by Seth Davis
Wooden’s close friend and former assistant, Ed Powell, witnessed countless moments when Wooden pulled his Jekyll-and-Hyde act in an effort to manipulate the refs. “Usually, some time in the first half, he would choose one incident, a close call, and jump all over the referee,” Powell said. “Just chew him out in, if there is such a thing, a gentlemanly manner. But let him know that side of Wooden. Then the half comes. During the half, as they’re walking to the lockers, he’ll seek out the referee and apologize to him. ‘I know it was a close call. Regardless of whether I thought you were right, it’s a job, and you’re doing the best you can.’ And Wooden in a nice meek-like manner would walk away. Now this fellow has a chance during the halftime to give it some thought. He has seen Wooden in a rage, and he has seen him in a very friendly-like manner. This works on him to the extent that the second half, if a similar situation arises where it’s a close call, he will say, ‘Do I want to meet this Wooden or do I want to meet that one?’ And chances are he’ll call the play in Wooden’s favor.”
Wooden’s halftime routine became so established that one veteran league official, Bill Bussenius, sometimes loitered by the scorer’s table to avoid the confrontation. “Wooden was no saint,” Bussenius said. “There were just two doors in the old Westwood gym, and he’d wait for you by one and give it to you when you came out.” Another former PCC ref added, “I’ve seen him so mad that I’ve been afraid he’d pop that big blood vessel in his forehead. But I’ve never heard him curse.”
Wooden was especially rabid in his early years at UCLA when he was trying to get the program established. “He was sort of a tiger when he came into the league, but that was in the days when he was trying to make his mark,” said Al Lightner, another veteran West Coast official. “I would think that any referee who does not command the respect of John Wooden can expect to be tested.” During one game, Wooden became so enraged at the officials that he refused to bring his team out of the locker room for the second half. “The athletic director of the other school came in and talked to me,” he said. “Eventually, I went on with the game.”
Wooden also developed a habit of bringing a stopwatch to the games in hopes of gaining an advantage with the enforcement of the rule requiring teams to bring the ball past half court within ten seconds. He believed that if the referees knew he was keeping track of the time, they might count a little more quickly. “I’ll let them see that I have it there, before the game starts. When I’m talking to them, they may see I have the stopwatch in my hand,” he said. Not surprisingly, Pete Newell was one of Wooden’s more outspoken critics in this area. “I guess John felt that by badgering the officials and really making them conscious of him, he’d have a better chance of winning the game,” Newell said. “Heaven knows he was successful, and maybe it helped him, but I don’t think from an educational viewpoint it’s the way to coach basketball or coach anything.”
The exchange with Ken Stanley revealed another habit of Wooden’s that was even less sporting: he razzed opposing players. He often confessed that it was “the thing I may be ashamed of more than anything else.” But he still found it useful. “I talk to players to try to get them thinking about [me], hoping it would get them off their game,” he said.
In his autobiography They Call Me Coach, Wooden admitted to calling Stanley a “butcher.” Another former USC player, Ken Flower, who played for the Trojans from 1950 to 1953, remembered Wooden as a “constant intimidator” when it came to opposing players. “I was surprised at how vocal he was,” Flower said. “I don’t remember another coach in high school, junior college, or college who was like that. It was ongoing chatter. He was trying to be bothersome.”
To the outside world, this may have been the most arresting discovery of all. After a UCLA victory over Stanford in 1955, the San Francisco Chronicle reported that “the Stanfords were at a complete loss about the ethics they say were employed by Wooden from the coaching bench when he allegedly yelled such phrases as ‘You butcher!’ and ‘Go cry to the ref!’ at the Stanford cocaptain. That comes as a complete surprise to us because we know the Bruin coach to be a mild mannered, amiable gentleman. It could easily prove a case of mistaken identity, although the Indians say, ‘No.’”
Former Cal guard Earl Schulz said that Wooden especially liked to yell at opposing players while they were trying to shoot free throws. “He was just obnoxious,” Schulz said. “He’d dig you a bit, and then hopefully you made both foul shots so you could smile at him when you ran down the court.” Walt Hazzard, who had done his fair share of trash talking on the Philadelphia playgrounds, described his coach as having an “antiseptic needle. It’s clean but biting, and it hurts.”
In the years after he retired, this aspect of Wooden’s personality was often whitewashed, inconsistent as it was with his “Saint John” image. To those who played for him and coached against him, however, it was very much a part of the man they knew. Late in his life, Wooden conceded that these memories made him uncomfortable. “I’m not always proud when I think about the way I bothered officials,” he said in 2006. “I’d say, ‘Don’t be a homer!’ Well, what am I really saying? I’m telling him he is being a homer. ‘Call it the same at both ends.’ Well, that means he isn’t. I try and think how I would feel if I was an official and someone said that. I’m sure I wouldn’t have liked it.”
* * *
Wooden’s decorum was again a topic after UCLA suffered its first conference loss of the 1961–62 season on February 16, to USC. A technical foul was called on the Bruin bench, but Wooden insisted afterward he was not the offender. “I was on my feet only once while the other side was up twelve times,” he said.
Despite that loss, the Bruins were ready to kick into higher gear. Sometimes, if the team fell behind, Wooden deployed a full-court pressure defense, which resurrected the late flourishes that had characterized his early teams in Westwood. During a game at Washington on March 2, the Bruins found themselves trailing by 14 points midway through the second half. They rallied behind the press and won by 3.
After Hazzard returned from almost quitting the team over Christmas, he and Wooden came to an understanding, but that did not mean Wooden went easy on him. In fact, Wooden figured out that Hazzard responded better to harsh criticism than he did to gentle praise. So Wooden came at Hazzard, again and again and again, and each time Hazzard’s play improved.
With the coach and his point guard learning to coexist, the machine was refined. Hazzard was the humming engine, and though he could score almost at will, he understood that his primary function was to distribute the ball to the sharp-shooting wheels, Green and Cunningham. (“His passes off the break are uncanny,” Florence wrote. “It’s a shame assists don’t show up in the box score.”) Fred Slaughter rebounded and played defense, while Pete Blackman was the erudite senior wing who provided leadership on and off the court. Even Wooden was surprised at how well things were coming together. “This group comes as close to attaining maximum efficiency as a team as any group I’ve coached,” he said. “They don’t attempt to do each other’s job. They’ve meshed together a lot better than I had expected.”
By the time UCLA reached the final weekend of the 1961–62 regular season, it had already sewn up its first conference title since Willie Naulls was a senior. After the Bruins clinched the league title by overcoming a 12-point second-half deficit to win at Washington, they were so exuberant in the postgame locker room that a couple of players got the idea to throw Wooden in the shower. “I wouldn’t do that, boys,” Norman said. They didn’t.
UCLA’s first opponent in the NCAA tournament’s West Regional was Utah State. The Bruins built a commanding first-half lead, but when it was cut to 2 points with five minutes to play, Wooden ordered Hazzard to stall. Wooden wasn’t much for showboating, but Hazzard’s Globetrotter impression had been an effective weapon throughout the season, much as Wooden’s own trickery had been during his playing days. With the crowd whooping its approval, Hazzard managed by himself to play keep-a
way from the Aggies for a full three minutes, helping UCLA to a 73–62 win. It had taken him fourteen long years, but Wooden had finally secured his first NCAA tournament victory.
Next up was Oregon State. The Beavers had ended several UCLA seaons in the past, but this time they were no match as the Bruins won handily, 88–69. UCLA was heading to the NCAA semifinals for the first time in its history.
The tournament would climax in Louisville, Kentucky, where the Bruins’ semifinal opponent was Cincinnati, which had won the NCAA championship the year before under its first-year head coach, Ed Jucker. The Bearcats possessed just as much speed as the Bruins, but they would have a size advantage inside, in the form of six-foot-nine center Paul Hogue. “We won’t be able to run on Cincinnati like we did Oregon State,” Wooden said the day before.
UCLA had encountered taller teams all season long but never before in such an intimidating environment. With more than 18,000 fans packed into Freedom Hall, the Bruins were rattled as they found themselves trailing 18–4 in the early going. They fought back to earn a 37–37 tie at halftime and stayed within striking distance throughout the second half, despite the fact that Hogue was having his way with Slaughter en route to scoring a game-high 36 points.
With the score knotted at 70-all heading into the final two minutes, Wooden again ordered Hazzard to play keep-away and then try to get the ball to Cunningham for the last shot. This time the strategy backfired when Hazzard was whistled for charging into Cincinnati guard Tom Sizer. “Hazzard faked the guy and the guy fell down, and Hazzard got called for charging. I’ll remember that one forever,” Wooden said many years later. That gave the Bearcats the ball with 1:34 to play.
Now it was Jucker’s turn to stall. Cincinnati held on to the ball until there were ten seconds remaining, whereupon Jucker called time-out to set up a final play. When the game resumed, the Bearcats swung the ball to Tom Thacker, a six-foot-two junior guard. Thacker had not made a basket all game, but with time winding down, he was forced to launch a twenty-foot jump shot. Swish. There was just enough time for a desperate heave from Hazzard, but it was deflected out of bounds, and Cincinnati escaped with a thrilling 72–70 victory.
The UCLA players were devastated by the loss, but in the postgame locker room they heard only encouraging words from their coach. “I remember him saying how very proud he was of the progress the team had made,” Pete Blackman said. “We had come together in such an odd way. We were 4–7 and yet we almost won it all.”
Indeed, this team had come a long way from the previous November. The Bruins had endured tension between their best player and their coach, had gone through the crucible of Houston, and had hit their stride at just the right time, a finely tuned machine that got more powerful with each passing week. No Wooden-coached team had ever achieved more “success”—by his definition, anyway. “He never liked the word overachiever,” Blackman said. “He said you can only achieve.”
Once again, Wooden’s “boys” had demonstrated the power of that idea. Once again, they had no trophy to show for it. The pressure, self-inflicted, would continue to build.
18
Gail
Having finally tasted success in the NCAA tournament, UCLA’s basketball program was well positioned to keep its momentum. Thanks to a series of bond issues from the state of California, as well as matching federal funds and other gifts, UCLA found itself in the fall of 1962 with $150 million to invest in new facilities. That included the on-campus basketball arena that Wooden had been promised when he interviewed for the job in 1948. The unbuilt structure even had a name: the UCLA Memorial Activities Center, which would be dedicated to students who had lost their lives in World War II. This was real progress.
The initiative was part of a citywide construction boom that was undertaken to keep up with population growth. Los Angeles’s high schools were teeming with athletes, and while as a general rule Wooden did not like to attend high school games, he usually made an exception for the city play-offs. That’s how Wooden came to be watching John H. Francis Polytechnic High School play a tournament game in early 1959.
Wooden was there to check out a few notable players, but there was one guard on the Poly High team who kept catching his eye. His name was Gail Goodrich, a junior. He stood just five-foot-seven, 140 pounds, but he was crafty, a lefty, and Wooden was taken by the way he sliced through the defense and scored at will. “We ought to watch that player,” he said to Jerry Norman. “If he grows, I’d love to have him.”
Wooden felt a tap on his shoulder. “Did you really mean that?” a woman asked.
When Wooden said yes, the woman told him, “That’s my son.”
Poly lost the game, but afterward, Wooden introduced himself to Goodrich and invited him to visit a UCLA practice. The kid was stunned. “I couldn’t understand why,” Goodrich said. “Would I grow? Would I be big enough?”
Having been a small player himself, Wooden understood how grit and guile could overcome physical shortcomings. Those traits were built into Goodrich’s DNA. His father, Gail Sr., had been a captain on USC’s basketball team in 1939, and Gail spent most of his childhood obsessed with the game. His mother, Jean, complained that “he’d dribble the ball through the house so much that I thought he’d drive me out of my mind.”
As it turned out, Goodrich did grow a couple of inches during his senior year of high school, as he led Poly to the city title and was named the city’s high school player of the year. His father’s alma mater tried to swoop in at the last minute, but by then it was too late. Goodrich was dead set on going to UCLA. He needed to clear a few academic hurdles before he could enroll, so he didn’t arrive on campus until February 1961. That was too late for Goodrich to play basketball, but he did suit up that spring for UCLA’s baseball team. Thus, it was on the diamond, not the hardwood, that he first encountered Wooden’s competitiveness. “He would sit right behind home plate and ride the umpire the whole game,” Goodrich said. “‘You sure about that call? Looked a bit outside to me. You watching the same game I am?’ He thought it was part of the game.”
Goodrich joined UCLA’s freshman basketball team the following fall. That was the first year the school staged an official contest between the freshmen and the varsity before the regular season began. The freshmen lost by only 6 points that day, and they went on to enjoy an undefeated season. His academic deficiencies aside—“My first two years I was the king of the poor students,” he admitted—Goodrich had a grand old time. He would soon discover, however, that playing on the varsity was a lot different, and a lot less fun.
In the first place, he would have to adjust to playing alongside Walt Hazzard. “I was used to having the ball in my hands,” Goodrich said. The glut of perimeter players prompted Wooden to assign Goodrich to play forward next to the undersized center, Fred Slaughter. It was a big job for such a little man. Goodrich thought it was a bad fit.
Goodrich also did not handle criticism well. If Wooden chastised him, Goodrich would pout. Wooden recognized this immediately. Though Goodrich later said, “You’ve never been ripped until he’s ripped you,” Wooden did his best to soften his words. Sometimes, when he wanted to get a message through to Goodrich, Wooden would address his critique to the entire team. For example, one day after Goodrich had missed a few too many classes, Wooden delivered a stern lecture to the entire team about the importance of academics. When he was through, one of Goodrich’s teammates said to him, “That speech was for you.” As Goodrich recalled, “He would say during a time-out, ‘We’re getting a little away from our offense.’ That was his way of telling me, ‘You’ve done enough.’”
This was completely different from how Wooden treated Hazzard. While Wooden would verbally pat Goodrich gently on the back, his barbs at Hazzard would come, in Wooden’s words, “a little lower and a little harder.” Hazzard noticed the difference, and it bothered him so much that he wondered whether race might be a factor. “I didn’t agree with the way he approached me, as opposed to the way he appro
ached Gail,” Hazzard said. “There was a difference, a very implicit kind of thing. It has to do with perceptions. I don’t think [Wooden] saw color, but I don’t think he would be ecstatic if his daughter married a black man.”
* * *
Hazzard might not have been so suspicious of Wooden’s motives had he known the coach better. That was part of the problem. Hazzard knew Wooden, but he didn’t really know Wooden. Very few people did. Wooden told his players he loved them and called them his “boys,” but the contours of his personality did not come gushing forth. Instead, he chose to reveal himself little by little, drip by drip.
For example, Hazzard discovered during his junior season in 1962–63 that his ultraserious coach had a quirky side. Just as the team was about to take the court for a game, Wooden offered Hazzard a piece of gum. The Bruins won, so Wooden did the exact same thing the next game, and the next. As long as the team kept winning, the ritual remained the same. Just before tip-off Wooden would walk over to Hazzard, reach into his pocket, take out a stick of gum, remove the wrapper, hand it to Hazzard, and pat him on the butt. “The man was one of the most superstitious people I ever met,” Hazzard said.
Wooden indulged in lots of rituals like that. The pregame routine he had established with Nell at Martinsville High had evolved over the years. Now, just as each game was about to tip off, Wooden went through the same progression: pull up his socks, spit on the floor, rub the spit with his foot, rub his hands together, pat his assistant on the leg. Only then would he turn around and flash the “okay” sign to his bride. “John has been doing it for so many years now that I don’t think the referee could get up steam to blow the whistle if John failed to go through with it,” Nell said. “Of course, it’s all very silly.”
Silly? John Wooden? Well, how else would one describe his incessant habit of sticking hairpins into wood? Wooden first got the idea when he read that the old St. Louis Cardinals baseball teams did it. From that day forward, any time he spied a hairpin on the ground, Wooden picked it up and inserted it into the nearest slab of wood, usually a tree. Nell confessed that sometimes on game day she would purposely drop a hairpin in his path. Likewise, whenever Wooden found a coin on the ground, he would place it in his left shoe for the remainder of the day. “You can keep it, but you must never spend it. And that brings you luck. Oh I know it does,” he said. He kept in his pocket a smooth rock, which he called his “Indian worry stone.” And both he and Nell carried small metal crosses that were given to them by a minister right before John went into the navy. Those crosses had proved their power. He lived through the war, didn’t he?
