San Diego Union-Tribune (Sunday)
HIS STARDOM ROSE PLAYING WITH SUNS
Paul Westphal, a Basketball Hall of Fame guard who played for the Boston Celtics’ 1974 NBA champions, became a four-time All-star with the Phoenix Suns and coached them to the league playoff final in 1993, died Saturday. He was 70.
Westphal, whose death was confirmed by the Suns, was found to have brain cancer in the summer of 2020.
Westphal was an outstanding shooter with both hands and a fine playmaker and defensive player. He played in the NBA for 12 seasons, also with the Seattle Supersonics and the New York Knicks. He was a head coach for all or part of 10 seasons, with the Suns, Seattle and the Sacramento Kings, and an assistant coach with the Dallas Mavericks and the Brooklyn Nets.
He was inducted into the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame in Springfield, Mass., as a player in 2019.
The Celtics selected Westphal in the first round of the 1972 NBA Draft, the 10th player chosen overall.
One of his finest games with Boston came in the 1974 NBA Finals against the Milwaukee Bucks. Westphal scored 12 points in Game 5 and played stifling defense against Oscar Robertson, one of the NBA’S greatest players, who made only 2 of his 13 shots. The Celtics won 96-87 on the Bucks’ court and captured the series, four games to three.
But Westphal was mostly a reserve in his three seasons with the Celtics, since they had outstanding guards in Jo Jo White and Don Chaney. They traded him to the Suns in May 1975 for Charlie Scott, a future Hall of Fame forward, and draft picks.
Westphal was back in the playoff finals in 1976, this time playing for Phoenix against Boston. He scored 25 points in Game 5, though the Suns were beaten 128-126 in triple overtime in what has been called “the greatest game ever played.” The Suns lost the series 4-2.
Westphal played for the Suns from 1975 to 1980 and again in his final season, 1983-84. He played with the Supersonics in 1980-81, when he gained his fifth All-star selection. The Knicks signed him midway through the 1981-82 season, though he was still recovering from a stress fracture of his right foot incurred when he played for Seattle.
Westphal averaged 20.6 points a game in his six seasons with the Suns and had career averages of 15.6 points and 4.4 assists per game. He had a 318-279 record as an NBA head coach.
After his playing days, Westphal coached at several western colleges, including Grand Canyon University in Phoenix, taking the school to the 1988 NAIA national championship.
He was an assistant coach with the Suns for four seasons before he was named head coach in 1992-93, when they posted the NBA’S best regular-season record at 62-20, led by Charles Barkley, the league’s MVP, along with Dan Majerle, Kevin Johnson and Danny Ainge. But the Suns lost to Michael Jordan’s Chicago Bulls in a six-game championship final.
Westphal coached several outstanding Suns teams afterward but was fired in January 1996 when the Suns, riddled with injuries, were playing poorly.
He coached the Supersonics and the Kings for all or parts of three seasons each and closed out his coaching career as a Nets assistant from 2014 to 2016.
Paul Douglas Westphal was born on Nov. 30, 1950, in Torrance, a son of Armin and Ruth Westphal. His father, an aeronautical engineer, and his older brother, Bill, shot hoops with him in the family’s driveway when he was a youngster.
He was a basketball star at Aviation High School in Redondo Beach, then played for the USC for three seasons. He averaged 16.4 points a game and was voted as a second-team All-american by The Associated Press in 1971.