Back from the Dead

by Bill Walton

  But once I stopped riding and caught my breath, I immediately realized that something was wrong—terribly wrong. All of a sudden, my whole body—everywhere—felt like it was on fire. I was pouring out sweat from every pore. My vision was blurring, fogging over. My mouth was foaming, my nose and eyes running. I was losing the ability to breathe, as my throat and tongue were rapidly swelling. And it was all getting worse—fast.

  I went frantically from room to room in the house. I found Jim, sound asleep, in his completely darkened room. He was working the night shift at the local Petaluma Creamery—in the butter room—and this was his sleep cycle, the middle of the day. I walked right in and called out, “Jim, something’s wrong here. I got stung by a bee. On my bike. On my way home from school. And something is really wrong here.”

  I turned to leave, scratching everywhere uncontrollably, unable to see or breathe, and boiling over with scalding heat. And then I fell over, passed out, collapsing facedown on the floor, unconscious. I was very fortunate that Jim woke up and got out of bed.

  The next thing I knew, I was lying on a stretcher in the back of an ambulance with a doctor pulling a huge hypodermic needle out of my arm. Jim had quickly called somebody; the ambulance had come and was taking me to the hospital, which was way up the road in Santa Rosa. I was still unconscious. The ambulance crew knew I was in real trouble and that I probably wouldn’t make it all the way to the hospital. They radioed for help, and were instructed to go straight to the office of a local doctor, who would be waiting on the street for me. As the ambulance screeched to a stop, the doctor threw open the door and stabbed me with the giant needle full of epinephrine and started forcing Benadryl tablets down my throat, hoping to reverse the deadly anaphylactic shock caused by the bee sting. The doctor jumped into the back of the ambulance with me and yelled at the driver to get going to the hospital. We finally made it there, and they gave me all the medicine that I needed. When the doctors were satisfied that I was stable, Jim and Laurie came and took me home.

  I was able to get back to things pretty quickly, though I’ll never forget what Jim and Laurie did to save my life. And I’ve never gone anywhere since without my EpiPens and Benadryl.

  I soon set myself back into a wonderful summertime rhythm of school and biking, usually close to a hundred miles a day after school got out. I was out there enjoying the ride, rolling on forever, with lots of very serious smiling along the long, hard climbs. I got to explore every corner of Sonoma and Marin Counties, and it provided just the kind of rejuvenation that Coach recommended.

  I stayed as long as I could. And then it was time for one final go-round at UCLA, where all we had to do was keep the train on the tracks.

  * * *

  CHAPTER 9

  * * *

  The Great Unraveling

  UCLA 1974

  When life looks like easy street, there’s danger at your door.

  Nothing’s for certain, it could always go wrong.

  Success is really hard.

  Duplicating it, replicating it, sustaining it are all the things of which the greatest champions are made.

  It is generally easy to determine what is wrong with something.

  Identifying what makes things right or work is often extremely elusive.

  * * *

  As our senior season began, we were ready.

  I was in top shape and form, having been on a bike-riding and academic tear for the entire summer. Greg had been playing beach volleyball at a championship and Hall of Fame level and was in fantastic condition, and Jamaal was always ready—for EVERYTHING. We had not lost at anything since we started at UCLA three years before. And things just kept getting better.

  The team had a distinctly different makeup to it now, as we had lost two starting wing players, the Larrys—Hollyfield and Farmer—and Swen, who in retrospect turned out to be much more valuable than any of us ever dreamed—all to graduation, or at least to the loss of their eligibility.

  Over the previous two seasons, that now made five guys who were critical components, when you count Henry Bibby and Andy Hill, who had all matriculated on to varying professional careers.

  But with new talent and maturing returning stars, we were loaded. We had it all.

  Dave Meyers would now get to play all the time, which was always a good thing. Andre McCarter and Pete Trgovich were explosive perimeter players, salivating at the chance to finally strut. Freshmen Marques Johnson and Richard Washington were dynamic gems who gave us an entirely new dimension. And Ralph Drollinger took over for Swen.

  This was by far our most talented team in the four years that I played for UCLA.

  Sadly, we still had Tommy Curtis on the roster. Tommy was the antithesis of everything that I knew and loved about basketball and UCLA. He was a self-centered, overdribbling, statistically oriented, loudmouthed, foul-mouthed fool. He was a shoot-first gunner with an individual agenda that revolved around nonsense. He had none of the values, goals, or ideals that defined who we were as a team, what we stood for, or what we were trying to do. If only he had not redshirted. Who knows how the fate of the known world would have evolved.

  * * *

  School, academics, and our social life could not have been better. Ever so close to graduating early, I now took only classes and professors of great interest. The concerts and special events continued unabated, and I was into everything, with rarely a free nanosecond, constantly bouncing from one thing to the next.

  One of those things was my introduction through friends to meditation. A bunch of us got very into it, and Coach Wooden was hospitably accommodating in letting us use his office for the quiet time and space that we needed, usually right after practice, on our way to the training table at the Student Union.

  When we officially got going with the team, with the usual birthday party for Coach on October 14 and media day, we were all so very excited, dizzy with the possibilities of the pending perfection and the chance to run the table.

  Dave Meyers was terrific in all that he did, and I loved his passion, enthusiasm, and challenging intensity. Dave was superfun to play with, and ultimately against, down the road in the NBA, until his back failed him way too early in life. He has since gone on to an extremely productive, albeit quiet, career and life in education, social policy, and missionary work.

  Marques Johnson was also destined for greatness. We had known of him forever, as one of Wooden’s recruits since he was in the eighth grade. And now we were getting to see firsthand the gleaming talent that Coach Wooden had been beaming about for years.

  On the first day of practice, Coach told me that my hair was too long and that I hadn’t shaved that day. Despite all of our protestations, he basically threw me out of practice before it even started. He was quick into his “I’m the coach here. And while we’ve enjoyed having you . . .” routine. I knew I had lost again, and I immediately raced on my bike into Westwood, shaved, and got a haircut—missing the first three minutes of the opening practice.

  In the early days of practice, while we were settling into our routine of five days a week on, then the weekend off to rest and regroup, I was out on the court early warming up by myself when I noticed Coach walking with a mission across the court. Now, Coach was always fierce, but on this day he seemed more determined than usual as he made a straight line for Greg, who was also warming up alone, but in the far corner from where I was.

  As I went about my business, I could not help but notice their animated conversation, which seemed unusually contentious, more than a simple how are things going, and how are you going to get the ball to Bill and Jamaal today.

  That conversation with Greg ended rather abruptly and seemingly not well. Coach then made his way directly to me in the far and opposite corner of Pauley.

  When he got to me, he started right in. “Bill, it has come to my attention that you have been smoking marijuana.”

  Caught completely off guard, and totally surprised, I did everything I could to keep a straight face.
In as composed, serious, and sincere a tone and manner as I could muster under the circumstances, I solemnly replied, “Coach, I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  He took a deep breath and said, “Good.”

  Then he turned on his heel and went back to getting practice started—right away.

  * * *

  A bit later, in our first quiet moment together, I asked Greg what he and Coach had been talking about before practice.

  Greg indicated a similar line of questioning as I had experienced.

  Whatever Greg’s answers to Coach were that day, things were never the same again.

  For any of us—none more so than Greg.

  If only . . .

  Almost immediately our regular lineup, rotation, and style changed.

  Greg’s selflessness and remarkable ability to deliver the ball flawlessly in the most efficient offense in the history of the sport would no longer be the key ingredient to our unbeatable success.

  In his place we found Tommy Curtis.

  When you look at all that has gone wrong in basketball today, with little punk guards dribbling incessantly, aimlessly, and without purpose other than to draw attention to themselves and promote some ridiculous individual culture of idiocy, selfishness, and greed, and where the most beautiful game in the world grinds to a halt while nine guys watch and wait for one guy who is dribbling for no reason other than to show off, then you have witnessed the madness and all-consuming disease of conceit that defined Tommy Curtis.

  * * *

  And try as we did, with everything that we had, this could not be overcome.

  We had Jamaal Wilkes, Dave Meyers, Marques Johnson, Richard Washington, Ralph Drollinger, and me up front. All good players. Jamaal is a Hall of Famer and one of four players in history to have won multiple NCAA and NBA championships. He was also described by Coach Wooden eleven years after he graduated as Coach’s vision and version of the perfect player and person. Dave and Marques were both the best NCAA players over the next few years and would be in the Hall of Fame themselves if they had stayed healthy in the NBA and had had better teammates there. And Richard was incredibly talented in his own right. Ralph was 7'2" and could play.

  But now with Tommy Curtis, none of us could ever get the ball when and where we needed it, if we could get it at all.

  I would be in Coach’s office constantly—begging, pleading, trying to explain why Tommy Curtis was not right for our team, our style, our psyche, our game, our life, our fun.

  But there was no satisfaction, no getting around it all.

  The team became incredibly inconsistent. We were all so used to getting the ball in perfect rhythm, at the instant we were open. And now we found ourselves waiting, waiting, waiting—endlessly, while Curtis kept dribbling for no apparent good reason.

  * * *

  We started that year with Arkansas. As we gathered one last time for the opener, Coach was well into his pregame routine, which, like most everything else by this time, we had committed to memory, if not practice. So when he started in with “I’ve done my job, the rest is up to you,” and all the other stuff that we had heard so many times before, we were just anxious to get going.

  As was the now realized custom on opening night, Coach started down the path leading to his “discovery” of the lost lucky penny.

  Now, while I readily admit to being a very slow learner, by this point, there were some things that I had figured out.

  Anticipation is always key in life, so while drifting and dreaming how this was all going to play out, when the assistant came in to make sure that everything was in perfect order before bringing the Coach in, I noticed him wandering over to where Coach usually “found” the lucky penny.

  Seeing him drop the penny and then quickly move toward bringing the Coach in, I stealthily pounced on the coin while nobody was looking and put it in my pocket, then returned to my stool, dutifully waiting for the Coach.

  So, Coach is now well into his speech, telling us how to have a good season, it all starts with a strong opening performance. We are all nodding enthusiastically as he heads inexorably toward “finding” the “lost” penny.

  As the speaker, he knows where he’s going. As the audience who’s been there before—so do we. As he’s building toward his “discovery” he keeps looking over to where the “lost” penny is supposed to be, but it is clearly not there, and he knows it.

  And he finds himself in the worst of all possible worlds for the speaker—stuck, with nowhere to go after the big buildup. So he just comes to a complete stop. Flustered, flummoxed, perplexed. With no way out.

  In the incredibly awkward silence that now engulfed our locker room, I stood up, beaming, grinning. I said, “Come on, guys, let’s go! We’re a great team, we don’t need luck, and Coach, here’s your silly lucky penny.” I reached into my sweatpants and pulled out his good-luck charm, then tossed it his way as I walked out the door and onto the court.

  That was the year we lost.

  Never discount the power of luck.

  Ever since, I have been burdened by the Curse of the Stolen Penny.

  If only . . .

  * * *

  That opener against Arkansas had the lone distinction of being Richard Washington’s first game as a Bruin. A game in which Richard played only a few mop-up minutes at the very end. Afterward while we were all standing around waiting to take the bus back to our local team hotel, the magnificent Bel Air Sands, Richard was heard to say, “Man, I can’t believe that Coach Wooden barely even put me in the game tonight—it was like I was not part of anything at all. . . . All these thousands of people in this sold-out arena who came here to see me play my first game here at Pauley, and the countless more who will tune in tonight on KTLA Channel Five with Dick Enberg on the tape-delay broadcast just to watch me play, and that darned Coach Wooden treated me as a mere afterthought.”

  Nobody had the heart to tell Richard that UCLA had sold out every game in Pauley’s eight-year history to that point, that the school had won the previous seven NCAA Championships, and that the team had won its 76th consecutive game that night.

  The next night we played Maryland. Their coach, Lefty Driesell, was determined to build his Terrapin program there in College Park into the UCLA of the East. They had a good team, probably the best that we had come up against in our college careers to this point, with real players—Len Elmore, Tom McMillan, and a very young John Lucas.

  This was the first outing Greg’s apparently wrong answer to Coach Wooden’s early-season queries began to haunt us. With Greg spending the first minutes of what would turn out to be inordinate and eternal time on the bench, and Tommy Curtis seemingly taking more shots by himself than Greg normally took in a month, and Jamaal and me waiting breathlessly and endlessly for a ball that would never come, we could not sustain our early dominance and comfortable lead. We did finally win the game, by one, when John Lucas couldn’t get it done in the lane on the game’s final play.

  * * *

  We rolled through the rest of our nonconference schedule in typical fashion—riding our explosive offense, stifling pressing defense, and overwhelming talent to rout the hapless and hopeless opposition.

  We opened the conference in early January up in Seattle, where we made mush of the Huskies, winning by 52 and running our winning streak to 84 games.

  Then it was off for the always exciting trip to Pullman. They had a very bright, dynamic, and streetwise coach, George Raveling. And now they had a brand-new, state-of-the-art gym with an “innovative” synthetic Tartan floor—hard as a rock, as sticky as if coated in fresh glue, and completely inappropriate for basketball.

  It was January 7, 1974, and we were on our way. Then for the first time ever at UCLA, Greg, who had not lost a game as our starting playmaker/ball-handler/leader for the past three years, never even got in the game—without a word of explanation.

  And then, during the course of an eminently awful and dreadful slow-down game, I was high above t
he basket making a play on the ball when a thug from the other team came over from the other side of the court and in a despicable act of violence and dirty play took my legs out from underneath me, flipping me over at the peak of my jump. I landed flat on my back on that Tartan floor and couldn’t get up.

  I lay there stunned, staggered, and helpless, and soon learned that I had broken two bones in my spine. My teammates tried to help me up, but it was real tough. It was even harder when I tried to keep playing after they finally started the game up again. There was just too much deep, burning pain searing through my entire body. I couldn’t continue. The guys helped me to the locker room,

  We eventually won the game by 10, but the damage was done.

  After the game, the ever-quiet and soft-spoken Coach Wooden said in his postgame news interviews that something had to be done to protect our players from the violent attacks of our opponents.

  I spent the next eleven days in the UCLA hospital, the swimming pool, bed, and Ducky’s training room, discovering acupuncture and the fine practitioners of every imaginable healing art, as I tried everything in a desperate attempt to get up and get going again.

  I missed the next two conference games—couldn’t even attend them, much less play. I had a broken back.

  Then, with our annual trip to Chicago and Notre Dame right in front of us, I strapped on a corset with vertical steel rods in it for support and flew across the country.

  I stayed in the hotel bed for our game at the Chicago Stadium, and then joined the team for the long, late-night, ice-cold bus ride across the frozen tundra to South Bend.

  With the awful weather, travel, motels, bus rides, my broken back, and Tommy Curtis, it was all basically miserable. Our schedule those days usually called for us to play late Friday night, then an early Saturday day game. So on that Saturday, January 19, 1974, we played Notre Dame. And I was finally able to play, for the entire game even, and we lost. That day, we broke Wooden’s most-oft-repeated admonition: “Do your best; your best is good enough, that’s all you and we need. But whatever you do, don’t beat yourself, don’t cheat or shortchange yourself, because that’s the worst kind of defeat you’ll ever suffer, and you’ll never get over it.”