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They gathered at the Inglewood YMCA. General manager Jerry West and his assistant, Mitch Kupchak, were there. So was Bill Bertka, the scouting lifer who had been Pat Riley’s assistant coach.
Michael Cooper and Larry Drew were there as human thermometers, getting a reading on a 17-year-old from a suburban Philadelphia high school, a kid just wide-eyed enough to call people “Mr,” just ambitious enough to cut in line and join the NBA.
“Not many people were quicker than Michael Cooper,” Bertka said. “Not many people in the NBA were. This kid was.