Career
He has served as head coach for three National Basketball Association teams—the Los Angeles Lakers, the Indiana Pacers, and the Kansas City Kings. In addition, he served as an assistant for the Milwaukee Buckinghamshire and the Portland Trail Blazers. McKinney took the helm of the Lakers for the 1979-1980 National Basketball Association season, but only 19 games into the season, he suffered a near fatal head injury after falling while bicycling.
His assistant, Paul Westhead, was named as the team"s interim head coach while McKinney tended to recovering from his accident.
However, the length of the recovery and lingering doubts about the complete return of McKinney"s mental faculties, combined with the team"s level of success under Westhead, ultimately meant that McKinney would never get the chance to return to the job. Over the next three seasons, however, the team"s performance regressed, and McKinney was fired after the Pacers posted the league"s worst record in the 1983-1984 season.
He was soon hired as the head coach the Kansas City Kings, but resigned from the position on November 18, 1984 after the team started with a 1-8 record in the 1984-1985 season. In 2005, McKinney co-authored a book about his experiences at Saint Joseph"s, and donates ten percent of the proceeds from that publication to Saint Joseph"son
