolved mystery led new owner Jerry Buss to quickly search for new candidates. He found his man in Jack McKinney, a beloved former college coach who was now a well-liked assistant on the champion Portland Trail Blazer’s bench. After he was hired and Magic Johnson was drafted, he laid out his blueprint for what would become Showtime basketball: “A constant running game… a moving offense… We’ll run every chance and under every possible situation.”
So why is Pat Riley the coach we associate with the run and gun offense of the Showtime dynasty? It was all because of an incident that, while not as violent as Weiss’ death, was almost as strange: Jack McKinney got in a bicycle accident.
A month into the 1979-1980 season, the new-look Lakers were gelling. McKinney’s decision to start Magic Johnson at guard instead of forward has pissed off starting point guard Norm Nixon, but it was paying off with a 9-4 record. “Jack was all about utilizing the speed and quickness of the guard play and Kareem was right with it as well,” said Brad Holland to the NY Times after McKinney’s 2018 death.
The week of November 5th, 1979, the Lakers were scheduled to play three games in four days. So on the off-day, November 8th, Jack got on his bike and planned to ride from Palos Verdes to meet his best friend, Lakers assistant coach Paul Westhead, for a game of tennis. But Jack never arrived. His gears locked and he flew over the bike, smashing his head into the concrete. Jack laid in a coma for three days before waking up. Westhead took over the team while McKinney recovered and hired the Lakers’ play-by-play color commentator, Pat Riley, to be his assistant coach until McKinney got back into coaching shape.
Westhead faithfully ran his old friend’s playbook and the Lakers waltzed into the playoffs, eventually facing off against the Philadelphia 76ers in the NBA Finals. But before the Lakers pulled off their clinching game 6 victory with Magic starting at center, Buss decided that McKinney would be in no shape to continue as Lakers head coach. He informed Westhead of the decision and called a press conference. But the one person they neglected to call was McKinney.
The following season, McKinney would be hired by the Indiana Pacers, a team that, as I detailed in game 35, was likely in cahoots due to the involvement of Buss’ business partner Frank Mariani. Despite winning Coach of the Year in his first season, McKinney lasted only four years before getting fired. In his next stop with the Kansas City Kings, he only lasted nine games (and only one win) before resigning. The coach had a playful reputation for being forgetful before the accident, but the effects of his near-fatal accident and concussion had begun to muddy the once-great basketball mind. He never coached again.
The Lakers won a title with Westhead and four with Riley, after Westhead was fired for re-implementing a slower offense. But if it wasn’t for one faulty gear, McKinney likely would’ve gone into the NBA history books as one of the greatest coaches of all time. Decades of NBA lore -- from the Showtime Lakers to the LeBron-Wade-Bosh superteam that Riley built as the Miami Heat’s president -- all changed because of that bike ride.
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Marinated Chicken Strips
4 boneless chicken breasts
Juice of two lemons
½ teaspoon dried tarragon leaves
White pepper
Salad greens
1 cup dry white wine
⅓ cup sliced green onions
Salt to taste
2 cloves garlic minced
Skin chicken and cut into strips. Combine chicken and wine in saucepan and poach over low heat, covered, until chicken is tender (about 15 minutes). Transfer to a large bowl. Stir in garlic, lemon juice, onions, and tarragon. Season to taste with salt and pepper. Cover and chill overnight. Drain, arrange on salad greens, and serve with toothpicks. Garnish with paprika.
Poaching is not a method I’d ever used before to cook a chicken. Poaching sounds like something you do to fancy poultry, like a quail or other tiny bird that wasn’t worth blasting out of the sky. Poaching in white wine sounds even worse. But maybe that’s the only thing that differentiates it from boiling.
In any case, poaching chicken is like giving your chicken a really inaccurate sous vide bath. You have to hope it’s ready. My chicken was overcooked, which was fine with me given the alternative. After 24 hours of marinating it in the garlic/lemon/green onion/tarragon sauce, I arranged the chicken strips on a bed of lettuce and sprinkled paprika on top per Frank Brady’s instructions. I wasn’t hosting a dinner party, just a lonely man’s unemployed lunch, so I skipped the tooth picks. The snack… wasn’t that bad? I love acidic chicken and the tarragon was an interesting touch. Dry as hell, but not bad. But I won’t look back on my life with regret if I never eat a poached chicken again.
