Wooden: A Coach's Life

by Seth Davis

  Like the other Bruins, Johnson wasn’t the least bit conflicted about what was going on. “It was a different time back then. It wasn’t like you were blatantly doing anything wrong,” Johnson said. “Being from L.A. and living in the same apartment complex with a couple of USC football players … there was a feeling like what we’re doing over here is nothing. I hate to say that because I don’t want to drag their program though anything, but it’s true. I knew guys who were playing at UNLV. L.A. guys. So it was a level playing field for everybody. There were certain things that you were going to try and get, and certain ways you were going to work the system.”

  As for his coach, well, Johnson may have talked about a lot of personal things with Wooden that season, but this was not one of them. “Coach never talked about what was going on with Sam,” Johnson said. Holding his hands apart, he explained, “At that time, he was here, and Sam was here. And never the twain shall meet.”

  * * *

  Old habits were hard to break. As February gave way to early March, the usual tensions infiltrated John Wooden’s cone of serenity. As the postseason drew nigh, he found it increasingly difficult to sleep. His morning workout at the UCLA track was now starting at 5:00 a.m. The pressure of mounting another run to an NCAA championship was taking an even rougher toll on Nell, which only added to his worries.

  Things were also bearing down hard on Gary Cunningham. He had been struggling all season with the question of whether he should be Wooden’s successor. Finally, in February Cunningham went to Wooden and told him that he did not want the job. Cunningham told Wooden that when he quit at the end of the season, Cunningham would quit, too. “It’s not where my interests were,” Cunningham said.

  This sent Morgan into scramble mode. At that point, he couldn’t be positive that UCLA would even reach the NCAA tournament, much less win another title, and he wanted to have Wooden’s replacement locked down. With Cunningham no longer an option, the next obvious choice seemed to be Denny Crum, who was having another fabulous season at Louisville. Morgan, however, was not a huge fan of Crum, considering him a little too rough around the edges. Morgan wanted a coach who could win while maintaining the clean-cut UCLA image that Wooden had promulgated so well.

  That also ruled out another winning coach with local ties, Jerry Tarkanian. After leaving Long Beach in a mess, Tarkanian was already attracting the scrutiny of the NCAA at UNLV. “I said to him once, what about [hiring] Tarkanian?” said Byron Atkinson, the UCLA professor and dean of students. “You should have heard the … names he called him. They were hot. [Morgan] considered him a scab and a pirate.”

  Thus, Morgan had no choice but to go outside the UCLA family—and he had someone in mind. Back in the 1973 NCAA final against Memphis State, while everyone else was entranced by Bill Walton’s performance, Morgan came away impressed with Gene Bartow, the Tigers’ head coach. Not only was Bartow a good coach; Morgan also liked his “Clean Gene” profile. Problem was, Bartow had since left Memphis State and was now in his first year at Illinois. He had just signed a five-year contract.

  Bartow was shocked when Morgan called him. “I said, ‘J. D., I can’t. I’m trying to win games,’” Bartow said. “It was nice of J. D. to do it, but I felt you could win big at Illinois. So at that moment, I didn’t give much thought to it.” Two weeks later, Morgan called Bartow again and asked him to reconsider. This time, Bartow was more willing to listen. He was a southerner originally, and he had twice recently skidded off the road during a bad snowstorm. Bartow was becoming more enticed by the idea of living in the California sun. More important, he was warming up to the idea of being UCLA’s next basketball coach.

  On February 8, Illinois lost by 4 points at Northwestern. The next day, Bartow flew to Los Angeles, met with Morgan for two hours over lunch in Santa Monica, and then turned around and flew back home. To that point, Bartow had not told anyone about the situation except for his wife, and he managed to keep word from leaking out about his meeting with Morgan. Among those left in the dark was his athletic director at Illinois, Cecil Coleman. “It probably wasn’t real ethical,” Bartow said. “I wasn’t real proud of it.”

  Wooden had no idea about Morgan’s conversations with Bartow. J. D. figured the coach had enough to worry about as the Bruins entered the final two weeks of the regular season with a one-game lead in the conference standings. Wooden was uncharacteristically emotional down the stretch of the season. After the team scored a dramatic 107–103 victory at Oregon to keep its grip on first place, Wooden had to gather himself before speaking in the locker room. “I’ve got a frog in my throat,” he said. A 12-point win at home over second-place Oregon State pushed that lead to two games. Two weeks later, the Bruins clinched the title by throttling Stanford in Pauley Pavilion by 34 points.

  That rendered meaningless the regular season finale at USC, but the game meant a lot to Wooden. Before tip-off, he shared some quiet words with Bob Boyd inside the Sports Arena. Afterward, Boyd went over to his assistant, Jim Hefner, and said, “You won’t believe what’s happening. Wooden just told me this is the last time he’s playing us. He’s quitting.”

  Hefner was surprised Wooden was retiring, but he was not surprised that he would confide in Boyd. “He respected Boyd,” Hefner said. “I know that for a fact because his assistants used to say what Wooden thought about him. He knew Bob could coach.”

  The game was sealed in the final minute when Pete Trgovich, who had so often struggled to find playing time throughout his career, stole a pass meant for Trojans guard Gus Williams and converted a pair of free throws. When the horn sounded, Wooden jumped out of his seat, threw his fist in the air, and shook it several times. “More than anything else, I was elated for Pete,” he said. “I know he hasn’t done as well here as he probably expected to.” Wooden was so thrilled with the win, he opened up his locker room to reporters.

  Wooden had done well to keep his impending retirement a secret, but now the news was starting to break, and from a most unlikely source. Washington coach George Raveling first reported the big scoop in his Sunday column for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, which was published on March 8. “The public announcement won’t come until mid-April, but John Wooden won’t return as head coach at UCLA next year,” Raveling wrote. “Several sources up and down the coast have told me of Wooden’s pending retirement.”

  Raveling wasn’t totally straight with his readers. He actually had only one source, and it was not from the West Coast, but it was a good one. A few weeks before, Gene Bartow, with whom Raveling had become very good friends over the years, called Raveling to tell him about his meeting with Morgan. “I told him, damn, you know it’s going to be tough as hell following a legend. The only expectation they know is a national championship,” Raveling said. Once the regular season ended, Raveling called Bartow and asked if he could report the news. Bartow said it was fine with him as long as Raveling didn’t reveal his source.

  When the column was published, said Raveling, “all hell broke loose.” Morgan rang him up and demanded that Raveling tell him his source. “He was livid. He kept saying, ‘You can’t just say these things. You’ve got to prove it,’” Raveling said. “He was trying to smoke me out, but I wouldn’t tell him where I got it from. I just said, ‘Well, let it play its course and we’ll see who’s right and who’s wrong.’” Morgan also got the Pac-8 commissioner to publicly reprimand Raveling.

  Raveling’s article was just one more piece of conjecture for Wooden to bat down. “I’ve said it before and I can say it again. I’ve made no decision about retiring next season yet,” he said. “You may put to rest rumors that I have decided not to return.”

  Wooden, however, was becoming increasingly uncomfortable with having to lie. He knew the questions would only become more frequent during the NCAA tournament. It was going to be hard enough to win the title. Because of the addition of seven at-large slots, a team would have to win five games instead of four to claim the championship. The conference champions were assig
ned regions by geography, but the at-large teams were drawn out of a hat and placed into the bracket. That’s why UCLA’s first opponent in the West Regional in Pullman, Washington, was Michigan, which had been the runner-up in the Big Ten to Indiana.

  The Bruins’ season came very close to ending against the Wolverines, but they pulled out a thrilling 103–91 win in overtime. That sent them to the West Regional semifinals in Portland, where they were nearly upended yet again, this time by a Montana team coached by a hard-nosed Marv Harshman disciple named Jud Heathcote. The Bruins’ win in the West Regional final came much easier by way of an 89–75 triumph over Arizona State. After all they had lost, after everything they had been through, the Bruins were headed for the final weekend in San Diego. John Wooden would have the opportunity he wanted, to leave basketball a champion.

  * * *

  Gene Bartow was headed to San Diego, too, but unlike Wooden he was not bringing his team. The Illini had gone 8–18 and failed to make the NCAA tournament. Bartow still was not sure what he was going to tell Morgan, but he felt himself inching closer to taking the job. After he got back from his cloak-and-dagger trip to Los Angeles, Bartow told his boss, Cecil Coleman, what was going on. Coleman was understandably angry, but when Bartow asked him what he would do if he was asked to be UCLA’s athletic director, Coleman conceded he had a point.

  UCLA arrived for the tournament’s final weekend back in its customary perch atop the rankings, courtesy of No. 1 Indiana’s loss to Kentucky in the Mideast Regional final. The Bruins’ opponent in the NCAA semifinals was No. 4 Louisville. This put Wooden in a tough spot. Not only would he again have to go up against his former player and assistant, Denny Crum, but he still had not told Crum about his plans. That was one more reason why Wooden did not want the news to break, but he was losing the battle. At a party on Friday night, Wooden was cornered by four Los Angeles sportswriters who claimed to have heard from reliable sources that he planned to announce his retirement on Saturday night if UCLA lost or on Monday night if the Bruins reached the final. Wooden was through with the charade. “It might be,” he said. “I won’t want to lie. I would announce it to my players first and I haven’t yet. I wouldn’t be surprised if a decision came this weekend. It’s been a troubled time. It’s not what I’d really want. If I did it, it would be for the best.”

  In an unbylined story the following morning, the Los Angeles Times reported that “a prominent UCLA alumnus said Friday that John Wooden will resign as the Bruins’ basketball coach at the NCAA tournament.” The Los Angeles Herald Examiner published the same claim. When Wooden read those articles during the Kentucky-Syracuse semifinal that preceded his own, he knew the jig was up. The spiraling situation set the stage for one of the most dramatic and wrenching nights of his life.

  * * *

  If anyone could get his team prepared to play UCLA, it was Denny Crum. His Louisville Cardinals built two separate 7-point leads during the first half. Each time, the Bruins managed to hang tight. “It was like playing against ourselves,” Marques Johnson said. The game stayed close for the entire second half. Louisville led, 65–61, with 1:06 to go.

  After Richard Washington dropped in a pair of free throws to cut Louisville’s lead to 2, Wooden went to his zone press for the first time all day. The move baffled the Cardinals, who turned the ball over and allowed Johnson to score on the ensuing possession to tie it at 65–all. When neither team could score during the final minute, the game headed for overtime.

  By that time, Drollinger and Trgovich had fouled out, and the Bruins again fell behind by 3 points with 2:20 to go. A Johnson tip-in and two free throws by Meyers sandwiched a Louisville basket, leaving the score at 74–73 in favor of the Cardinals. Crum called time-out and ordered his team into a four-corner stall. For most of the possession, the ball stayed in the hands of Cardinals guard Terry Howard. There was a good reason for this: Howard had not missed a free throw all season. He was a perfect 28 for 28.

  With the game slipping away, Washington had no choice but to foul. It was a one-and-one situation. If Howard made both free throws, it would be a two-possession game, and UCLA would probably be headed for defeat. Howard stepped to the foul line … and missed.

  If ever there was evidence to support Tarkanian’s theory that Wooden was the good Lord’s favorite coach, this was it. Howard’s miss gave the Bruins new life. Wooden called time-out to set up the final possession. When play resumed, McCarter tried to score on a drive down the lane and missed, but Meyers grabbed the rebound to keep the possession going. The Bruins worked the ball around to Washington, who slipped loose on the baseline and lofted a baseline jumper as the final seconds ticked away.

  Swish. Ball game. UCLA 75, Louisville 74.

  Wooden and Crum shook hands amid the bedlam. As Wooden walked off the court toward the locker room, he was totally, utterly spent. His players were elated in the locker room. Nobody was trying to avoid peaks and valleys, least of all Wooden. When he came inside, he waited for the whooping and hollering to subside. Once it did, Wooden praised his Bruins for how they played. He said he was proud of them. He said he loved coaching them. He told them he believed they had an excellent chance to beat Kentucky in the final.

  Then Wooden dropped the news. Win or lose, Monday was going to be his final game as the UCLA basketball coach. “I’m bowing out,” he said. Struggling to push down the frog in his throat, he could only add, “I don’t want to. I have to.”

  At that point, the only player who had known of Wooden’s plans was his senior captain, Dave Meyers. The rest were in shock. “There was never a hint that he was going to retire,” Johnson said. “I remember feeling a little disappointment, a little sadness that he wasn’t going to be there to finish out my career.”

  Wooden had not told anyone—not Morgan, not Cunningham, not Nell—that he was going to break the news to the players that night. He wasn’t even positive himself until he started walking off the court. He dreaded the idea of going into that interview room and facing another round of questions about that morning’s reports. He was tired of carrying around his secret, tired of lying to his friends. It was important to him that his players heard the news from him first. Having told them at last, he was ready to reveal his plans to the world.

  Wooden was still wrung out when he took his seat in the interview room. “I’ve always said that my first year in coaching [at UCLA] was my most satisfying. My last year has been equally satisfying, regardless of what happens Monday night,” he said. “I’ve asked J. D. Morgan to release me from my coaching duties at UCLA. I have done that for a number of reasons I’d rather not go into. I just told the players.”

  The room fell silent. Someone asked Wooden what the players’ response was. “Quietness,” he said.

  Wooden explained, less than truthfully, that he had been considering retirement “for some time” but did not come to a final conclusion until the last week. He said he was making the announcement now instead of after the final “because there has been a lot of conjecture about it recently, most of it reasonably accurate. I certainly don’t think I panic when I make decisions.” He talked of his recent sleeping troubles—“That had never happened before and I thought, well, maybe it’s a sign”—and said he did not make the decision out of his own health concerns but rather “the health of others,” presumably Nell, who later confirmed to reporters that her husband had made his decision to retire at the start of the season. Wooden also promised he would not coach anywhere else. “I’ll be sixty-five October 14. Practice starts October 15. I made the decision many years ago I’d never coach any place but UCLA.

  “But let’s don’t talk about that,” he pleaded. “Let’s talk about the game.”

  Fat chance. Wooden’s announcement set off a mad scramble. Frank Arnold was doing an interview with Hessler on the court when Wooden delivered the news to the players. “I had a hunch it might happen, but I didn’t know. He didn’t tell me,” Arnold said. Cunningham was also caught off-guard. He immediately
informed the press that he planned to resign as well. “I’m thirty-five years old and things have happened to me that shouldn’t be happening to a man my age,” he said. “They’re directly related to coaching, the hours and pressure.”

  Now it was Wooden’s turn to be caught off-guard. “Did he say for sure he was resigning?” he said to a reporter who relayed what Cunningham had said. Asked if he was surprised, Wooden said, “Yes and no.”

  Crum may have been the most surprised of anyone. Not only was he unaware that Wooden was going to retire; he had no idea that Morgan had already offered the job to someone else. Crum could barely hold back tears as he talked about his former coach. “There’s not much you can say about a man who has done what he has done in his profession,” he said as his hands shook. “Basketball will miss him. You’ll all miss him. He might miss basketball even more.”

  When the writers entered the UCLA locker room—Wooden didn’t like the rule, but he didn’t protest it—the players were still spinning from the night’s events. “I felt like I was sitting in on a little bit of sports history,” Johnson said of the moment Wooden broke the news. Meyers added, “There was a lot of emotion in the room. Most of our guys are young and maybe don’t realize what Wooden has meant to UCLA and the game.”

  The chance to play in an NCAA championship game was plenty big on its own. Now, Monday night’s final wasn’t just going to be big. It was going to be historic. The players may have been young, but they weren’t naive. As soon as Wooden left the locker room, McCarter brought everyone together and delivered a stern message. “There’s no way,” he said, “that we are going to let this man lose.”