In the summer of 1971—the offseason before they would make history with the longest winning streak by a team in one of the four major men’s sports, a mark that remains unsurpassed 50 years later—the Lakers had a lot going on.

First there was the issue of who was in charge. Six weeks after losing to the Bucks 4–1 in the Western Conference finals, Los Angeles canned coach Joe Mullaney. “I am shocked,” said point guard Jerry West, who was, at the time, ranked fourth on the NBA’s all-time scoring list—and third among the Lakers. The two ahead of him, Wilt Chamberlain and Elgin Baylor, were nearing the end of their careers and struggling with injuries. The 37-year-old Baylor had played only two games in 1970–71, and Chamberlain, 35, had missed almost all of the previous season. West was 33 and had been largely healthy—until a knee injury sidelined him for the 1971 postseason. The three had played just 14 games together in Mullaney’s two seasons, yet he had taken L.A. on two strong playoff runs.

Still, the perception existed that Mullaney was too soft on the players. “[His] gentle, easygoing ways—and some odd personality quirks—made some of the players think he was just a nice, absent-minded old bumbler,” Chamberlain wrote in his 1973 autobiography,

Enter Bill Sharman. A Hall of Fame guard for the hated Celtics, he also had local roots, having been an All-American at USC. (He also had a tie to the local baseball team. He had been called up by the Dodgers when they were in Brooklyn at the end of the 1951 season as a reserve first baseman. But the Bums collapsed in epic fashion and Sharman never got off the bench, where he was sitting when Bobby Thomson of the Giants hit the Shot Heard Round the World.)

And Sharman’s coaching chops were undeniable. He had just led the Utah Stars to the ABA title and had taken the San Francisco Warriors to the 1967 NBA Finals. After Mullaney’s firing, Sharman quit the Stars, who promptly obtained a court order to keep him from taking another job. The legal wrangling went on for six weeks—Utah threatened to sue the Lakers for $5 million—before L.A. finally introduced him July 12.

At last the Lakers had their man, but was he the man? In many ways Sharman was the opposite of Mullaney. His players in Utah described him as a “cold fish,” a “tyrant” and a “tactical psycho.” He was fond of having players do calisthenics in the locker room before games. (One struggles to imagine Tom Thibodeau telling his troops to take off the headphones and gather around for some jumping jacks.) Among Sharman’s innovations was the shootaround, a light practice the morning before a game—an NBA staple now, but revolutionary at the time. “When guys doze off or mope around their room or the lobby, they get so logy they may not get sharp until after the game is lost,” Sharman explained. “What I want them to do is develop a game-day routine.”

Chamberlain famously enjoyed the nightlife. On those rare occasions he was not entertaining into the wee hours, he often had trouble sleeping and was rarely out of bed before the time Sharman’s shootarounds ended.

Long before the first practice, writers had a field day ruminating on the compatibility of the two men, and even Schaus got in on it. “As [team doctor Robert Kerlan] was telling me,” GM Fred Schaus told , “wait till Bill tells Wilt about his schedule for a 10 a.m. workout, 3 p.m. meeting and 8 p.m. tipoff. . . . You can hear Wilt right now saying, ‘I’ll be there, Coach. Name one. The workout, the meeting or the game.’ ”

Then there was Baylor. Sharman loved the fast break, but Baylor was in no shape for a track meet. In fact, there were issues with him within the organization even before Sharman arrived. In early June, Baylor, who had starred at Seattle, was offered the coaching job at Washington. “It might be a very good thing for Elgin,” Schaus said. “This could be an excellent opportunity.” It wasn’t exactly begging him to stick around.

From the outset, Chamberlain was stoic about the decision to change leadership. “It’s just like moving from one house to another,” he said. “It’s a lot of work—work that could be saved but isn’t.”

The Big Dipper knew all about moving houses—that was another thing he had going on in the summer of ’71. He uttered those words from a trailer on a lot in the Santa Monica mountains, where he was building an 8,300-square-foot mansion with a 360-degree view—and no right angles. “We borrowed an idea from Frank Lloyd Wright and made the house a series of interlocking equilateral triangles,” Chamberlain wrote. That included the sunken marble bathtub and a 14-foot front door.

Chamberlain and the Lakers got their first taste of Sharman in training camp. After a week at Loyola University it was off to Hawaii, an annual tradition that usually meant light practices and plenty of beach time. Sharman, though, put the team through morning practices in a stifling National Guard armory, then had them report for an afternoon meeting and an evening scrimmage. There was a lot of running by the players, and a lot of yelling about running by the coach, who developed a sore throat exhorting them to move faster. Said West, “I went over there with a suntan and came back without it.”