Wooden: A Coach's Life

by Seth Davis

  Finally, his finger came to rest on his own visage. “Almost gone,” he said.

  * * *

  The only way John Wooden would consent to return to the Final Four would be if UCLA were playing in it. Even then, it took much convincing.

  It was not destined to happen under Walt Hazzard. The Bruins failed to reach the NCAA tournament in both of his first two seasons as coach, although they did win the NIT in 1985. Hazzard and Wooden made a good show of having close ties—in his first season, Hazzard even convinced Wooden to come to a practice for the first time since he retired—but behind the scenes there was very little interaction. Much of that was because Wooden was so preoccupied with taking care of Nell, but Jack Hirsch, who was Hazzard’s assistant, suspected there were other reasons. “I felt a little slighted by that. He should have given us more input,” Hirsch said. “You could talk to him, but he would never really talk about what you should be doing in basketball. Was he afraid of us winning, or was that just him telling us we had to do it ourselves?”

  In 1987, Hazzard guided UCLA back to the NCAA tournament, but the Bruins lost to Wyoming in the second round. Six months later, the program once again found itself in hot water because of Sam Gilbert. A second NCAA investigation unearthed another batch of extra benefits, including rent payments that were made on behalf of Carl Pitts, a junior college transfer who signed for UCLA but never enrolled there. In its public report, the NCAA’s Committee on Infractions noted that Gilbert was the one who alerted UCLA to his arrangement with Pitts “as if pleased with his actions.” Once again, Gilbert was not identified by name; the NCAA described him as “a well-known and highly identifiable representative of the institution’s athletics interests … who had been involved in serious violations of NCAA rules in a 1981 infractions case involving the institution.” The report declared that Gilbert had “ignored repeated warnings from the university to disassociate himself from all recruiting activities.” The NCAA also chastised UCLA for continuing to accept money from Gilbert and his family (especially his wife, Rose) for nonathletic purposes. As a result, the infractions committee stated that it “believes it appropriate to require the institution to sever all relations (to the limit of the university’s legal authority) between the university’s athletics program and this representative.”

  This time, it was left to Hirsch to deliver the bad news. “I had to betray Sam. I went to his office in Encino and I told him, ‘You have to leave the program completely,” Hirsch said. “He threatened to kill me.”

  Hirsch knew that the violations uncovered by the NCAA were penny ante stuff compared to what was really going on. “I’m not going to sit here and tell you I was the most honest coach in the world,” he said. “If one of my players came up and said he needed a hundred bucks to take a girl out, what am I going to do, say no?” He finally decided he’d had enough when Hazzard sent him to visit LaPhonso Ellis, a six-foot-eight power forward from East St. Louis, Illinois. According to Hirsch, when he showed up at Ellis’s house, he was carrying a bag full of several thousand dollars in cash. “I heard he wanted his mother to be taken care of,” Hirsch said. Hirsch never showed the money to Ellis, who ended up going to Notre Dame. “I called Walt and said, ‘This is so unethical and so immoral.’ But we were tired of being outrecruited.”

  Based on the evidence it had, the NCAA only levied two minor penalties against UCLA: a public censure and the loss of two scholarships for the 1988–89 season. A few weeks later, Hazzard was given a contract extension. “I think our program has weathered the storm,” he said.

  The NCAA’s report was not the last the world would hear of Sam Gilbert. Those long-held rumors of Mafia ties turned out to have more merit than anyone realized. On November 25, 1987, a federal grand jury in Miami indicted Gilbert and five other men on charges of racketeering and laundering some $36 million in connection with a marijuana smuggling ring dating back to 1975. Gilbert’s son, Michael, was among those charged with conspiring to defraud the Internal Revenue Service. The profits from the drug sales were allegedly laundered through the Bicycle Club, a casino in Bell Gardens, California, that had recently been built by Gilbert’s construction firm.

  There was only one flaw in the government’s case: four days before the indictment was handed down, Gilbert died in his home following a long battle with cancer and heart disease. He was seventy-four. The grand jury was unaware of this when it completed its work. So were the federal officials who went to Gilbert’s Pacific Palisades home to arrest him. Whatever is said about Sam Gilbert, he must be given his due: the son of a bitch beat the system with four days to spare.

  As a result of convictions handed down two and a half years after the indictment, Michael Gilbert would serve five and a half years in federal person. By that time, UCLA basketball had changed coaches yet again. Walt Hazzard was fired on March 30, 1988, after failing to reach the NCAA tournament three times in four seasons.

  UCLA athletic director Pete Dalis spoke briefly with Hirsch about replacing Hazzard, but Hirsch had had enough. Once again, Dalis scoured the country for replacements. After being turned down by several prominent coaches, including North Carolina State’s Jim Valvano and Larry Brown, who had just won an NCAA title at Kansas, Dalis tapped Jim Harrick, who during his nine years at Pepperdine had compiled a 167–97 record and gone to four NCAA tournaments. Because of his many years coaching high school and college ball in Southern California, Harrick proved to be a savvy recruiter. When he signed Don MacLean, a six-foot-ten All-American from nearby Simi Valley, that summer, it jump-started the program. Though the frustrations of Bruins fans mounted while Harrick’s teams compiled sterling regular season records but kept flaming out in the NCAA tournament (sound familiar?), the Bruins finally broke through in 1995, returning to the Final Four for the first time since Brown had taken them there fifteen years before.

  Harrick was one of many coaches who had long implored Wooden to come back to the Final Four. “I kept telling him, ‘Coach, the young coaches need you. They need to see you, they need to talk to you.’ But he wouldn’t go.” Thus, when Harrick returned from the 1995 West Regional final in Oakland, he drove straight to Wooden’s condominium in Encino for an unannounced visit. When Wooden opened the door, he looked at Harrick and said, “I’m not going.”

  “We sat down for two hours and I just absolutely begged him to go,” Harrick said. “I called him every day that week. He was as stubborn as any guy I’ve known. You couldn’t budge him off of what his belief was.”

  Finally, the old man gave in. Arthur Andersen, the prominent accounting firm, hired him to speak in Seattle and sent a private plane. Wooden didn’t arrive until Monday, the day of the final. When he walked into the Kingdome a few minutes before tip-off, the entire arena rose for a standing ovation. “I got cold chills seeing him there,” Harrick said. “It was electric.”

  A few hours later, the Bruins were putting the finishing touches on an 89–78 victory over Arkansas. It would be UCLA’s first NCAA title in men’s basketball since Wooden’s final game twenty years before. With a little over a minute remaining, Wooden got up from his seat and started making his way out of the arena. A fan shouted his congratulations. “Not to me,” Wooden replied. “To the team.” When the final buzzer sounded, the Bruins players celebrated wildly and jumped into each other’s arms, but Wooden never saw it. It was a triumphant moment, but it belonged to someone else.

  34

  Andy

  He lived.

  At the end, this was John Wooden’s greatest gift to his former players. He was finally available—truly, emotionally available—in a way that he never was when he was coaching. Back then, their interactions were limited to basketball. Now, there was no basketball. There were only moments, memories, and the lessons they shared.

  To many of Wooden’s players, he didn’t start making sense until long after they had left his classroom. Take, for example, Keith Erickson, who played twelve years in the NBA. Toward the end of his career, Erickson
was playing in a 1976 play-off game with the Phoenix Suns. The game was close, and as it entered the final minutes, a teammate threw Erickson a pass for a layup. Just as the ball arrived, Erickson reached up to swipe the hair out of his face. The ball went through his hands and sailed out of bounds.

  The Suns ended up winning the game, but as Erickson replayed the sequence in his mind later that night, he couldn’t believe how boneheaded he had been. “I thought to myself, that’s why Coach Wooden told us to keep our hair short,” he said. “Before the next game, I went out and got a haircut.”

  Lucius Allen experienced many such moments during his first few seasons with the Milwaukee Bucks. The team usually had other guards who were more gifted, but Allen still was able to find ways to earn playing time. “I was better equipped than other guys because I had all the fundamentals. I could shoot, I could defend. It gave me longevity,” Allen said. “It took me three years to realize what a gift I got from that man. I was using the Pyramid of Success and not even realizing it.”

  Jack Hirsch spent a lot of time with Wooden in his later years. Since Wooden lived near Hirsch’s mother, Hirsch would often ring up his coach and get together for lunch or just drop by to chat in Wooden’s den. “At a certain point, you start looking at your parents as people. You start thinking your dad was right,” Hirsch said. “That’s what happened with every one of Wooden’s players. Once you’re done with the program and you’ve been brainwashed by one of the best minds that ever lived, you start saying and doing things that he taught you, and you don’t know where those things came from.”

  Gene Sutherland could relate to that notion. He had never liked the way Wooden was so ultraserious all the time, so when Sutherland became a high school coach and ran his own practices, he tried keeping things loose. It backfired. “I saw the practice deteriorating,” he said. “They were having fun, but they weren’t learning. So I thought, I can’t do that. I have to keep that distance.”

  Most of the Bruins arrived at these discoveries in small increments over long periods of time. That was not the case, however, with Andy Hill. In the years after he left UCLA, Hill remained bitter about the humiliations he had experienced when Wooden would insert him in the final minute into blowouts. He still got angry when he thought about all those times they butted heads over the Vietnam War protests or the way Wooden subjected Hill to a paranoid (Nixonian?) interrogation in the wake of the Bill Seibert banquet fiasco. In the early 1990s, Hill received a visit from his good buddy and former teammate Terry Schofield, who had become a successful professional basketball coach in Germany. Schofield had his own lingering discontent about Wooden, but he was struck by the level of resentment Hill harbored. “I said to Andy, ‘Man, you gotta let this go.’ It was ruining his life,” Schofield said. “I even suggested he should write some of this stuff down because it might help him come to terms with it. I had the feeling it was sort of consuming him. He had to find another place to be.”

  Hill had tried his hand briefly at playing professionally in Israel, and when he returned to the States, he spent a few years coaching junior college in Southern California. But he realized that coaching was not for him, so he pivoted to the entertainment industry, where his intellect, charisma, and ambition served him well. Hill became a successful movie and television executive at Columbia Pictures Television, formed his own production company, and went on to become president of CBS Productions. For a while, he maintained ties to UCLA and went to a few games, but when those interactions proved awkward, he broke away from the program altogether. He figured he was done with UCLA—and John Wooden—for good.

  Then, one day in 1998, Hill was playing golf with some buddies. As he took a practice swing in the fairway, one of his playing partners chastised him. “Stop hurrying,” he said. “You’re losing your balance.” Hill laughed to himself. For an instant, he felt like he was back inside the symphony of a UCLA practice. When he striped his approach shot and tapped in for birdie, he had to acknowledge that something significant had just happened.

  The moment set Hill to thinking. Despite falling short of his basketball ambitions, he had done extremely well for himself in the business world. He began to ponder the qualities that had enabled him to become successful and where he had gotten them from. He realized—conceded, perhaps—that he had learned most of them in John Wooden’s classroom. The epiphany was exhilarating and humbling at the same time. He felt the need to share it.

  The problem was, Hill had not spoken to Wooden in more than a decade. The idea of just calling him out of the blue filled him with trepidation. Still, he went for it. With his heart pounding in his chest, Hill dialed Wooden’s home number. The answering machine picked up—Please speak slowly and distinctly, and leave your name and number after the tone—and Hill started rambling. After a few seconds, Wooden came on the line.

  “Andy!” he said cheerfully. “How are you? Where are you?”

  Hill made small talk and indicated that he would like to visit whenever Wooden could carve out some free time. “Now would be fine,” Wooden said. The comment sent Hill’s heart racing anew. He asked if he could come the next day, and Wooden agreed. When the time came, Hill climbed into his car and headed north. He had an appointment with his teacher as well as his past.

  * * *

  The first conversation was less awkward than Hill had expected. He was a little taken aback at how Wooden’s eighty-seven years had worn him down physically, but the coach’s mind was sharp and his ears were open. Hill talked to Wooden about what he had been doing since graduation. He told Wooden what had happened to him on the golf course and what it had made him realize. The teacher was pleased. “So you did learn something after all,” Wooden said.

  When they were through talking, Hill asked Wooden if it would be all right to call on him again. Wooden said sure. The visits continued regularly for months. Hill described it as “tippy-toeing back into a relationship. It’s awkward because you’re not sure it’s real.” But the conversations were intellectually stimulating. As an executive, Hill had long been fascinated by the subject of leadership, so he prodded Wooden at length about it.

  At one point, Wooden reached into a cubbyhole and pulled out a card that listed some of his favorite leadership principles. One of them was the importance of making people who aren’t in the spotlight feel appreciated. For a moment, Hill figured he should leave well enough alone. Then he reconsidered. “I thought to myself, nah, that’s not fair. If we’re going to have a really adult relationship, it should based on being truthful,” Hill said. “So I said, ‘You know, Coach. I think I have come to a point where I understand that in your heart, that’s what you meant to do. But I think you need to know that you didn’t really do it.’”

  As Wooden digested the remark, Hill wondered if he should have just kept his mouth shut. But Wooden surprised him by saying, “If that’s what you remember I’m sure you’re right, and I’m sorry about that.” It was a pivotal moment in their renewed relationship. “My dad was an alcoholic,” Hill said. “I waited for ‘I’m sorry’ my whole life, and I never heard it.”

  Hill’s creative instincts (and clever marketing skills) convinced him that the story of his experiences with Wooden, tracing the arc from frustrated college student to successful entertainment executive to middle-aged man who returned to the classroom, would make for a compelling story. He broached the idea that they should write a book together. Once again, Wooden assented. From that point on, their sessions became more interviews than conversations.

  When word spread about the collaboration, some mutual friends were skeptical. “Everybody was terrified when Andy said he was going to write a book,” Schofield said. “John Ecker told me that he had talked to Denny Crum, and Crum was worried that the thing was going to be an exposé. Because there is enough material there for an exposé.”

  Hill’s book was no exposé. (Wooden would not have cooperated if it were.) But it was no free pass, either. The warm photograph of Hill and Wooden on the cov
er, combined with the title, Be Quick—but Don’t Hurry!, gave the impression that it was yet another gauzy, sterilized tribute, but the story inside was more complicated, more layered. Hill wrote in detail about his discontent as a player, his conflicts with Wooden over protesting the war, even the whole Bill Seibert episode. (There was, however, no mention of Sam Gilbert. “For crying out loud, give me a break!” Hill laughed. “I was worried enough.”) Hinting at that underlying discord was a smaller photo tucked into the corner of the book’s cover. It shows Hill and Wooden together cropped from a black-and-white team photo. “Look at his face in that team picture,” Hill said. “He ain’t smiling.”

  The book was published in 2001. In the ensuing months, Wooden and Hill embarked on a lengthy promotional tour. Wooden was nervous about how the public would react to these hints of imperfection. As he signed the books, he would often say to people, “Get past the first thirty pages. He ends up liking me.”

  Be Quick—but Don’t Hurry! didn’t set any records, but it sold well enough. Then again, all of Wooden’s books sold well. He also published a series of inspirational books, and with the help of his most trusted coauthor, Steve Jamison, he dabbled in children’s books. Wooden came up with the characters Inch (a worm) and Miles (a mouse) and set them on a course to learn the true meaning of the word “success” from their teacher, Mr. Wooden.

  This was one of Wooden’s more enjoyable projects because it earned him invitations to do readings at elementary schools. One day during one of these appearances, a little girl asked him if he was afraid of dying. There was a murmur of discomfort in the room until Wooden broke the tension by saying, “Now that’s a rather odd question to ask of a ninety-three-year-old man.” He then gave his stock answer, which is that while he wasn’t doing anything to accelerate his demise, he also did not fear it, because that would be the only way he could be reunited “out yonder” with his dear Nellie. Wooden used that phrase so many times, it inspired Swen Nater to write a poem called “Yonder.” Wooden loved to recite it during his talks: