The father is sitting on the court, draped in the Lakers’ signature gold warmups. The ball is in the hands of his toddler son, who scampered onto the court when he came through the tunnel and spotted his dad at the Fabulous Forum.
It’s a moment frozen in time, a picture that tells a happy, if incomplete, story — one that father and son agree came full circle last week when Wesley Matthews became a Laker himself.
“That was the first place he picked up a basketball,” said his father, Wes Matthews, who won championships in the two seasons he played with the Showtime Lakers in 1987 and ’88.
Wesley Matthews has had this photograph all his life. It hangs in his home. His father thinks it might be the only snapshot of the two of them from those years that his son likes to look at.
Because as much of a Hollywood story as it is for one Wesley Matthews to sign with the Lakers three decades after the first one, the truth is that the son has never exactly followed in his father’s footsteps.
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For as long as the younger Matthews has been recognized for his basketball prowess, starting in his native Wisconsin, where his dad had been a Goliath on campus in Madison, he has had to explain to anyone making the obvious genetic connection that he was, in fact, raised by his single mother, Pam Moore.
The elder Matthews spent years overseas, chasing the dying embers of a playing career, and he was not around for his son’s childhood.
“We had a rocky relationship,” Wes Matthews told The Athletic. “… When parents break up, the kid always suffers.”
But father and son have worked to build a relationship over the years.
“We are very much closer than we were (when I was) growing up,” Wesley Matthews told reporters on Tuesday, “and as I’ve gotten older and older, our relationship has continued to grow and it’s something that I’m very proud of.”
Now, the veteran guard who has built an 11-year career without the daily influence of his NBA father is trying to follow in his old man’s footsteps in one very specific way: by winning a championship with the Lakers, an organization he was born into. Literally.
In the fall of 1986, Wes Matthews was a 27-year-old shooting guard trying to stick with his fifth team in six seasons. His girlfriend was pregnant with a baby boy. During training camp, the San Antonio Spurs cut him.
Then the Lakers called.
On Oct. 13, Matthews flew to Los Angeles and waited to clear waivers so he could sign a new contract. He put pen to paper the next day and immediately hit the court for his first practice with Magic Johnson, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and the rest of the Showtime Lakers.
“I got the phone call while in practice that Pam was in labor,” he said.
Wesley Matthews Jr. was born on Oct. 14, 1986, the same day his father signed with the Lakers. The new father packed a bag and immediately flew back to San Antonio, a few hours before his new team, which, as fate would have it, was scheduled to play an exhibition game against the Spurs the next day.
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In attendance was a certain newborn.
“He wasn’t even 24 hours old (and) he was blessed by the basketball gods,” Wes Matthews said. “Magic was holding him. Kareem is holding him. Pat Riley is holding him, welcoming him to the world. It’s unbelievable.
“He was anointed by basketball gods at the time basketball was at its best.”
Matthews would appear in 101 games in two seasons with the Lakers, averaging 4.9 points in 12.3 minutes per game as well as four minutes in 22 playoff appearances. But he earned two championship rings for his contributions. And when the Lakers celebrated with the title parades, there were two Wesley Matthews on the float.
After news broke that his son had agreed to join the Lakers, Wes Matthews started receiving text messages from former teammates like Johnson and Mychal Thompson. Magic tweeted that it was a “great legacy for the Matthews family.”
I played with the father of Wes Matthews Jr. on the Championship Showtime Lakers. What a great legacy for the Matthews family. Congratulations!
— Earvin Magic Johnson (@MagicJohnson) November 21, 2020
“I’m happy as hell,” Matthews said. “As a father I’m happy as hell. … He deserves this ride right now he’s about to go on. He’s with my old family because once a Laker, always a Laker.
“I’ll probably end up crying when I see him with the uniform on.”
Last Friday, Wesley Matthews committed to the Lakers within the first 30 minutes of the free agency period. He said Tuesday that it was the Lakers’ dogged pursuit of him that led him to sign a one-year deal.
“I think it’s a pretty simple thing,” Matthews said. “You want to be wanted, and you want to be wanted by the best.”
He is a candidate to start, just as he did in each of the 67 games he appeared with Milwaukee last season. That, too, was a homecoming that also happened to give him a shot at his first championship.
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“I had the tremendous opportunity to play for my hometown Milwaukee Bucks with a tremendous coaching staff and group of guys and ownership. And I’m very proud of the time that I spent there even though it was brief,” he said. “But then to also be wanted by the defending champions, along with the family ties and just the history of the Lakers organization — to add that to the fit and style of play — I’m tremendously excited about the opportunity.”
The Lakers will be Matthews’ seventh team, as he has carved out a career as one of the league’s most reliable 3-and-D wings. He shot 36.4 percent from 3 last season and ranks ninth in career 3-pointers among active players currently on a roster. But he has never advanced beyond the second round of the playoffs.
“It’s like déjà vu,” his father said. “I went through the same thing for seven, eight, nine years in the league. Couldn’t beat anybody. Lakers call me, we run everybody.”
Wes Matthews lives in Connecticut, where he retired after coaching girls basketball at a private school. He said this week that he is working on making his way back to L.A. to be close to his son and his Lakers family.
“I’m coming home,” he said.
He said he plans on giving his son his space but is “going to be there to make sure he knows I’m there.”
The two are on good terms now. They speak regularly. The father views his son’s new basketball home as a gift that will help them continue to repair their relationship.
“It’s bringing us back even closer,” Matthews said. “It closed the circle, so to speak. He’s going to be happy as a man, he’s going to be happy as a basketball player. I’m happy. It’s a feel-good story. It’s a great story.”
It’s a story with a beginning captured by a photograph, a middle with far too many missing pages and an ending that’s still being written.
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But that picture, the one that is so special to both father and son, has taken on new meaning since Friday.
Wesley Matthews said Tuesday that when he looks at the photo he is struck by the fact that his daughter, Skye, is barely older than he was.
“To see everything coming full circle,” he said, “it’s really only God can write a story like this.”
Perhaps there will be more photographs at Lakers games.
“I’m sure my granddaughter will be recreating that picture on the floor at Staples Center,” Wes Matthews said.
(Top photo of Wesley Matthews: Jevone Moore / Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)