A decade ago, Nancy Lieberman wrote that she and Pat Riley “laugh about it now,” recalling how his Lakers summer league team “beat the c*** out of me” for three hours at practice. What she didn’t know then was why the coach had been so skeptical. Now, 45 years after the 1981 summer league, the Hall of Famer revealed that Riley never wanted her there, and the man who made it happen was Jerry West

Lieberman told the story on All The Smoke, including how she won him over. It began with a phone call. “The next day, Jerry West called my mom’s house,” she said. “He says, Nancy, I’m with Dr. Buss, the owner of the Lakers, and we’d like for you to come play for the Lakers.”

West had seen a Jane Pauley story on her playing against NBA players at a men’s league at Xavier High School in New York, she said, which led to the call. Riley, however, was not on board. “I didn’t know until later on in life, like 30 years later, that Pat Riley did not want me,” she said, explaining that she learned this decades later at a coaches’ symposium, not from Riley at the time.

She jumped at the chance. “I’m super excited. I play against anybody because what Ali taught me, respect everybody and fear nobody,” Lieberman said. But the welcome inside the gym was cold. She recalled the Lakers trainer tossing her a mesh bag and sending her to the men’s locker room. She told him the jersey was too small, threw it on the floor and asked for something bigger.

The reason for that attitude came out later. At a coaches’ symposium at the Clippers facility, she heard Riley tell the room about the situation. When Buss and West told him Lieberman would be there, he replied that he didn’t want her. They said, “good, she’ll be here tomorrow.”

A Los Angeles Herald Examiner photo from July 20, 1981, shows Lieberman at the Lakers’ Summer Pro League game at Cal State Dominguez Hills with Pat Riley watching in the background. At the time, she played for the Dallas Diamonds of the Women’s Basketball League and was using the summer league to get into shape.

She had been a three-time All-American at Old Dominion, won two Wade Trophies and helped the U.S. earn a silver medal at the 1976 Olympics. West’s invitation was a big gamble for a woman at the time, and it also tells you how highly he regarded her.

Pat Riley Eventually Saw Why Jerry West Wanted Nancy Lieberman

Riley’s version, as Lieberman said, was a story of a coach changing his mind. “They beat the c*** out of her. She gets up. She doesn’t cry. She doesn’t sit out,” she said Riley told the symposium. According to her, he even noted she “tried to start two fistfights with her teammates,” and asked West and Buss what they wanted him to do with her. Their answer was to play her for two or three weeks of summer league.

Her career afterward showed why West saw something special. She returned to the Diamonds in 1984 after the WBL folded, then in 1986 became the first woman to play in a men’s league, the USBL. She told Bleacher Nation she was “a little bit of an anomaly” because her prime came before the WNBA, a reminder that the nickname “Lady Magic” was earned long before 1997.