Wooden: A Coach's Life

by Seth Davis

  The old UCLA would have put the game out of reach, but there was no blitz in sight. In fact, the script was being flipped. Now it was the Bruins who were the bigger, slower team, while Drake was the smaller, speedier, more cohesive unit. Sweek sat and watched his senior season teeter on the brink, yet Wooden would not put him back in. The only thing that kept the Bruins in front was John Vallely, the long-range marksman who tossed in a career-high 29 points. But Vallely fouled out with four minutes left, so Wooden had no choice but to send in Sweek.

  When the coach summoned Sweek to the scorer’s table, Sweek removed his warm-up shirt slowly and sauntered over with a look of disgust on his face. He wanted Wooden to know just how pissed he was. As it turned out, Wooden didn’t think he needed any lessons, either. “Sit down,” he barked.

  Sweek did not sit down. He wheeled around, strutted past everyone on the bench, and headed straight for the locker room. He was through with basketball, through with UCLA, and most all, through with John Wooden. “I thought for a second, ‘You know, it’s Easter vacation. All my friends are going to Mexico. I’m just going to get in the shower, get my stuff, and hitchhike there. I’m done,’” Sweek said. Wooden put Terry Schofield into the game instead. “I remember thinking, that’s weird. Is Bill hurt or something?” Heitz said.

  At first, Sweek was unable to open the door to the locker room. It took him several minutes to find someone to unlock it for him. Back on the court, UCLA appeared to stay in control until Drake exploded for 6 quick points in the final twenty seconds, but in the end, the Bulldogs came up just short and lost, 85–82. The close call put the Bruins one win away from an unprecedented third straight NCAA title. Their final opponent would be Wooden’s alma mater, Purdue, which had beaten North Carolina by 27 points in the other semifinal. Wooden, however, was not in a celebratory mood. All the pressure, all the conflict, all the mutinous behavior from his senior class had finally pushed him over the edge.

  Wooden strode quickly off the court. He was the first member of the team to reach the locker room. There, he found Sweek naked in the shower, and he lit into his fifth-year senior something awful. “It was madder than I had ever seen him. The veins in his head were bulging,” Sweek said. When the rest of the team got there, Cunningham and Crum had to restrain Wooden from tackling Sweek in the shower. The players stood with their eyes wide and mouths agape. If they weren’t in such shock, they might have burst into hysterics. “It was tragic and hilarious at the time. Mostly hilarious,” Heitz said. “Wooden is yelling at Bill like he wants to fight him. Sweek is going, ‘You wanna come fight, old man? You’ve been messing with my mind for five years!’ And the whole team is dying laughing.”

  Sweek gave as good as he got. “You’re right, Coach, and I’m wrong,” he said sarcastically. “In fact, you’re always right. Edgar Lacey quit, but you were right, and he was wrong. Don Saffer quit, but you were right, and he was wrong. All these problems, and you’re just never wrong. Did you ever think the problem was you?”

  Finally, the assistants pried Wooden away. Since Wooden did not permit reporters in his locker room, nobody in the press got wind of what had happened. Sweek rode with the team back to the hotel, but he was sure he had played his last game for UCLA. Given what he did, he had to admit that he deserved that fate.

  When he woke up Friday morning, Sweek had not yet been booted from the squad. So he went to breakfast. As the meal was winding down, Wooden said he wanted to speak to the team. Instead of coming down on Sweek again, Wooden told the team that he had thought about what Sweek had said and conceded his argument had some merit. He went on to tell the players how proud he was of them and how much he enjoyed coaching them. He told them they were a great team. “I remember talking to Kenny about it later, and we were both just stunned that Wooden would be so honest about how he cared for the team,” Marcucci said. “Other than his wife and kids, he was not open to talking about his feelings that way. He didn’t want to burden other people. It made a real impression on everybody.”

  At the end of his brief talk, Wooden shook hands with Sweek in front of the team. He never apologized—neither did Sweek, for that matter—but the incident had been put behind them. Sweek was still on the team for the championship game. “It surprised me, because I think most coaches would have thrown me off the team,” Sweek said. “We were under all this pressure—I know he felt the pressure—but despite all that, and despite what I had done, the fact that he would try to bring us together and mend this thing and forgive me, I thought was impressive. He forgave me and wanted me to be there and play in the final game.”

  Maybe it was the catharsis of that confrontation. Maybe it was the presence of Alcindor’s father, Big Al, playing first trombone in the UCLA band. Maybe it was the fact that there was only one game left. Or maybe it was simply because they were a great team that had gotten a lousy game out of its system. Whatever the reason, UCLA took the floor with real purpose on Saturday night. Purdue never had a chance. Wooden sicced his best defender, Heitz, on Rick Mount, and he held the Boilermakers star scoreless for more than eighteen consecutive minutes during the first half. During one stretch, Heitz forced Mount to miss fourteen consecutive shots. Wooden also scuttled his full-court press for the first time in seven years; the Drake game had exposed the fact that he did not have the personnel to use it.

  As the game wound down, the only suspense was whether Alcindor would go through with his plan to dunk the ball in one last gesture of protest against the basketball rules committee. Wooden removed him with just under two minutes to play, before he had the chance. The final score was UCLA 92, Purdue 72. The only disappointment for Alcindor was that Lucius Allen wasn’t there to share the glory with him. “Lucius should be here. I bet he doesn’t feel right,” he said.

  It was an emphatic valedictory for the young giant. He finished with 37 points and 20 rebounds as he completed his college career with an 88–2 record, with both losses coming by a single basket. In becoming the first player to be named the NCAA tournament’s Most Oustanding Player three times, Alcindor established himself as arguably the greatest player in the history of college basketball. Wooden did the same as a coach. He was now the first coach to win five NCAA titles as well as the only one to capture three in a row.

  After all they had been through, all the pranks and the fights and the parties and the complaints about double standards, the seniors were only just beginning to realize that the important things they learned from Wooden had little to do with basketball. “He came from a conservative environment, yet he was able to understand the feelings of people who were African Americans or downtrodden or weak. He was able to be flexible enough to change his thinking during the craziness of the sixties,” Sweek said. “He was such a morally upright person. He could hear and he would listen. Despite his background, he was willing to change. He really was a lifelong learner.”

  For all that Alcindor had accomplished between the lines, his two most vivid memories from his senior season took place on a bus and over breakfast. He never felt particularly close to Wooden, but he understood that Wooden was a major reason why he was leaving Westwood a better man. “He was the ultimate,” Alcindor said years later, well after he became widely known as Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. “He was a teacher above all else. He challenged us without taking away our spirit. He taught me how to instill confidence in others. He made me understand that everything is a learning game. It’s all learning about yourself and learning how to be successful.”

  The teacher learned a great deal from his students as well. It had been a trying three years, but the Alcindor era was officially over. Maybe now life could return to normal. Maybe now Wooden could find a better balance. “I look forward to again coaching to try to win,” he said, “rather than trying to avoid being defeated.”

  25

  The Last Banquet

  In October 1969, John and Nell spent a glorious weekend with their children in Martinsville, Indiana. Thousands of people welcomed their native so
n to the annual Morgan County Fall Foliage Festival, where the India Rubber Man served as grand marshal. A street was renamed in Wooden’s honor. Even though he had spent more than two decades living two thousand miles from where he grew up, Wooden was still a Hoosier at heart. As one national sportswriter had recently put it, “He goes better with sycamores than palm trees.”

  His midwestern attitudes were making him feel especially old-fashioned as he watched the game he loved turn into a big business. In the weeks that followed the 1969 NCAA tournament, Wooden watched with disdain as Alcindor became the subject of an unprecedented bidding war between the NBA and its upstart rival, the American Basketball Association. Alcindor had tapped Sam Gilbert to represent him in the negotiations, and Papa Sam told Alcindor he would not charge for his services. The Milwaukee Bucks had won a coin flip to earn the number one pick in the NBA draft, but first they had to ward off ABA commissioner George Mikan, who told Gilbert that Alcindor could choose his team, which would presumably be the New York Nets. Alcindor eventually signed with the Bucks for $1.4 million per year. “I’m glad to see Lewis get all he can get,” Wooden said, “but the sort of money being offered to athletes these days is completely out of line.”

  Given Wooden’s paltry salary at UCLA, it was only a matter of time before the pros came calling for him, too. After Lakers coach Butch van Breda Kolff resigned following the 1969 play-offs, the team’s owner, Jack Kent Cooke, offered to pay Wooden several times what he was currently making to coach the Lakers. Wooden said he wanted to discuss it with Nell and his children. “I told them I would have had to travel so much more and be away from home,” Wooden said. “I said, ‘You can have a lot more things that I just simply can’t afford now.’ But they said, ‘No, Dad, you wouldn’t be happy with that.’” According to Wooden, Cooke was furious. “I don’t think I would have enjoyed working for Jack Kent Cooke,” Wooden said years later.

  Wooden’s off-season was further upended in October, when Alcindor published a lengthy diary in Sports Illustrated under his byline that recounted in vivid detail the unhappiness he had felt in college. The second installment was headlined “UCLA Was a Mistake.” Wooden admitted he was hurt by the series. “I’m very, very sorry to find out that he seemed to be as unhappy as he has indicated,” Wooden said. “I honestly believe that he would have been ten times more miserable at many other places he could have gone.”

  The articles only deepened Wooden’s relief about beginning a new era at UCLA, post-Alcindor. “I am looking forward to this season more than I have the seasons of the last three or four years,” he said before the first practice. “We are not on the spot like we were before. The problems are fewer. I don’t have to play nursemaid to so many hurt feelings.”

  The roster lacked a once-in-a-generation talent, but that fit better with Wooden’s egalitarian ethos. He was eager to reinstate his full-court pressure and up-tempo attack. He would go back to the high-post offense that he had used in all but three years as a head coach. And while the roster had plenty of talent, there was a significant drop-off between the top seven and the rest of the group. Just the way Wooden liked it.

  Naturally, much of the early attention fell on Alcindor’s replacement at center, Steve Patterson. A six-foot-nine junior, Patterson had sterling credentials as a former prep All-American at Santa Maria High School. As a sophomore, however, he had mostly been Alcindor’s understudy, as well as his foil in practice. “Lew really destroyed my confidence,” Patterson said. He couldn’t match Alcindor’s size, but he was a good passer and a much better long-range shooter. That made him an ideal center for the high-post offense.

  Indeed, this was shaping up to be one of Wooden’s best-shooting teams in years. Senior guard John Vallely, whose 29 points against Drake had allowed the Bruins to avert disaster in the NCAA semifinals the year before, was as good a shooter as there was in the conference. And there were plenty of possibilities to play alongside him, including Andy Hill, a six-foot-one sophomore guard who had shared the freshman team’s MVP award, six-foot-three junior Terry Schofield, and six-foot-three junior Kenny Booker. All of them, however, would quickly be outclassed by Henry Bibby, a six-foot-one sophomore dynamo from Franklinton, North Carolina. Bibby was the latest to join the conga line of out-of-state black players who came to UCLA because of its prestigious basketball program and progressive racial tradition. Bibby was so good in high school that Wooden sent Jay Carty to scout him. Carty sat next to Bibby’s parents during the game, visited their home afterward, and then got chased out of town by white vigilantes who were enforcing a local rule forbidding whites to stay in black neighborhoods late at night.

  Bibby had shown great promise as a freshman, averaging 26.8 points per game. He also fit nicely into Wooden’s austere culture. “I wasn’t a Goody Two-shoes or anything, but I respected him a lot and tried not to go against what he said. I was too scared,” Bibby said. Nor was Bibby put off by Wooden’s aloofness. “I was seventeen, eighteen years old. I didn’t want to get to know him,” Bibby said. “It’s not like I was looking forward to going over to a white guy’s house. I just came out of segregation in North Carolina.”

  Wooden went into practice believing that the competition for playing time in the backcourt alongside Vallely would be wide open, but it was evident right away that Bibby was ahead of the pack. “I don’t believe I’ve ever had a player with more range,” Wooden said. “And Henry not only works hard; he accepts criticism readily.”

  And yet everyone knew that the heart of this 1969–70 team would be the junior forwards, Sidney Wicks and Curtis Rowe. On the surface, they appeared similar. They were cocky, flamboyant black kids from Los Angeles, and the best of friends. Underneath, however, there were subtle differences. Rowe grew up in all-black Compton, where he broke Edgar Lacey’s city scoring record in high school, and he emerged from that environment with a few rough edges. During one game, he got so angry with his defender that he popped him in the mouth with an elbow and knocked a tooth to the floor. As the kid grabbed his face in anguish, Rowe leaned down, picked up the tooth, and handed it back to him.

  Wicks, on the other hand, hailed from Santa Monica, a much more well off and diverse community by the Pacific. Wicks could put on a glare when it suited him, but most of the time he was easygoing and fun-loving. He delighted his teammates with his spot-on imitation of the Ratso Rizzo character from the movie Midnight Cowboy or his ability to recite lengthy passages from Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Wicks was also a flashy dresser. He loved nothing more than to arrive at Pauley while the freshman game was still going on and strut with Rowe across the court like peacocks, basking in the adoring cheers of the UCLA faithful.

  Physically, Wicks had the makings of an All-American. He was a chiseled six-foot-eight, 230 pounds, with stunning quickness and leaping ability—“a real specimen,” as Jim Nielsen put it. Problem was, Wicks had gotten by for so long on ability that he never had to learn to play. He was the quintessential wild child. When Wicks was a sophomore, Wooden tried to tame Wicks by planting him on the bench. Without Alcindor on the team, that was no longer an option.

  Wicks and Rowe had waited their turn. Now that it had come, they wanted everyone to know it. They showed up for the freshman-varsity game sporting thick Afros and long muttonchop sideburns. Wooden had let Alcindor and Warren get away with that, so they assumed he would do the same for them. They were wrong. Wooden told Wicks and Rowe that if they didn’t shave, they would not play. At first they weren’t sure he was serious, but Wooden wouldn’t budge. So they went to Ducky Drake’s training room and cleaned up.

  After the game was over, Wicks and Rowe apologized to Wooden. Wooden told the boys to forget it and promised they would have a fine season. Everyone was on the same page, for a little while anyway.

  * * *

  Just as the 1969–70 season was getting under way, UCLA was becoming a center of conflict in the civil rights movement. At the urging of California governor Ronald Reagan, the state’s Board of Re
gents had fired Angela Davis, a visiting UCLA philosophy professor. Davis was an outspoken feminist, a Black Panther, and an avowed member of the Communist Party USA. Her firing set off a wave of student protests, as well as criticism from civil rights leaders that she had been fired on the basis of her race, not her beliefs. Davis was reinstated, but she continued to spout her incendiary rhetoric on campus and around the city throughout the school year.

  The Davis contretemps was just one more disruption that Wooden had to shut out of his program. “It was almost schizophrenic going from campus life to this cloistered church of UCLA basketball,” Andy Hill said. “There were no people in the stands. All you heard was Coach’s whistle, squeaking sneakers, guys talking on defense, the net swishing, dead silence. That was a symphony orchestra compared to what was going on right outside the door.”

  The players understood the need for Wooden to build a cocoon—they wanted to win just as badly as he did—but unlike him they could not shut out the world. The Vietnam War was not some faraway abstraction for them. Some of their friends from high school had gone to Vietnam and had been killed or badly wounded. This issue was much more important to them than basketball.

  As it turned out, the first day of practice in the fall of 1969 coincided with a national campus moratorium that had been called to protest the war. A few days beforehand, Hill and his close friend, junior forward John Ecker, went to Wooden and asked him to cancel the first practice as an expression of solidarity. Wooden wasn’t having it. “You don’t have to come to practice,” he told them. “In fact, you don’t ever have to come to practice. But there is no way that I am going to cancel it.”