Wooden: A Coach's Life

by Seth Davis

  Yet Wooden had to answer this silly charge once again after winning his seventh straight championship and his ninth overall. “It’s a sad thing what has happened to college basketball,” Glenn Dickey wrote in the San Francisco Chronicle. “UCLA makes everybody play for second place. When you take the suspense out of sport, there’s really nothing left.… The shadow of UCLA hangs over the sport like a blight.”

  No wonder John Wooden had a heart attack. Even when he won, he couldn’t win.

  The 1972–73 season should have been the most enjoyable of Wooden’s career, but he didn’t see it that way. In a letter he sent two weeks after the final to Duane Klueh, his former All-American guard at Indiana State, Wooden wrote that it had been “a very ‘trying’ year for me,” because of all the external pressures and the health issues that stemmed from them. “The players were fine,” Wooden wrote, “but some of the press and the fans were almost unbearable at times.”

  Wooden had promised Walton and his classmates that he would coach at UCLA through their senior year, but he was conflicted about how much longer he wanted to continue beyond that. UCLA’s mandatory retirement age was sixty-five, which meant he was eligible to coach another three seasons. If he wanted to go beyond that, the school would probably make the allowance, but it seemed unlikely that Wooden would go that long. As far as his wife was concerned, he couldn’t retire soon enough. “If he even loses a game they’re going to say that he’s too old and he has lost his touch,” Nell said. “You learn to prepare yourself for the worst and then hope it doesn’t happen. They can stretch the rules and let him stay until he’s sixty-seven but I wonder if it would be worth it. What more does my husband have to prove?”

  * * *

  The week after the win over Memphis State, Walton and Wooden flew to Atlanta so Walton could accept the Naismith Trophy at the Atlanta Tipoff Club’s annual awards banquet. During the flight, Walton asked the stewardess for a glass of wine. When she brought him juice instead, he looked over and saw a familiar furrowed brow. “As long as you’re traveling with me,” Wooden said, “you’ll not drink wine.”

  Aside from that, Walton enjoyed a blissful six months away from John Wooden’s exacting eyes. That meant being able to grow out his hair and beard, but when the first day of practice came around in October 1973, Walton cleaned himself up. Or so he thought. The start of the practice was open to the press and included the taking of the annual team photo. Wooden told his assistants that he wanted to go to the locker room early because he suspected Walton would try to test him. He was right. Walton came into practice with his hair matted down to look shorter than it was, but Wooden wasn’t fooled. They argued back and forth. Walton complained that he had just gotten it cut. Wooden countered that Walton’s ears and collar were still covered. Walton argued that it was his right to wear his hair as long as he wanted. Wooden agreed. He then pointed out that it was his right to determine who was permitted to practice.

  That settled it. Walton hopped on his bicycle and pedaled as quickly as he could to the nearest barber shop. Thirty minutes later, he returned, freshly shorn, to join his teammates. “I may be an anarchist,” Walton said, “but I’m no dummy.”

  The players teased Walton about what happened, but when the practice was over, he turned serious. After asking Wooden if he could address his teammates, Walton informed them that he had discovered the wonders of transcendental meditation, and he wanted to share it with his teammates. He asked everyone to follow him to the basketball office. “I go back to the office, and there’s eight or nine kids sitting on the floor with their legs crossed going, ‘Mmmm … Mmmmm,’” Frank Arnold said. “Coach wasn’t very happy about that.”

  Walton also revealed that he had become a vegetarian. Not surprisingly, that idea was planted in his mind by Greg Lee. His teammates were willing to try it. “We were big time, and of course everyone with a cause wanted your attention,” Jamaal Wilkes said. “If you weren’t at least open to exploring different stuff, you were kind of like an oddball.”

  All of this was quite an indoctrination for the incoming freshmen. Wooden had once again assembled a stellar recruiting class, which was more significant than ever because the NCAA had just adopted a rule making freshmen eligible for varsity competition. (Wooden had opposed the change.) The gem was Richard Washington, a six-foot-nine center from Portland, Oregon. Washington had committed to UCLA the previous spring after Wooden watched one of Washington’s high school games during the Bruins’ road trip to Oregon and Oregon State. (Washington later joked that during his campus visit to UCLA, “I took a dip in Sam Gilbert’s pool and it cooled me off, and that was the convincer.”) Wooden had also recruited Jimmy Spillane, a five-foot-ten guard from nearby Palos Verdes; Ralph Drollinger, a seven-foot sophomore from San Diego; and Marques Johnson, a six-foot-five freshman forward from Crenshaw High School in Los Angeles.

  The presence of eligible freshmen created an even bigger glut than usual for Wooden to sort through. Returning at forward would be Dave Meyers, the six-foot junior who Wooden said “made more progress [last season], week by week, than anybody we’ve had here.” The most intriguing battle would come at point guard, where redshirt sophomore Andre McCarter, the six-foot-three blur from Philadelphia’s storied Overbrook High School, was poised to challenge two seniors, Tommy Curtis and Greg Lee. The numbers crunch convinced Vince Carson, a once-heralded six-foot-five forward from nearby Altadena, to transfer. “Wooden has his favorites and I’m not one of them, I guess,” he said on his way out the door.

  Marques Johnson was considered an afterthought among the freshmen, but from the outset, Wooden could see that he had great potential as a rebounder. Not only was Johnson strong for his age; he was also a quick repeat jumper. Johnson was startled at how Wooden’s gentle personality transformed during those two hours between the lines. “I just remember this crazy look he had when he conducted practices,” Johnson said. “He was this fierce warrior dude, but he was able to use this whole spiritual kind of Christian philosophy. He was a real walking contradiction.”

  After having not seen Walton all summer, Johnson was delighted when the redhead called out to him while riding his bike across campus one day, because it meant that Walton knew who he was. Johnson and the other freshmen were ready to follow Walton into whatever odd endeavors he suggested. Johnson did as he was asked and brought a handkerchief and two pieces of fruit to Walton’s meditation guru in Westwood. The man gave Marques the top-secret mantra he was supposed to recite over and over with his eyes closed, thus empowering him to commune with the universe. “I was caught up in it,” Johnson said, “but a certain part of me was thinking, ‘If only your homies from Crenshaw could see you now.’”

  All of this was Walton’s not-so-subtle way of commandeering this team as his own. He was a senior, after all. He had heard Wooden’s speeches so many times, he could recite them himself—and he and his fellow seniors often did, to Wooden’s annoyance. They knew all of his tricks. For example, before Wooden’s annual here’s-how-you-put-on-your-shoes-and-socks lecture on the first day of practice, he always had Gary Cunningham plant a penny in a corner of the room. Then Wooden would “find” the penny, tuck it into his left shoe, and tell the boys that it would bring them luck. This time, Walton found the penny beforehand and shoved it into his pocket. When Wooden couldn’t find it after several minutes of looking, Walton let Wooden know he had been foiled. “We’re a great team,” Walton said. “We don’t need luck.” He might as well have said they didn’t need coaching.

  * * *

  So it was that Wooden faced his an annual conundrum: Where should he hold the line, and where should he bend? Walton’s and Lee’s vegetarianism posed a problem because the team’s regular training table served mostly meat. If Walton and Lee were going to get enough nourishment, they would have to eat at the student union. Wooden allowed them to do so, but because he couldn’t extend that privilege only to those two, he allowed everyone to eat at the cafeteria as well. Pretty soon, he
dropped the training table altogether.

  Wooden also let Walton stay at home the night before a home game instead of at the team’s hotel, because Walton said he got a better night’s sleep there. Remarkably, Wooden disposed of his regular curfew, instead letting the players decide a reasonable time that they should be in bed. “I’ve changed,” Wooden acknowledged. “The times have changed. You can’t be rigid and unyielding.”

  The 1973–74 season marked the arrival of a new broadcaster to fill absences left by Dick Enberg, whose career had taken off to include more national television responsibilities. Enberg’s replacement on KTLA’s broadcasts was a young California native named Al Michaels, who had left his job calling Cincinnati Reds baseball games to return to his West Coast roots. Having grown up watching Wooden’s teams play at the Los Angeles Sports Arena, Michaels was somewhat in awe of the man, but when he met the coach for the first time, Wooden put Michaels at ease by showing a deep curiosity about the inner workings of the Reds. “The Reds had just gotten Joe Morgan, and John was very interested about how Sparky Anderson was folding Morgan into the team,” Michaels recalled. “He struck me as a man who enjoyed listening more than talking. He was an absorber of information.”

  Wooden would have to be especially shrewd about how he managed his own assortment of egos, because for the 1973–74 season J. D. Morgan had put together the toughest schedule the Bruins had ever faced. That included an early-season home game against fourth-ranked Maryland. The Terrapins had a stellar frontcourt duo in Tom McMillen and Len Elmore, as well as a heralded sophomore point guard, John Lucas, who was also a nationally ranked tennis player. The Terrapins’ fifth-year coach, Charles “Lefty” Driesell, had been widely mocked when he declared his intention to make Maryland “the UCLA of the east,” but now he appeared well on his way. Like most coaches around the country, Driesell did not know Wooden well, but he held a deep reverence for him. While they spoke on the phone the week before the game, Driesell picked Wooden’s brain about the best way to manage McMillen’s and Elmore’s transitions to the pros. Wooden recommended that Driesell meet with Sam Gilbert while he was in town. Driesell called Gilbert, who picked up the Maryland coach at the airport and took him to lunch, though he did not end up representing Driesell’s players.

  The nationally televised game did not lack for drama. UCLA built a 12-point lead shortly after intermission and still led 65–57 late in the second half, but when Driesell switched to a zone, the Bruins’ offense went dry. Maryland climbed back to within a point and threatened to take the lead in the closing minute, until Dave Meyers stole the ball from Lucas in the closing seconds to seal the 65–64 win. Curtis was fouled just as time expired, but Driesell argued with the officials that the game was over. He wanted to make sure his margin of defeat remained a single point. Walton finished with 17 points and 27 rebounds, and while Elmore was duly impressed—“Big Red is the baddest dude anywhere,” he said—Walton’s mother, Gloria, was less elated. “I just think winning all the time is immoral,” she said.

  Having watched his team barely win its seventy-seventh straight game, Wooden was concerned that it lacked balance. “It’s like when we had Kareem Jabbar. We tend to leave things too much to Bill,” he said. “Maybe now some of our fans will stop believing we have all the good players.”

  The best player not in a UCLA uniform also resided in the Atlantic Coast Conference. David Thompson was a six-foot-four prodigious leaper at North Carolina State who was the most exciting player to come into college basketball in a long time. The Wolfpack had finished the previous season 27–0 and ranked No. 2 in the AP poll, but they were ineligible to play in the postseason due to NCAA sanctions for recruiting violations. Thus, they never got the matchup with UCLA that everyone wanted to see. In the spring of 1973, however, the two schools’ athletic directors engaged in a protracted negotiation in hopes of getting them together. Since neither man wanted his team to travel to the other’s arena, or even a quasi-neutral site in the other’s home state, they agreed to meet halfway, in St. Louis, on December 15. ABC gladly forked over $125,000 to each school in order to make it happen, rendering this the most profitable college basketball game ever. Some blight, these Bruins.

  Wooden tried to downplay the matchup, emphasizing that it was far less important than the conference games. “I don’t even know what kind of defenses North Carolina [State] plays, and I don’t care,” he said. Still, the game garnered a buildup not seen for a regular-season tilt since the Game of the Century six years earlier. Unlike that game, however, this one was no contest. The Wolfpack hung close for three quarters, partly because Walton got in foul trouble, but once he reentered the contest with nine minutes to play, he led UCLA on a devastating 19–2 run. The final score was 73–56. The star for UCLA was not Walton but Wilkes, who scored a career-high 27 points while on defense limiting Thompson to 17 points on 7-for-20 shooting.

  And yet, even after this latest triumph Wooden could not escape sniping from his critics. Frank Dolson of the Philadelphia Inquirer, the same columnist who had published Wooden’s letter to Digger Phelps and called UCLA a “cancer” on the sport, pronounced himself shocked—shocked!—at Wooden’s sideline comportment. Dolson sat close enough to hear most every word Wooden said to the officials. In a column that was carried to newspapers around the country via the Knight News Service, Dolson offered an extensive, near-verbatim accounting of Wooden’s caustic remarks.

  “I wonder how many college basketball coaches could have verbally abused an official the way Wooden did without receiving a single warning, a single rebuke, a single technical,” Dolson wrote. “From a seat in front of your TV set, or a seat in the stands, you’d never suspect what John Wooden is really like while a game is going on. From a seat a few yards away, it’s a revelation. ‘Watch ’em pushing away.… Lookit the elbow.… That’s an offensive foul. You called that an offensive foul on us.… Oh, for crying out loud! Bad call. Bad call.” Dolson also reported that he heard Wooden shout at David Thompson after a questionable call awarded him two free throws. “Feeling good? You should be.”

  When asked about Dolson’s column, Wooden conceded, “I have my Achilles’ heels like other coaches do. Certainly I am critical of officials, just as I yell at my players, because I expect a great deal from them.” The Los Angeles writers were more amused than anything else. If Dolson thought Wooden was bad now, he should have seen Wooden before the old man mellowed.

  * * *

  The streak was now at seventy-nine games and counting. Wooden kept insisting it was only a matter of time before his team lost, but it was hard for people to imagine that happening. At least, not while Bill Walton was there.

  Walton was surrounded by more quality players than at any other time of his college career. Dave Meyers was a crafty scorer and dogged defender in the Jack Hirsch mold. He earned the nickname “Spider” because of his long arms. Pete Trgovich was earning more minutes in the backcourt, as was Andre McCarter, whose speed was a terrific asset on the fast break. Marques Johnson was pushing his way onto the court as well. When Walton got frustrated from being double- and triple-teamed, he would yell at Wooden, “Get Marques in here! We need rebounds!” Johnson said, “When I’d hear Bill say that, I’d start unbuttoning my sweatpants. I knew I was coming in.”

  Wooden was also substituting more liberally than at any point in his career. In the season opener, he played sixteen guys. Against North Carolina State, he played eleven. That made playing for him more fun, but it was not easy for ex-benchwarmers like Andy Hill to see. “I wish he could have changed his mind earlier. It’s tough to get in there and look like a player when you’re in for only two minutes,” said Hill, who had taken a job as an assistant coach at Santa Monica College. While emphasizing that he felt “privileged to have played for him,” Hill admitted that “not playing was a painful experience. I had a lot of desire in the past to be resentful, but not now because Wooden is not affecting my everyday life.”

  The Bruins looked as if they
would sail through yet another undefeated season. That is, until January 7, when Walton took a nasty fall during a 10-point win at Washington State. As he jumped for a rebound, Walton was undercut—or submarined, to use the common description—by Cougars center Rich Steele. “It was a despicable act of intentional violence and a dirty play,” Walton said many years later. At first, Walton hopped up thinking he was okay, but as soon as play resumed, he called time-out because the pain in his back was so severe. An X-ray the next day revealed that Walton had suffered two small fractures in his lower vertebrae. The diagnosis was kept secret.

  This was a big deal because UCLA was just two weeks from its next great test, on January 19, at Notre Dame, the school that had last beaten the Bruins, as well as the team against which UCLA had set the consecutive wins record. This time, the Irish were undefeated and ranked No. 2 in the AP poll. The speculation over whether Walton would be available to play against the Irish mirrored the guessing game that had surrounded Lew Alcindor’s eye before the game against Houston at the Astrodome. After Walton sat out home wins over Cal and Stanford, Wooden said he didn’t think it was likely Walton would even make the trip to the Midwest. When Walton did travel with the team but sat out a 24-point win over Iowa, Wooden said he would leave it up to Bill to decide whether he would play against Notre Dame. Walton had been practicing while wearing a corset to get himself ready. To no one’s surprise, he chose to play against the Irish.