For 32 seasons, from the 1980s Showtime era through Shaquille O’Neal and the beginning and end of Kobe Bryant, Gary Vitti tended to the Los Angeles Lakers, a fixture on their sideline whose career spanned 13 head coaches, eight championships, numerous Hall of Famers and enough stories to fill a library.
When Bryant ruptured his Achilles in 2013, Vitti was there. “Just tape it up,” Bryant famously asked him. And when Magic Johnson stunned the world by testing positive for HIV in the fall of 1991, Vitti was there. “When God gave me this disease, he gave it to the right person,” Johnson told an emotional Vitti.