Wooden: A Coach's Life

by Seth Davis

  As the centers stepped to the midcourt circle for the opening tap, Russell looked down at the shorter Willie Naulls, slapped his hand, and said, “I’m gonna whip you, boy, real bad.” Russell was not a skilled scorer, but he was such an effective offensive rebounder that he got a lot of points on putbacks. His real impact, of course, came at the defensive end. Russell was the first prolific shot blocker the game had ever seen. At that time, blocks weren’t tracked as an official statistic, and there was no rule in the books forbidding a player from swatting a field goal attempt on its way down toward the basket. (The national committee instituted a goaltending rule the following season, along with a decree to widen the lane from six to twelve feet. Both changes were made to contain Russell.) UCLA won that first meeting, 47–40, by slowing the tempo and getting physical, but even in defeat the Dons’ big man made a lasting impression.

  “Russell was invaluable under the basket,” Jack Geyer wrote in the next day’s Los Angeles Times. “He played a type of one-man volley ball, leaping up and tapping the ball to where he could grab it without interference. He also blocked at least a half-dozen Bruin shots, leaping high in the air and slapping the ball down the marksman’s throat.” Geyer concluded that “Russell is a cinch to be either a Harlem Globetrotter or a top pro player, whoever bids the higher.”

  The two teams met again seven days later in San Francisco, where the Dons held UCLA without a field goal for the first ten minutes and coasted to a 56–44 win. The next day’s San Francisco Chronicle reported that Russell had spun Naulls “like a fat, round top. The speedy Russell was constantly going left while The Whale was still moving right.” Russell ended up with 28 points in what Wooden called “the greatest job any one man ever did against UCLA.”

  Fortunately for Wooden, there was only one Bill Russell. From that point on, the Bruins had their way with most of their other opponents, entering their series with Stanford in the middle of February tied with the Indians for first place in the PCC’s Southern Division. The back-to-back games in Westwood would go a long way toward deciding which team would win the conference. UCLA cruised to an 85–63 win in the first contest thanks to 24 points from Morris Taft, who was quickly establishing himself as one of the best perimeter scorers in the country. The next night, the Bruins opened up a 7-point lead late in the first half. That’s when Howie Dallmar, Stanford’s first-year coach, ordered his players to switch to a zone defense. Wooden countered by instructing his players to hold the ball. Wooden had become increasingly willing to slow down the tempo, but it was unusual for him to deploy a flat-out stall. For three and a half minutes, Bruins guard Don Bragg stood next to the half-court line with the ball under his arm, doing nothing. The fans jeered. The clock ticked. The Indians stayed in their zone. Finally, after a full five minutes of inaction, Stanford pressured Bragg, and UCLA resumed its regular offense.

  The same situation occurred over a two-minute span late in the second half. These tactics helped UCLA to a 72–59 win that gave them a commanding two-game lead with just four to go. Needless to say, the strategy did not go over well in the Bay Area, not least because Wooden had so often tweaked other coaches who used those tactics against him. Dallmar’s response was measured—he claimed Wooden’s decision helped the Indians because it “gave us a chance to rest”—but the San Francisco Examiner published a photograph of the entire court that showed Bragg holding the ball under his arm while the other players stood and watched. The caption mocked Stanford’s opponent as the “Stall-Wart Bruins.”

  Wooden defended himself after the game. “I always have felt the responsibility belongs to the team behind to change what they’re doing, whether offensively or defensively,” he said. “I never would under any circumstances do what Stanford did. I’d go get them. If you’re behind, you’ve got to go after them.” At the local writers’ luncheon the following week, USC coach Forrest Twogood admonished the two coaches. “I think both of them should give this game of basketball some thought as to what they are doing to it,” he said. “However, I consider Wooden more right than Dallmar. The team behind must force the play.”

  In defending himself against criticism, Wooden was trying to thread an impossibly tight needle. He also revealed why some of his coaching peers were beginning to be turned off by what they saw as his holier-than-thou attitude. According to Wooden, stalling was bad for the game—unless UCLA needed to do it to win. Not only was he trying to have it both ways, he argued that there was no contradiction between his actions and his statements. The idea that Wooden would bend his principles in an effort to win was not earth-shattering in 1955, but in later years, as he burnished a public self-image that rival coaches would derisively refer to as “Saint John,” his hypocrisy on relatively small matters like this one would loom large.

  The contretemps over the Stanford stall also revived an ongoing debate about whether college basketball should install a shot clock similar to the one the NBA had put in place that season. There was no doubt where Wooden stood: he wanted the clock, though he preferred it to be thirty seconds as opposed to the twenty-four-second clock that the pros had implemented. Wooden argued that a clock would help defenses because it would prevent stalling. When he was once asked about a game in which California had stalled for more than nine minutes before losing a game to San Francisco, Wooden said, “Contrary to a lot of opinions, I’d like to see a lot more games just like that. Then they’d put in the 24-second rule.”

  UCLA’s victories over Stanford were part of an eleven-game winning streak that delivered the Bruins another Southern Division title. It was the fifth time in seven years that Wooden’s teams had won or shared the crown. They couldn’t have done it without Willie the Whale, who set a new Southern Division rebounding record and ended his junior season by being named to the division’s first team. But as well as Naulls was playing, Wooden believed his laid-back approach was preventing him from reaching his potential. “There are times when I don’t know what to do with Willie Naulls,” Wooden said in March. “He’s such a likable kid that it’s pretty hard to get sore at him for failing to give it the blood-and-thunder treatment. Exasperated would be more like it.”

  The season ended once again in Corvallis, where UCLA was unable to collar Oregon State’s seven-foot-three center, Swede Halbrook, who helped the Northern Division champs to a sweep and the PCC title. Oregon State went on to lose in the NCAA tournament to San Francisco, and a week later in Kansas City, USF claimed the national championship. It was a great moment for Russell and the Dons, but Wooden had every reason to believe that with Naulls and Taft leading the way as seniors, 1956 might be the year when he finally took his turn at the top.

  * * *

  His first defeat came five months before the season opener, when the state of California’s fire marshal office in Sacramento ruled that the men’s gym was unsafe to hold more than 1,500 spectators. Wooden could hardly believe it. His shabby, stuffy, subpar facility had been essentially condemned. The Bruins could still practice there, but they would have to find other venues for games. On the eve of the 1955–56 season, Wooden wrote a guest column for the Long Beach Press-Telegram that addressed the question of where UCLA would play its home games that winter. “This has not been determined yet,” Wooden wrote. “Wilbur Johns, our athletic director, will select the most favorable site after scrutinizing all available locations in the Los Angeles area.”

  Willie Naulls, meanwhile, entered his senior season in great condition and ready to lead. Unfortunately, the same could not be said for Morris Taft, who was hospitalized the first two weeks because of disc herniations in his lower back. Without him, the Bruins dropped four of their first six games, but Taft was close to full strength for the team’s return visit to New York City for the Holiday Festival in Madison Square Garden. Waiting for them in New York, once again, would be the University of San Francisco Dons. He may have been three thousand miles from home, but Wooden could not escape the specter of Bill Russell.

  The Bruins were unusual
ly unbalanced for a Wooden-coached team, with Taft and Naulls each averaging more than 20 points per game. The two men could hardly have been more different. Naulls was calm, elegant, introverted. Taft was flamboyant, temperamental, even a little mischievous. Most of the players may have found Wooden to be unapproachable, but Taft had no reservations about penetrating that veneer. Wooden liked him. When Taft came out of games, Wooden asked him to sit next to him on the bench so they could maintain a running dialogue. Taft also served as an intermediary when tension flared up between Wooden and Naulls. More often than not, he took the coach’s side. “Willie was a very fine gentleman, but he had his own way of doing things,” Taft said. “I told him, I’m not going to be passing you the ball if you’re not passing it back.”

  Unlike Naulls, Taft appreciated Wooden’s nonverbal means of communicating. “John was the most different type of coach I had ever seen,” Taft said. “A lot of coaches threaten you and call you a fool, but Wooden listened to you. He was very calm and he didn’t talk that much.” Sitting next to Wooden on the bench, Taft would chuckle as this otherwise laconic gentleman harangued the referees from tap to buzzer. “I’ll tell you, for a little man, Wooden had a big mouth,” he said.

  The relationship between Taft and Wooden helped the coach figure out ways to motivate his star guard. At the Holiday Festival in New York, the Bruins opened the tournament by knocking off the hometown favorite, St. John’s, which advanced them into a matchup with Duquesne and its All-American guard, Sihugo Green. Wooden knew that Taft was best suited to guard Green, but he also knew Taft did not like to play defense. So Wooden had to trick him. He approached Taft in the locker room before the game and said, “I don’t think Skeeter can guard Green. Can you?” The mind game was designed to appeal to Taft’s ego—and it worked. UCLA won, 72–57.

  That set up a rematch with the Dons in the final. The game was going to be a really big deal, both for Madison Square Garden and for West Coast basketball. Russell’s team still had not lost since the Bruins had defeated them twelve months before, and their thirty-five-game winning streak was just four shy of the NCAA record. The game against UCLA promised to be a study in contrasts, but for once it was Wooden’s Bruins who were playing the tortoise. Referring to their win over the Dons the previous season, Wooden said, “We got out ahead of them and slowed down our style of play. If we get a lead again tomorrow night, we’ll do the same thing.”

  However, the night before the game, Naulls and Taft returned to their hotel rooms well past their curfew. They had visited a seedy part of New York City and couldn’t get back in time. Wooden was livid. He immediately decided to send the two of them back to Los Angeles while the rest of the team took on the Dons. “Willie was crushed,” said Bill Eblen, a player who roomed with Naulls on the road. “He was really upset that he had let the team down like that.”

  Wooden’s decision was not well received by the men who were putting on the event. Foremost among them was Ned Irish, the president of the NBA’s New York Knicks and the chief promoter of college basketball at the Garden. He and several other executives met with Wooden in an effort to convince him to let his stars play. “We were on pins and needles waiting for the decision,” said Carroll Adams, a six-foot-one junior forward on that team. Wooden had always preached the importance of sticking to principles, but on this occasion his principles were trumped by business. Naulls and Taft played. “The New York guys told him, ‘You can’t do this. This is the biggest tournament of the year.’” Adams said. “I don’t know what compromises were made, but Coach relented.”

  Wooden had hoped his team would build an early lead so he could implement his deliberate offense, and midway through the first half, it appeared he would get his chance. With the Bruins leading by 1, Naulls faked out Russell, drove by him, and rose to the rim for a two-handed layup. Russell, however, recovered in a flash and blocked the ball. “It stunned us—and it beat us,” Wooden said. Naulls spent most of the second half in foul trouble, Russell scored 17 points, and USF cruised to a 70–53 win. The crowd of 16,357 gave Russell a standing ovation when he left the game with over a minute to play. “Russell’s defensive play kills you,” Wooden said. “They would be a good team without Russell, but with him they’re simply great.”

  * * *

  Despite the setback in New York, the Bruins returned home with plenty of confidence for the league season. The year before, the Pacific Coast Conference had decided to abandon its two-division format and have each school play every other team in a single two-game series. That meant UCLA’s opponents would only have to come to Westwood every other year, prompting one Bay Area sportswriter to declare “an amen is in order.”

  In the wake of the fire marshal’s decision closing down the men’s gym, Wilbur Johns could not find a locale suitable for all of UCLA’s games. The team therefore had to spend the season shuttling among three different venues: the Pan-Pacific Auditorium, Loyola University, and Venice High School. Despite the lack of a permanent home, the Bruins piled up wins with ease. Naulls was clearly establishing himself as the best player in the conference and arguably the best player in the country next to Russell.

  After all the tumult they had been through, Naulls and Wooden had arrived at a subtle, unspoken understanding. During a game at Stanford in February, Taft was fouled as he drove for a layup. He missed the shot, but as the referees momentarily looked away, Naulls reached up and tipped the ball in. The officials thought that Taft had made his shot and awarded him a 3-point opportunity. That brought jeers of protest from the Stanford players, coaches, and fans. After one of the Stanford players told a referee what he had seen, the official then asked Naulls if it really was he, and not Taft, who had put the ball in. Willie looked at Wooden, but the coach said nothing. So Naulls told the referee the truth. The basket was waved off, and UCLA eventually won in overtime as Naulls scored 37 points.

  Many years later, Naulls reminded Wooden of that moment and asked the coach if he thought he had done the right thing that night. Wooden carefully laid out all the various considerations before concluding, “A man has to make up his own mind in a situation that affects so many others.” Naulls took that as a yes.

  UCLA headed into its February series against California with a 12–0 conference record. The games were played at Venice High School. If the Bruins could sweep the Bears, they would clinch the 1956 conference crown. Wooden was none too pleased to have to play such a big game in a high school gym, where the length of the floor was ten feet shorter than regulation. Apparently, he was not alone. “I’ve heard some protests from the Bay Area regarding Venice High’s short floor, and I hope they do protest,” Wooden said during that week’s press luncheon. “If they do, we’ll move it right back to Westwood. There’s nothing I’d like better.”

  UCLA got the sweep it needed. In the first game, Naulls eclipsed Eddie Sheldrake’s single-game school record by pouring in 39 points in an 85–80 win. Taft scored 26 the following night to put the Bruins over the top. When the buzzer sounded, the players carried Wooden across the court. The only suspense in an otherwise meaningless final series against USC was whether the Bruins would finish the season with a perfect conference record. They did: 16–0. The same John Wooden who had once boasted of his decision to bench Naulls now lavished a whale of a compliment on him: he actually argued that Naulls was a better all-around player than Russell. In his memoir, Naulls described this as “an out-of-character outburst,” but he was gratified that Wooden had finally extolled him in public. “Willie can do so many more things [than Russell],” Wooden said. “Granted that Russell is tremendous in some respects, and in picking a team, you’d have to choose Russell, but … I’ve never had a boy so strong in all offensive departments as Willie.” Wooden later told the local sports columnist Sam Balter that Naulls was “the greatest I have ever coached. He is the greatest I have ever seen. And you know I have seen many.”

  * * *

  Since there were no longer separate divisions in the PCC, UCLA�
�s regular season title allowed the Bruins, who were ranked No. 10 by the Associated Press, to return to the NCAA tournament for the first time in four years. That was the good news. The bad news was that their first opponent in the West Regional would be top-ranked San Francisco, who still had not lost since UCLA had clipped them in the men’s gym fifteen months before.

  Since this was the postseason, the Bruins were due for another brush with bad luck. This one came when Taft fell in practice and re-aggravated his back injury. Taft was in such pain that he had a hard time getting in and out of a car. He played in the game, but he was limited, which rendered a difficult task all but impossible. UCLA lost, 81–72. One week later Russell would crown his college career with a second consecutive NCAA title.

  Naulls’s own brilliant career came to an end the day after the USF loss, when UCLA defeated Seattle University by 24 points in the West Regional’s consolation game. It was technically Wooden’s first win in the NCAA tournament, but because it did not come in the main bracket, the game was not counted in the record books. Thus, at the age of forty-five and in his eighth season at UCLA, Wooden still had not won an official game in the NCAA tournament.

  Naulls had high hopes of playing for the United States in the Summer Olympics in Melbourne, Australia. Since he was obviously one of the best players in the country, he should have made the team with ease. Imagine his surprise when he was cut despite scoring 42 points in three games during the Olympic trials in New York. Wooden figured that Naulls had been cut because there were too many players on the team from the West, and he was appalled that such a consideration could cause his All-American—the best player he had ever coached—to be left off the team. “I expressed my disappointment. To this day I can’t understand how they could have passed up Willie Naulls,” Wooden said nearly fifty years later. From that point on, Wooden would keep an icy distance from the American Olympic movement, which would isolate him even further from coaching peers who were deeply involved.