Not long after we got back to campus, I was hanging out in the dorm one night, talking with John and two or three of the other black athletes, football players I think. Someone came and said that the rest of the basketball team was over at the student bar, drinking and hanging out. We talked about it a little and got one another worked up, because we weren’t welcomed in there. So finally I said, “Come with me.” I walked ahead of them, and we went to the bar. The bouncers and staff looked at me but didn’t do anything. And sure enough, the rest of the guys were inside, drinking and hanging out. So we joined them. Nothing happened. We stayed for the night and talked. I doubt that if I hadn’t been leading our group that would have happened. But it was another small victory. And I never stepped inside that place again.
The following spring, my mother became ill. She had been feeling weak for a little while, and over the course of a week, pain increased through her stomach. The doctor said it was her kidney, some sort of infection, and it was serious. Mom was hospitalized, and surgery was scheduled.
The surgery was successful, but while Mom was in the hospital, we learned that the bill was going to be huge. On top of this, Mom had recently been taken on some house repairs by a crooked contractor.
I visited her in the hospital room. I could see she was in all kinds of pain, but that she was trying to hide it. I finally couldn’t take any more and left. A nurse came in the room and asked my mother if that fine-looking man was her son. Mom said I was and admitted that she had just won the battle of her life, hiding the extent of her pain.
“I don’t think you pulled it off,” the nurse said. “When I passed him, tears were rolling down his cheeks.”
Seeing my mother in that kind of pain was hard enough. That she had to go into debt to pay for her surgery made me furious. That we didn’t have anything and meanwhile people were making money off my talent and still treating me like their property incensed me.
To this day I cannot swallow the fact that the day after my mother got out of the hospital, she couldn’t rest and recover at home, she had to go back to work.
At the same time, what could I do? I couldn’t join the NBA for another year. Jumping to the Globetrotters for dirt wages definitely wasn’t an option. Especially not after all the speculation. I’d look like a hypocrite. Like a fool.
“Mother,” I said, “Someday, if I am able, I will do all I can for you.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
Gold
1959–1960
IN LIFE, IF YOU ARE PATIENT enough to let time run its course, solutions sometimes make themselves apparent. For me, the one obvious solution to any problem was basketball—all the time. The game itself was therapeutic, released my aggression. When the Cincinnati Royals’ season ended, Jack Twyman, Jack Fitzpatrick, and Connie Dierking would come down to the school for pickup games, or meet me and some other guys at some other local gym. The places weren’t air-conditioned, so they were your typical, humid sweatboxes, but we’d run up and down all afternoon, playing some great basketball, competing and having fun. Afterwards I’d shower, and Yvonne and I might go out to a movie or stay at her house and listen to records. My future was taking shape in all kinds of ways. I saw my profession clearly and was in love with the woman I wanted to spend my life with.
That summer I was invited to participate in the Pan-American Games in Chicago. The Pan-Ams were one of the premiere venues for international competition at the time. Every four years, nations from throughout the Americas (North America, South America, Latin America) came together for two weeks of competition and friendship. The basketball team practiced in Chicago. Probably my biggest thrill of the competition was getting to play with and know Jerry West. There’d been a lot written about the two of us, and the media tried to set up some kind of rivalry because I was black and he was white, especially when both of our teams made it to the final four that year. In Chicago, we had time to talk and practice together. Both of us are country boys—I was from Tennessee; he was from Cabin Creek, West Virginia, and it didn’t take long for us to hit it off. Like everyone else, I called Jerry “Zeke,” in honor of his nickname, “Zeke from Cabin Creek.” He took to calling me “Doughnut,” because doughnuts looked like big O’s.
DePaul’s Ray Meyer coached our squad. One night he called George Smith and told him to come up to Chicago, check out the situation. “I don’t like what the grapevine is saying about Oscar not finishing his senior year.”
Of course George took the first plane up. I was silent for a while, not sure what to say, half-angry at him because I’d told him I wasn’t going to play for Abe, half-amused at the way he was chasing after me, but also a little annoyed at him for that too.
“I’m not going anywhere,” I said. “I gave you my word. That’s that.”
George took the next flight home. But it wasn’t until classes opened in September that he and other college authorities were certain that I’d be back. Meanwhile, all eleven of the school’s home games had sold out, and close to a thousand people were already on a waiting list for season tickets. Now magazines were calling me Basketball’s Moody Marvel and reprinting claims that I had lost interest in my business administration courses. In fact, I made the dean’s list that semester. Maybe part of the reason I studied harder was to show up anyone who wrote that I wasn’t studying. And while there were professors who refused to give me a break, I also had wonderful teachers, like Dr. Sheehan in marketing. He used to make the class get up and give an impromptu speech for maybe three minutes. Obviously this was the last thing I wanted to do, but I did it like everyone else, and it was great. I learned about constructing an opening, a body, and a closing summation. That class was one of the little things that eventually helped me overcome my shyness.
Of course I wasn’t a scared eighteen-year-old anymore. Dave Tenwick, one of my teammates, liked to say that my dorm room that year was like Grand Central Station, jammed with friends constantly coming and going and watching basketball games on the television. Coke bottles and basketballs were all over the place, and the atmosphere was relaxed. If I wasn’t completely happy with the system I was in, at least I’d grown comfortable enough to exist in it. And while I missed Yvonne, at least I had friends around and dropping in.
Our team went into the season ranked as everyone’s favorite to win the national championship, which marked the only remaining goal I really had, my one piece of unfinished athletic business at that time. I wanted to graduate, and I wanted to win the national championship. At this point, everyone in the nation seemed to agree I was the best collegiate player. Indeed, for the first time, it seemed even the most hostile fans acknowledged my abilities. When we played in Houston, people who had been throwing things during my junior season rose and gave me a standing ovation that lasted several minutes.
I understood the game at a deeper level than other collegiate players, and I started pacing myself, not out of disrespect or haughtiness, but strategically. I tested my opponents’ abilities early and gauged officials to see what they’d let me get away with, then used the second half to exploit whatever openings I’d observed.
We opened the season on fire, drubbing a solid St. Joseph’s ball team by forty-four points. (I scored forty-eight points on eighteen of twenty-six shots, fourteen rebounds, and six assists.) Soon after, an early-season showdown pitted us against the fifth-ranked Bradley Braves. I scored eighteen in the first half, but we couldn’t shake free, and led just 38–35 at the break. With the score at 44–43, I scored nine straight and had twenty-four points, thirteen rebounds, and eight assists in the second half alone. We won going away, and I matched my season average of forty-two points. I remember coming back to the locker room after the game and discovering that an envelope stuffed with money had been left in my locker. I figured someone had put it there to trap me, and I didn’t want to jeopardize my future. I left it right where I found it.
Next on the schedule was a trip back to New York for the Holiday Festival at the Garden. In our opening game
, I had forty-seven points. The next night we were matched up against St. Joseph’s again.
A twenty-five-year-old prodigy named Jack Ramsay coached the Hawks. Two decades later, he would coach the Portland Trail Blazers to an NBA title. Ramsay had a reputation as a whiz. Determined not to let me torch his squad again, he drew upon Pete Newell’s blueprint and came up with a junk defense. It looked like a box-and-one, where four men played a zone, while one man stuck with and shadowed me wherever I went. But in reality, it was constantly changing. Three men played a zone in the form of a triangle, with two men guarding the baseline, and one clogged up the lane. The other two defenders played man-to-man. If I was outside with the ball, Ramsay had his team play a normal box-and-one, with Frank Majewski guarding me and the other men playing zone in the form of the box. But when I went inside, two men surrounded me; Majewski fronted me, while Vince Kempton pushed on me from behind. The other three men employed a triangle-shaped zone, with each guy continually ready to rush in and help defend me.
I still found openings. Midway through the first half, I took a pass. While Majewski and Bobby Clarke surrounded me, I spun and jumped and made the shot. Once I grabbed a St. Joseph’s pass from underneath their basket in one fluid motion, flicking the ball out of the air and shooting it, scoring before anyone had a chance to surround me.
I totaled seventeen rebounds and five assists. I also made key steals, guarded the middle against cutting Hawks players, and boxed out. I deflected dribbles, started the fast break with defensive rebounds, and jammed their outlet passes to clog up their fast breaks. I set screens, fought through picks, and dove for loose balls. In other words, I played my usual game. My twenty-five points were a personal low over our first ten games and the fourth lowest total of my career to that point. But with all that attention lavished on me, Bob Wiesenhahn, an unheralded six-four junior, went unguarded. He ended up with a career high of twenty-eight, and we took the win.
But afterwards, our locker room was like a morgue. Nobody had expected a team that we’d beaten so badly to play us this tough. Reporters asked how many men guarded me. “I don’t know,” I answered. “All I saw were hands, and I just wanted to get rid of the ball.”
The next night we played Iowa for the Holiday Festival Championship. It was December 30, 1959. Less than two hours before the game, I was lying quietly on my bed in the Manhattan Hotel, completely absorbed in a television show. At 8:00 P.M., Bob Sweeten, the student manager, came into my room. “Come on, Oscar. We’ve got to go down now.”
Iowa came out and pasted us, speeding to a 24–13 lead in the first nine minutes behind their backcourt of Ron Zagar and Mike Heitman, with six-seven sophomore Don Nelson working on defense and making his usual hustle plays. Seventeen thousand five hundred basketball-crazed New Yorkers were buzzing at the thought of an upset. George called time-out. In the huddle he told them, “Give the ball to Oscar and get the hell out of the way.”
Up to that point I had three points, had missed several free throws and shots, and been called for traveling twice. After the time-out, immediately I drove and scored and got fouled for a three-point play. I stole a rebound and converted the layup. I hit a jumper from the side. Another jumper from out front. A drive. A couple of fouls. Fifteen straight points. When the half was over, we led 54–42, and I’d accounted for thirty-three points.
I ended up with fifty points, thirteen rebounds, and four assists, as we cruised to the tournament title, 96–83. After the game, I explained the comeback in my usual matter. “We were behind. I had to start sometime.”
Someone asked if this was my best performance. “It was all right,” I said, “but I missed a few easy ones.”
“Do you have any weaknesses?” another reporter asked.
“Sure. Lots of them.”
“Name one.”
I grinned. “This is one. Talking to reporters.”
Navy coach Ben Carnevale was in the stands watching. “Would you trade a battleship for him?” he was asked. “I’d give the Polaris missile for Oscar.”
After thirteen straight wins, we lost at Bradley by a point, then began another winning streak. On February 1, 1960, five minutes into our win over Drake at the Armory Fieldhouse, I drove for two quick layups and broke Frank Selvy’s all-time collegiate scoring record. The game was stopped for the announcement, and at halftime, George Smith and I walked out on the court. George handed me the basketball I used to score the points and spoke into the microphone. “It could not be presented to a more deserving student-athlete and great star.” People think that if you are quiet and stoic, you don’t care, don’t feel. But as the crowd stood and clapped, I was overcome, suddenly uncomfortable with all the attention. Meanwhile, there was another half to play. I wiped my face on the sleeve of my warmup jacket, took the ball, shook George’s hand, and promptly walked off the floor.
A week later, I entered our game against North Texas State leading the nation in scoring with an average of thirty-three points a game. North Texas’s Jim Mudd was fifth, averaging almost twenty-eight a clip. I hit my first nine shots before missing, nailed a fifty-foot shot at halftime, and with a little more than three minutes left was pulled from the rout, having scored fifty-seven points. A team official saw that I was one shy of the conference record, so George put me in. I ended up with sixty-two points on twenty-three of twenty-nine shooting, made sixteen of nineteen from the free-throw line, and had nineteen rebounds. We destroyed North Texas 123–74. George told reporters that he put me back in the game because, “I felt we owed him that chance.” When the press came to me, I was even more succinct. “Had fun tonight,” I said, and that was the end of the interview.
The only lull in my scoring clip came against Duquesne, in Pittsburgh. Before leaving for the trip, I gave Yvonne the little ring I’d bought for her and asked for her hand in marriage. She said yes, and my head was still in the clouds at tip-off.
We took our conference title yet again and rolled through the NCAA tournament and were a game away from our second consecutive final four appearance. On March 12, we played highly seeded Kansas on a supposedly neutral court, located in Manhattan, Kansas. The crowd was insane, and the game was tight; with eight and a half minutes left, we trailed 63–61. I scored on a twisting layup, then hit a long jumper to give us a lead that we wouldn’t relinquish. I scored twelve of our last twenty-one points and ended the night with forty-three points, fourteen rebounds, and three assists, as we stretched our lead and won, 82–71.
Once again we were in the final four. And once again we were matched up against Pete Newell and the University of California. We’d won fourteen straight and were 27–1. California was 26–1 and the best team in the West. This was the game we’d wanted all year. Now we had it.
The game was played in the old Cow Palace auditorium in San Francisco. “Our whole game plan predicated on being able to reduce the damage Oscar was going to do to us,” Newell later said. “You have to play him with one man on him and the other four guys really helping.” It wasn’t a new plan. It was the same one California had beaten us with last year, the same plan Jack Ramsay and St. Joseph’s and a bunch of other teams had tried. But we’d beaten St. Joseph’s this year. And with Paul Hogue and Bob Wiesenhahn and Carl Bouldin in our lineup, we had the players, I felt, to be able to deal with Cal.
Darrall Imhoff was still controlling the paint for them, and we had no answer for his running, sweeping hooks, but we hung tough. California ran a deliberate, half-court offense that slowed the game down, and when we had the ball, two and three guys were constantly running at me. I did what I could, driving, dishing, trying to hit open men. Midway through the first half, John Bryant grabbed me. “I’d rather see you taking a fifteen-foot jump shot than see someone else take a two- or three-foot shot.” I told him, “Look, if someone’s open, you give them the basketball. It’s just the way the game is played.”
This isn’t to say I wasn’t aggressive. If you watch the tape, you can see me bring the ball up court, dri
ve past one defender, head down the left side of the court, and hit a running jump shot with three defenders collapsing around me. You can see me drawing two men on one drive after another and dribbling away from all the defenders to take arcing, fadeaway jumpers from the baseline.
The truth is, we didn’t have the personnel to win that game. Everyone thinks we did. Everyone thinks that because I was on the team, we had a great bench and a talented squad. We did have a talented squad—in three years we had gone from an average team to one of the best programs in the nation, so we had talent. But we were always a small team. I played forward, and I was six five. Wiesenhahn was six four. We just weren’t big enough to deal with Imhoff and the other California trees. Maybe if I had moved to the backcourt and played point guard, I could have done some things to change the game, penetrated more and pounded their guards. But we hadn’t played that way all year, and George Smith wasn’t the kind of guy who would experiment with something like that in such a big game. Besides that, I was kind of acting as the point guard anyway. When California double- and triple-teamed me, our guys got passes and had opportunities. We didn’t score when we should have, and that can’t happen in big games.
Winning basketball often comes down to simple things. You’ve got to have good players, play good defense, and get defensive rebounds. You’ve also got to make sure your stars don’t get into foul trouble, and you need to make the most of your opportunities and open shots. We didn’t make the most of our opportunities, but at the same time we didn’t really have the manpower to be able to take those chances and do something with them.
The Big O Page 14