Wooden: A Coach's Life

by Seth Davis

  This newfound attention was having some unintended consequences. That same day, Bob Nesbit wrote in his column in the Terre Haute Star that “a note from Los Angeles claims that U.C.L.A. is trying to sign Johnny Wooden as its basketball coach. We hope the story is wrong.”

  The championship game against Louisville was broadcast in Terre Haute on WTHI radio, where an announcer offered play-by-play from a transcription that came in via telephone from Kansas City. The station joined the game in progress after the completion of the high school state semifinals. (High school hoops was still king in Indiana.) When Louisville and Indiana State took the floor of Municipal Auditorium on the night of March 13, more than 9,000 paying customers had settled into their seats. They were about to get their money’s worth.

  Like Wooden, Louisville coach Peck Hickman believed in the fast break, and the two teams raced up and down the court at breakneck speed. This time, the Sycamores would spot their opponents an 18-point lead at halftime. Indiana State came rushing back once more after intermission, but Louisville’s free throw shooting down the stretch enabled the Cardinals to claim the title with an 82–70 victory. “We had a difficult time getting inside because we weren’t very big,” said Klueh, who scored 25 points in the final and was named the tournament’s most valuable player despite the loss. “We were disappointed but we weren’t tremendously upset because we hadn’t really thought about getting that far in the first place. We just played.”

  Plenty of history was made at the 1948 NAIB tournament. The 9,200 people who watched the final set a new single-game attendance record for the tournament. So did the 53,704 who watched over six days, as well as the total of $65,777.59 they paid for admission. The event had drawn schools from thirty-one states, also a new high. And of course, a black man had competed for the first time.

  In the end, Clarence Walker’s presence on the court drew little notice—which is exactly what Walker wanted. Though the two major newspapers in town never mentioned the breakthrough, the reaction (or non-reaction) from the fans and players had a profound effect on John Johnson, the sports columnist at the Call. “The opposing players regarded Walker as just another basketball player. At no time was there any evidence of difference shown to Walker by players whether they were from the North or the South, the East or the West,” Johnson wrote. “The spectators for the most part appeared to savor the participation of the Negro player, for they applauded his play whenever he was recalled to the bench. No expressions of disapproval were heard. Judging by this acceptance of the first Negro to ever play in the NAIB, the inference is that sports fans are not too much concerned with the race of a player; in fact, they seem to welcome the change and came out in larger numbers to see democracy in action on the fields of contest.”

  Walker had a few more unpleasant experiences on his way back to Terre Haute. When the Sycamores stayed overnight in a hotel outside St. Louis, he again had to sleep in the basement. Wooden met him for breakfast the next morning. As they were leaving the hotel, Walker walked past a woman holding her young daughter. “Look, Mommy, a nigger,” the girl said, pointing. The woman hushed her daughter by saying, “Sh! A colored boy.”

  For all the indignities he suffered, Walker wouldn’t have traded that week for anything. He met the Olympic track star Jesse Owens, boxing champion Henry Armstrong, and Floyd Bates, a black professional basketball player. Walker spoke with Bates until five in the morning and was so excited he couldn’t sleep. He learned some important lessons, many of them unpleasant, all of them worthwhile. He understood that his presence in Kansas City had resulted because someone confronted an unjust system, not the man he knew and revered, but rather strangers who lived thousands of miles away. This realization presaged the larger struggle to come in America. “An important trait among men is their ability to assert themselves in relation to other men,” Walker wrote in his journal. “It is not necessary to win all the little battles, but if and when human issues arise—we must take a stand—and this we must do by assertion.”

  * * *

  Because the Sycamores had lost to Louisville, they did not get to compete at the Olympic trials, but their performance in Kansas City was still hailed as a triumph back home. They ended the 1947–48 season with a 27–7 record, the best ever at the school. They also set a new single-season team scoring record, while Klueh shattered his own single-season mark by 260 points. When the team got back to Terre Haute, the whole town turned out to greet them. The players were paraded down Wabash Avenue in a caravan of fire trucks that took them to the gymnasium for a huge pep rally. The day included frequent predictions that the team’s success would be the catalyst for the new field house the school had been hoping to build.

  Once the celebration subsided, Wooden’s assistant, Ed Powell, assumed that his boss would begin preparing for the year ahead. “I thought he was happy at Indiana State,” Powell said. What Powell didn’t realize was that Wooden was itching to leave.

  Wooden confided as much to Louisville coach Peck Hickman shortly after their two teams met in the NAIB finals. Hickman later recalled Wooden saying, “Peck, I’ve got to get out of here. If you hear of anything, let me know.” Wooden never explained why he was looking to leave Indiana State, but it likely stemmed from his awareness that his success would only create more pressure to win. He sensed this dynamic as soon as he took the job, when the town gave him such grief for building his roster with quicker players from South Bend. Wooden confessed his concerns to his former grade school principal, Earl Warriner, who had traveled to Indianapolis to watch Wooden’s team play during that first season. “He said, ‘Mr. Warriner, I may be in bad down there,’” Warriner said. “I said, ‘Oh, John, why?’ He says, ‘I’ll tell you what it is.’ He had taken his high school team down there with him, and he kicked off seniors and juniors. He said, ‘I’m playing my freshman team this year. I’ve got to win. I’m gone if I don’t win.” Now, with his entire team returning from its runner-up finish in the NAIB tournament, Wooden would face expectations unlike any he had encountered as a coach.

  One of the jobs Hickman mentioned to Wooden was at the University of California, Los Angeles, which had already contacted Hickman about its opening. As Bob Nesbit’s item in the Star revealed, UCLA had been interested in Wooden for some time, but he was not the school’s first choice. The UCLA athletic director, Wilbur Johns, had offered the job twice to Branch McCracken, who by then had coached for eight seasons at Indiana. After turning Johns down the year before, McCracken actually accepted the UCLA job in the spring of 1948. He had gone so far as to find a buyer for his house until Indiana increased his salary and convinced him to stay. When McCracken called Johns to say he was backing out, he recommended Wooden.

  It was not the first time someone had made that suggestion. Back in 1941, when Johns was in his second season at UCLA, he was eating dinner with Piggy Lambert and mentioned that he wanted to stop coaching soon. As Johns recalled, “He said, ‘Wilbur, when you do and you’re looking for a coach, just keep this guy in mind—John Wooden.” Johns heard the same thing from Bob Kelley, a radio broadcaster who had lived in South Bend when Wooden was coaching there and had since moved to Los Angeles to call professional football games. But it was the word of Wooden’s former Purdue teammate, Dutch Fehring, who had become an assistant football coach at UCLA, that weighed heaviest of all. “One man convinced me that John Wooden was the man. It was Dutch Fehring,” Johns said. “He told me that if he could choose any man in basketball, any man, ‘I couldn’t give you a better name than John Wooden.’”

  At first blush, it looked like a poor fit. UCLA had enjoyed just three winning seasons in the previous twenty-one years. Wooden had no ties to the West Coast, and he had all of two years’ experience coaching in college. But when Johns contacted Wooden and invited him to Los Angeles, Wooden figured he should at least check it out.

  He was disappointed to discover that UCLA had poor facilities. The Bruins played their games on the third floor of a small, stuffy gymnasiu
m. Even the gym at Martinsville High put it to shame. Johns told Wooden (without explicitly promising) that UCLA hoped to build a new, first-rate basketball arena in the near future. Johns offered Wooden a two-year contract, but Wooden insisted he wouldn’t come for anything less than a three-year deal. When Johns agreed, Wooden said he wanted to go home and think it over.

  Ed Powell originally assumed that Wooden had no real interest in the UCLA job, but he noticed a change when his boss returned to Terre Haute. “I met John at the airport upon his return and knew that he was hooked,” Powell said. “Because this very conservative gentleman was wearing a loud Hawaiian shirt and argyle socks. I felt that he had made up his mind that he was to take the job at UCLA.”

  UCLA was not the only college pursuing Wooden, however. Some influential people associated with his alma mater, Purdue, informed Wooden that they wanted him to coach there. The catch was that he would have to remain at Indiana State for one more season, after which he would replace the school’s current coach, Mel Taube, who would be fired the next season. Wooden told them no thanks. “I didn’t like that way of doing things,” he said.

  Boston University also called, and a wealthy Indiana businessman named Tony Hulman had promised Wooden (among other things) a summer job at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway if he stayed in Terre Haute. But the place where Wooden really wanted to go was the University of Minnesota. The school’s athletic director, Frank McCormick, had just relieved Dave McMillan of his job as the basketball coach, and McCormick wanted Wooden to take the position. There was, however, one condition: Wooden would have to retain McMillan as his assistant. Wooden demurred, not least because McMillan favored a slow, Henry Iba–style of basketball. He also believed the arrangement would be awkward. As Powell recalled, “John always told me, ‘Never take a job where your predecessor remains on the premises.’” Wooden told McCormick that he would come to Minnesota, but only if he could bring Powell with him as an assistant. McCormick said he would have to clear Wooden’s request through the school’s athletics board. “I wanted the Minnesota job,” Wooden said. “I wanted to stay in the Big Ten. I was a midwesterner.”

  By this point, UCLA was pressing Wooden for a decision. It all came to a head on the evening of April 17, 1948. Wooden was due to receive a phone call at 6:00 p.m. from McCormick to learn whether he would be permitted to bring Powell to Minnesota. Johns was supposed to call an hour later. When Wooden didn’t hear from McCormick at the appointed time, he assumed Minnesota was no longer an option. So when Johns called to ask whether he was prepared to accept UCLA’s offer, Wooden told him yes.

  About an hour later, McCormick called. Unbeknown to Wooden, Minnesota had been hit by a major snowstorm, unseasonable even by that state’s standards. The storm had knocked down some phone lines, preventing McCormick from getting through. He was now calling to say he had gotten the green light for Wooden to bring Powell. Wooden told McCormick he had already agreed to take the position at UCLA. When McCormick asked if he could call UCLA back to tell them he changed his mind, Wooden said no. Not only had Wooden given Johns his word, but UCLA had already notified the press that Wooden had accepted the position.

  Such were the odd circumstances that paved the way for John Wooden to become the fourth coach in the inglorious history of UCLA basketball. Upon announcing his decision to the people of Terre Haute, Wooden sounded almost apologetic. “I deeply regret leaving State at this time, but an opportunity such as the one UCLA offered does not come along every day,” his statement read. Johns wanted him to come to Los Angeles immediately, but Wooden said he preferred to wait until July so he could finish coaching the baseball season.

  Wooden’s basketball players were naturally disappointed, especially since they learned the news by reading the newspapers. But they were happy for their coach. “I hated to see him go. We all did,” Klueh said. “It was a real feather in our cap that he could go from a school of about twenty-two hundred students, a little teachers college, to a big place like UCLA. But we definitely had mixed emotions.” Clarence Walker echoed that sentiment in his journal entry dated April 26: “A week ago it was publicly announced that John R. Wooden, coach of I.S.T.C. basketball team will not return next year due to his going to U.C.L.A. as head basketball coach. A truly wonderful man is leaving.”

  It was an illogical career move for many reasons, but John and Nell didn’t see this as a permanent change. They figured he could go out to Los Angeles, coach there for a few years, and then come back to the Midwest—probably in the Big Ten, maybe even at Purdue. Little did Wooden realize that he would never return. Strange as it seemed, unplanned though it may have been, a new season was upon him. Johnny Wooden was going west.

  PART TWO

  Summer

  10

  Unwelcome

  It was another fine spring day at Joe E. Brown Field in Los Angeles, California, where the UCLA baseball team was holding practice. Early in the workout, Ken Proctor, the Bruins’ second baseman, noticed a short, trim man standing quietly behind the third base dugout. The stranger was wearing athletic apparel, but Proctor didn’t recognize him. “Everybody wondered who he was,” Proctor said. “Then one of the guys said that’s the new basketball coach.”

  John Wooden had flown into town in April 1948 to spend a few days meeting the community and conducting basketball practices before heading back to Terre Haute to finish coaching Indiana State’s baseball season. The visit lasted only a few days, but it was long enough to alert the locals that he planned to bring a different kind of game to the campus in Westwood. “The fast break is my system,” he declared at the UCLA athletic department’s semimonthly breakfast with local sportswriters. “We’ll win fifty percent of our games by outrunning the other team in the last five minutes.”

  It would not be easy to whip the hoops program into shape. UCLA had posted a winning record just twice in the previous seventeen seasons and at one point had lost thirty-nine consecutive games to its crosstown rival, the University of Southern California. The previous March, the Bruins finished dead last in the Southern Division of the Pacific Coast Conference (PCC), and they were about to lose their entire starting lineup to graduation. But that did not stop Wooden from laying down an ambitious (and apocryphal) marker. “I’ve never played for nor coached a losing team in my life,” he told the players. “I don’t plan on starting now.”

  After Wooden returned to Indiana, Bill Putnam, a holdover assistant coach at UCLA, presided over the rest of the spring practices. Wooden monitored things from Terre Haute through the mail. Despite his pedigree as an All-American collegian and the coach of a squad that was the runner-up in a prestigious national tournament, his reputation had not preceded him. People who lived on the West Coast barely followed their local basketball teams, much less those all the way out in Indiana. “He was just a coach from the Midwest somewhere. We didn’t know anything about him,” said Ralph Joeckel, a forward on Wooden’s first two UCLA teams.

  Two months later, John, Nell, and their two young children enjoyed a lovely long drive to California, pulling over their Mercury to visit the Grand Canyon and Carlsbad Caverns along the way. When they reached their new home, however, they were overcome with despair. “I felt like I was coming to the end of the world,” Nell said. “We got on the Pasadena Freeway, and it almost scared us to death. We’d never seen a freeway before. I remember John getting all upset and saying, ‘What are we doing here anyway?’”

  It was an understandable reaction. To that point, Wooden’s idea of a big city was South Bend. “I came from the farm, the country, and Los Angeles was frightening to me,” he said. “Nellie, my dear wife, wasn’t the happiest she could be. Neither were my children at the very beginning.”

  Wilbur Johns, the school’s athletic director, arranged for Putnam and his wife, Betty, to show John and Nell around town and help them look for a house. The Putnams tried their best to make conversation with the newcomers, but it wasn’t easy. “They were very, very quiet. I think UCLA fe
lt too big for them for a while,” Betty recalled. “They were used to a smaller town and close friends. They were religious, and they had a hard time finding a group of people they were compatible with.” The Woodens decided to rent an apartment in the Culver City neighborhood. It occurred to Betty that by renting instead of buying, they were preserving their freedom to leave on short notice.

  As if being transported to this big, uncomfortable new world wasn’t hard enough, Wooden soon made a disturbing discovery. UCLA’s athletic department was under the purview of the Associated Students, which meant that the president of the student body was technically Wooden’s boss. Not only did Wooden receive no pension contribution on his paltry salary of $6,000, but he also had to suffer the ignominy of having his paycheck signed by an undergraduate. While the student body president had his own office, Wooden shared a small space with Ed Powell (whom Wooden had brought with him as an assistant coach) in Kerckhoff Hall, the building that housed the student association, the school store, the student newspaper, and the athletic department. “Had I realized the situation, I’m quite certain I wouldn’t have come,” he said.