At the height of the “Showtime” era for the Los Angeles Lakers, Michael Cooper was the trapeze act.
A premier defender at one end of the court, a gravity-defying blur at the other. He would soar above the rim, and earthlings, to kiss the sky and abuse the basket, cradling a pass from Magic Johnson and jamming it through the hoop in one swift motion. The “Coop-a-loop” defined above-the-rim basketball in the 1980s.
“I can still touch the rim,” Cooper said Tuesday, laughing.
So if I threw you pass, you couldn’t …?
“Oh, no way. I might be able to tip it in. I’m very much grounded now.”
He’s 58 years old, long removed from his glory days and five championship rings. Gray stubble covers his face. Cooper said the beard makes him look older, but there’s a reason he’s avoiding shaving it. The facial hair masks a six-inch scar, which begins below his left ear and hooks around the front of his neck.
“Thirty-five or 40 stitches,” he said. “They had to cut there to take out 55 lymph nodes.”
His new statistics. His new loop.
Cooper coaches the WNBA’s Atlanta Dream. But real-life problems recently forced him to take a leave: He had tongue cancer surgery three weeks ago. Doctors removed the “ulcer,” a chunk of his tongue about the size of a 50-cent piece, as well as the lymph nodes.
“That’s why I talk with a slur,” he said.
Cooper was known to be a little off-center as a player. So it’s not surprising he has used the speech-impediment as a source of humor.
“The refs don’t even know what I’m saying because when I yell my tongue swells up,” he said. “So I’m just like, ‘wa-wa-wa.’ But I think they know I’m mad.”
He also said when he turns his head to the right to scream, the left side of his neck “tightens” and can’t project. So he jokes about how he’s forced to pivot his entire body.
Now it’s funny. Last month it wasn’t. Whenever he ate or drank, he felt “shooting pains” on the left side of his tongue, near his molars. He suspected it was related to a problematic crown. But when the pain didn’t subside for three weeks, he went to see a doctor. They did a biopsy. Then came the stunning diagnosis.
“Cancer was the furthest thing from my mind,” said Cooper, who’s not a smoker. “It was such a beautiful day, too. There I was on the ninth floor of the hospital and I’m looking out over Atlanta, and they told me. I was like, ‘Cancer? Tongue cancer?’ The first thing I thought was, ‘I’m going to die.’ But then they explained that they caught it early and it brought me back to the real world.”
He told his wife and four children, who live in Los Angeles. He told his players. The Dream announced a few days later that Cooper would take a short medical leave. The surgery was July 24. He returned to the sideline only 10 days later, on a limited basis.
“When he first told us, we were shocked,” Dream guard Jasmine Thomas said. “We were like, what? You’ve been dealing with this all this time? We had no idea.”
“To have a piece of your tongue chopped off and come back by that fast … it’s inspiring,” Angel McCoughtry said. “When I just bite my tongue by accident, I have a heart attack.”
Events like this tend be life-changing. Cooper is no exception. He has a greater appreciation for his family, his players and everyday life. He has received phone calls and texts from his old teammates, some of whom he hadn’t heard from in years: Johnson, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, A.C. Green, Byron Scott, Norm Nixon, as well as coach Pat Riley.
“I found out a lot of people care about Michael Cooper,” he said.
“I’ve never been one to take things for granted, but this has really brought it home.
He cries a lot. Then again, he’s always been sensitive. His nickname in high school: “Buttercup.”
When the Lakers lost to Boston in seven games in 1984, Cooper said, “Magic and I sat in the shower and cried.”
I covered the Lakers for a newspaper in Los Angeles. Cooper was popular with the media but, well, different. One of the beat writers carried around a screw and joked with Cooper that he found it after it fell out of the player’s head.
“I was quirky,” Cooper admitted.
But he was beloved as a player, and it has been the same in his coaching days, which has included two WNBA titles with the L.A. Sparks, an assistant (and later interim head coaching job) in the NBA with Denver, and four years as the USC women’s coach.
The Dream hired him in November. They started the season 15-5, but began to slide during their coach’s absence and have lost nine of 11. Cooper said they’ve lost momentum, and he’s preaching about overcoming obstacles. He told them a story about the 1980 finals, when the Lakers were forced to play Game 6 in Philadelphia without an injured Abdul-Jabbar.
“Magic gets on the flight and says, ‘Have no fear. … Magic Johnson is here.’ We knew we were going to do something spectacular.”
Johnson, then a rookie, turned in arguably the greatest performance in finals history: 42 points, 15 rebounds, seven assists. L.A. clinched the title.
It’s a moment from which Dream players should be able to draw inspiration. Or they can just look at their coach.
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