Wooden: A Coach's Life

by Seth Davis

  When it came to this area of the game, the players possessed some extra motivation. Unbeknown to Wooden, an older fan had started doling out money for each rebound. According to Jack Hirsch, every player got five dollars per rebound per game up to ten, and ten dollars per rebound thereafter. Those payments were against NCAA rules, but the players didn’t much care. “Except for Jack, we had no money,” Keith Erickson said. “So if someone gave me an extra six dollars for getting some rebounds, I was thrilled and I didn’t care where it came from.”

  Goodrich, however, was less than thrilled when he learned what was going on. “I heard things about getting rebound money, so I went to Coach Norman. ‘What about assists? What about the guards? This is very unfair,’” he said. “I knew what was legal and not legal from my dad. Next thing you know, it was stopped. No one knew I did that.”

  (Told five decades later that Goodrich was the one who put a stop to the rebound money, Erickson quipped, “Even if they were giving out money for assists, Gail wouldn’t have gotten any.”)

  UCLA entered the middle of February in a tie with Stanford for first place in the AAWU, which was now being called the “Big Six” because of the off-season addition of Washington State. The Bruins prepared for their February road games at Stanford at a time of growing friction between Wooden and Fred Slaughter. Having proved early in the season that he was capable of scoring in big numbers, Slaughter bridled when Wooden ordered him to revert to his roles as a rebounder and defender. “I saw him run Fred Slaughter out of the gym one day,” Goodrich said. “Coach was running with him, jawing nose to nose the whole way.”

  UCLA’s first game against Stanford started badly and never got better. Wooden was whistled for two technical fouls early in the first half for arguing with officials, but that did not warrant an automatic ejection back then. Unfortunately, that meant he had to stick around to watch Slaughter hoist twenty-two shots and make only six as Stanford won, 86–78. When the Bruins lost two of their next three games, their hopes of winning a league title started slipping away.

  UCLA trailed Stanford by two games in the league standings with two games remaining, including one against Stanford at Santa Monica City College. The Bruins fell behind early in that game, which prompted Wooden to install his full-court press. Keith Erickson’s athleticism was an enormous asset in the back of that defense. Erickson didn’t start, but after Wooden subbed him in for Goodrich early on, Erickson played so well that Goodrich never set foot on the court again. Erickson finished with 13 points, Stanford committed twenty-four turnovers, and UCLA prevailed, 64–54. That left them one game back with one to go.

  UCLA easily dispatched Cal the following night by 19 points. That put the Bruins in the rare position of having to root for USC, which was playing Stanford across town at Los Angeles State College. Most of the UCLA fans at the Santa Monica gym were listening to the USC-Stanford game on transistor radios. By the time the Bruins finished off the Bears, the other game was midway through the second half. The UCLA players repaired to their locker room and listened to the end of that game on a radio. The suspense was so great that Hazzard asked a manager to take his radio out of the locker room. Messengers kept the players informed as the Trojans seized the upper hand and sent the game into overtime. “We’re backing in,” Wooden marveled. “I never thought we’d do it.”

  USC won, 67–61, setting up a one-game play-off for the right to represent the Big Six in the NCAA West Regional in Provo, Utah. Because Stanford had hosted two of the teams’ three meetings, the play-off had to be held in Los Angeles. The only question was where. The Coliseum Commission was itching to host it in the Sports Arena, but UCLA, still smarting over being treated as third-class citizens the previous fall, opted to go back to Santa Monica City College. Since UCLA’s radio agreement precluded the game from being televised anywhere but via closed circuit on campus, that meant most of its fans would be shut out. “No one likes money anymore,” Mal Florence complained in the Los Angeles Times. His colleague Paul Zimmerman argued that UCLA “owed it to the public to present the playoff with Stanford in the Sports Arena where all the thousands who wanted to could see.”

  The tickets sold out in an hour. With fans packing the tiny, hot gym, UCLA, despite using only six players the entire game, once again unleashed its full-court press for long stretches. The Bruins led by 9 points at halftime and by 14 early in the second half. Fred Slaughter snapped out of his funk and played terrific defense on Stanford center Tom Dose. With six minutes remaining and the Bruins holding a 45–40 lead, Wooden did two things he normally didn’t like to do: he called time-out, and he ordered his team to stall. Goodrich and Hazzard dribbled around for the next few minutes as Stanford tried vainly to come back by fouling. It was to no avail as UCLA held on for a 51–45 win, giving Wooden his eighth league title, and second in a row.

  It was as unexpected a championship as Wooden had ever experienced, but his elation was short-lived. When Wooden tried to bring out his favorite new toy, the full-court press, against Arizona State in the NCAA West Regional, the tactic backfired. Coach Ned Wulk’s Sun Devils also loved to get out and go—they had been ranked second in the country in scoring at 91 points per game—and they ran UCLA out of the gym. Right from the tip, ASU built an 11-point lead that swelled to 31 by halftime. Wooden emptied his bench in the second half as the Bruins sputtered to a 93–79 defeat. Given the setting, it was arguably the biggest drubbing one of Wooden’s teams had ever suffered. The following night, UCLA lost the regional third-place game by 1 point to San Francisco. The 1962–63 season had been a delirious ride, but it ended with a thud.

  * * *

  Even when Wooden’s machine sputtered that season, he could see it had potential. Sure, the guys could be headstrong and immature, but Wooden had to admit he liked their spirit. They were tough. They were competitive. And while they appeared to have little in common, once they hit the floor they shared a real love for playing.

  Whenever Wooden felt the need to relieve stress, he invariably turned to his other great passion: poetry. Not just reading it but writing it as well. Wooden’s poems were nothing special compared to the classics he studied, but they were clever and crisp, and he could recite many of them by rote. “He would have never said, ‘I’m a poet.’ He was a versifier, which is different,” Pete Blackman said. “He liked writing lines, and he liked taking simple ideas and conveying them. He was drawn to the symmetry. He enjoyed the intellectual exercise.”

  Blackman was every bit Wooden’s equal in this area. After graduating from UCLA the year before, Blackman enlisted in the navy and was stationed in Hawaii. During the fall of 1962, he wrote a letter to Wooden in verse, and Wooden returned the favor in January with a lengthy poem in which he laid out his analysis of his current team. He sent the letter shortly after the Bruins had lost those first two conference games at Washington. It reflected Wooden’s sour mood.

  The poem was ten verses long. At times it read like something from Dr. Seuss, such as when Wooden wrote of “boys who work and boys who don’t/Of boys who will and boys who won’t.” Wooden complained to Blackman about his team’s selfishness, overbearing parents, the players’ insubordination, and especially their academic laziness.

  In the final stanza, however, Wooden struck a hopeful chord, predicting that despite his misgivings, the team would eventually come together, and if everything fell into place, “We could be champs in sixty-four.”

  The work to fulfill that premonition would commence with the first practice the following fall. It would take place when it always did, October 15, one day after John Wooden’s fifty-third birthday.

  19

  Perfect

  Gail Goodrich figured, to hell with it. Toward the end of his sophomore season, he had spent long stretches on the bench, and it didn’t look like his junior year would be much different. He didn’t care much for his classes, either. The one thing that had gone well for Goodrich was baseball. So when school ended in the spring of 1963, he contempla
ted leaving UCLA to pursue a career in pro baseball.

  He didn’t bother sharing his thoughts with his basketball coach. “Wooden was up here,” Goodrich said, lifting his palm above his head. “I liked him and I respected him, but maybe I was intimidated. I always put him on a pedestal.” Gail’s mother was dead set against the idea of quitting school, but he was still inclined to leave. Until, that is, he started his summer job working at a lumberyard. At the crack of dawn each morning, Goodrich drove from his home in the San Fernando Valley to Glendale, where he spent long days hauling lumber. “I decided I don’t want to do this the rest of my life,” he said. He figured he would give college at least one more year.

  Fred Slaughter faced the opposite circumstance. He wanted to return to UCLA for his senior year, but his coach wasn’t sure he wanted him back. Following the loss to Arizona State, Wooden had bragged to reporters about a player in the program named Vaughn Hoffman, a six-foot-seven center who had redshirted that season because of a knee injury. Wooden predicted that Hoffman would “give Fred Slaughter all he wants to handle and more.” For Slaughter, this was not a good sign.

  Things came to a head a few weeks later when Wooden called Slaughter into his office. The coach wanted to talk about Edgar Lacey, a hotshot six-foot-six, 190-pound senior from Jefferson High School in Los Angeles. Lacey was a two-time all-city player who set a Los Angeles scoring record while averaging 32.2 points per game. Slaughter had met Lacey in passing a couple of months before, and the high school star had told him he expected to score in college at the same prolific rate. In reply, Slaughter warned Lacey that if his goal was to average 30 points per game, then UCLA was not the place for him.

  Somehow, Wooden had gotten wind of Slaughter’s advice. During their meeting in Wooden’s office, the coach accused Slaughter of trying to “de-recruit” Lacey. This was not Slaughter’s intent at all. He was simply telling Lacey the truth about what he could expect if he played for UCLA. Wooden told Slaughter in no uncertain terms that if ever tried to do that again with Lacey or any other player, then Wooden would take away Slaughter’s scholarship. “To this day I am just shocked and disappointed that that’s how he would treat me,” Slaughter said decades later. “He hears a rumor, brings me into his office, and tears into me. Think if he had taken my scholarship and I was gone my senior year. I wasn’t a troublemaker. It hurt my feelings. It’d be different if I didn’t tell the truth. That definitely kept me from being closer to Coach.”

  Then again, they had never been close to begin with. Slaughter and Wooden rarely talked about matters that did not directly relate to basketball. One of the few exceptions was a conversation Wooden initiated after Slaughter started dating a white girlfriend. Wooden warned Slaughter about the complications that could result from an interracial relationship. Slaughter didn’t think Wooden was racist, but he also didn’t appreciate the way the coach insinuated himself into his personal life. “He wasn’t telling me not to do it, but he was trying to protect me—and protect, therefore, his plan,” Slaughter said. “It surprised me. I thought, You stay out of my business. I’ll stay out of yours.”

  After ripping into Slaughter about Lacey that day in his office, the coach went on to tell Slaughter that he had showed a bad attitude for much of his junior season. “He did a lousy job in ’63. He was very unhappy that he wasn’t getting any credit. I told him if he didn’t change, I didn’t want him back for the team next year,” Wooden said. “I said, ‘You were whining and complaining all year long. Nobody likes you. Go up and down the hall here, any of the coaches and secretaries. You’ve changed completely. If you don’t change, next year I just would prefer you not come out. We’ll get along without you.’”

  A week later, Wooden picked up the Daily Bruin and read that Slaughter had been elected UCLA’s senior class president. He couldn’t help but chuckle. So much for his contention that nobody liked Fred Slaughter.

  * * *

  This is what a coach’s off-season was for: meeting with players, taking inventory, mapping out the road ahead. Every year after the last game, Wooden holed himself in his office and spent hour after hour poring over many years’ worth of his three-by-five cards, which now occupied several cabinets. In digging through past history, Wooden hoped to excavate a hint for why his teams kept coming up short in the NCAA tournament. Wooden made subtle changes every year, but this time an adjustment emerged that turned out to be hugely significant.

  The Big Idea evolved out of a series of conversations between Wooden and Jerry Norman. The two of them liked to get together almost immediately after each season ended, while the details were fresh in their minds. During the 1962–63 season, the Bruins had reversed their fortunes by using a full-court pressure defense. The tactic, however, had proved to be limited. In the first place, Wooden only sicced the press on opponents when the Bruins got behind. Also, even though the purpose of the press was to speed up the tempo, it failed too often because of bad design. A single skilled dribbler could simply weave through the defense, and then his team could run a delay offense once he got past half-court. Even when UCLA got steals out of the press, it didn’t usually result in fast-break baskets. Exhibit A was the play-off win over Stanford, when the Bruins forced 20 turnovers but scored just 51 points. “We fooled ourselves into thinking we forced a bunch of turnovers and won the game, therefore we did the right thing,” Norman said. “But we didn’t do the right thing. We didn’t have any size, and every team in our conference walked the ball up the floor.” Once the Bruins went up against a team like Arizona State, which had lots of savvy ball handlers, they were exposed.

  So Norman had an idea. Not only did he want Wooden to commit to using a full-court press for an entire game; he also wanted to use a different kind of press altogether. Instead of the man-to-man version they had been using, Norman suggested they go with a zone. Because teams can trap in a zone—that is, use two defenders to surround the player with the ball and prevent him from advancing—that meant the only way a team could get the ball over the half-court line was by passing, not dribbling. This, Norman surmised, would result in more steals and more fast breaks. And even if the Bruins didn’t get a lot of steals, a zone press would force the game to be played at a quicker pace. Norman had always been enamored of the way Pete Newell’s teams at Cal had controlled the tempo. Now he wanted Wooden to do the same thing—only instead of slowing the game down, he wanted Wooden to speed it up. “The idea wasn’t to steal the ball, remember. That would be an ancillary benefit,” Norman said. “It was to increase tempo.”

  After four years of working together, Wooden and Norman had forged a productive relationship, although it fell short of a genuine friendship. Wooden may have come across as insecure to Norman at times, but his decision to hire Norman spoke to his self-confidence. He knew Norman was strong-willed and would always speak his mind. Wooden wanted his assistant to challenge him, to give him balance. “Jerry was not reluctant to make suggestions, but he’d be disappointed if you didn’t go along with him,” Wooden said. “He was impatient. He expected too much too soon. And maybe I did, too, in my early years.”

  Wooden was familiar with the concept of a zone press. He had used it when he was coaching in high school and at Indiana State, but at UCLA he had never committed to it full bore, even when he had gifted athletes like Rafer Johnson who would have thrived in it. “Somehow I felt, maybe, that I was up another notch [at UCLA], and it wouldn’t work as well,” he said. “I’ve always second-guessed myself a little for that.”

  Not only did the 1963–64 UCLA team have the suitable personnel for a zone press; Norman argued it was the only way the Bruins could beat bigger teams. He suggested a 2-2-1 formation, but instead of putting the point guard on the front line, which was customary, Norman wanted to go with Slaughter up front alongside Goodrich or Freddie Goss. Slaughter was a track star, after all, and his size would be a formidable weapon against opposing point guards. Hazzard would then go on the second line, where he would be in better posit
ion either to steal the ball or to accept a pass from the player who did. With the floor sufficiently spread, Hazzard could work his magic in the open court. Finally, Erickson would occupy the all-important back position, where his grace and instincts would enable him to cover the court from sideline to sideline, and then pounce on an errant pass as if he were spiking a volleyball on the beach.

  Wooden was a tough audience, peppering Norman with questions and testing his commitment to the idea. “He could be a devil’s advocate,” Norman said. “He wanted to see how strong your convictions were.” Wooden eventually relented. Fine, he said, we’ll give it a try. Let’s see how well it works.

  * * *

  Goodrich was lucky he stuck around. Shortly before the start of practice, Goss walked into Wooden’s office and asked if he could sit out the season and resume playing the following year. It may have seemed like a generous sacrifice, but for Goss it was an easy decision. Unlike Hazzard and Goodrich, he did not come to UCLA harboring visions of a pro career. He did not want a repeat of the previous season, when there was a glut in the backcourt, and nobody was happy. Goss decided he should wait until after Hazzard graduated, and then it would be just him and Goodrich to man the two guard spots. “Wooden knew we had a problem,” Goss said. “Without me there, he wouldn’t have three guards rotating in and out. I knew the chemistry needed it.”

  Chemistry would indeed be vital. Just before the first game, Wooden asked the players to rank themselves from the best to the worst. He performed this exercise almost every year—it was a useful weapon against parents who believed their son should be playing more—but when the results came back, Wooden was surprised to see that the players had ranked themselves almost exactly the same. That had to be a good sign.