Wooden: A Coach's Life

by Seth Davis

  Wooden’s contrition was no doubt sincere, but it’s not hard to imagine a little gamesmanship at play. Just as he had done with referees at the old men’s gym, he had shown Phelps both of his faces. By writing the letter, he gave the Notre Dame coach the same implicit choice: Do you want to deal with this John Wooden, or do you want to deal with that one?

  * * *

  Having finally staked yet another place in history, Wooden could go about the business of tinkering with his machine. The 1972–73 Bruins were a wonder to behold. Never before had he had such a splendid combination of talent, depth, and cohesion.

  Keith Wilkes, for one, was starting to get his due, not just for being a gifted athlete but a classy, intelligent one as well. A more immature and petulant player would have struggled with having to play in Walton’s shadow, but Wilkes never let it bother him. “I’ve learned to play for my own satisfaction,” he said. “I don’t place much importance on being recognized.”

  These Bruins were also high performers in the classroom. Walton, Wilkes, and Lee were all academic All-Americans. “I believe this gives them a certain carryover that enables them to cope with praise off the court,” Wooden said. That also explained why Wooden was so flexible when it came to mixing older and younger players to develop his depth. Seasoned thoroughbreds like Larry Farmer and Larry Hollyfield provided steadiness alongside sophomore colts like Dave Meyers and Pete Trgovich. Tommy Curtis, also a sophomore, provided a spark off the bench, although he was starting to cut uncomfortably into Greg Lee’s playing time.

  And the redhead stood at the center—literally, figuratively, and metaphysically. Wooden’s genius lay in his ability to harness Bill Walton’s talents without squelching his free spirit. As usual, the coach struck a perfect balance. “There was total structure and complete freedom,” Walton said. “He never used the blackboard. We never had a play. There was no number one, no fist, no slash, no come-up-the-court-and-do-this. There was none of that. He never started practice with the words, ‘What do you guys want to do today?’ But he never held us back. That’s the beauty of basketball.”

  Indeed, the Bruins’ offense was so elementary that Bill Bertka, a former coach at Kent State who ran a nationwide scouting service, said that UCLA was among his least-requested reports. “That’s because everything they do is so predictable,” Bertka said.

  For all their differences, Wooden and Walton connected because they both loved the game for the right reasons. And they both really wanted to win. Walton was tickled when Wooden rode referees and opposing players. During one game, as Walton was sitting on the bench while an opposing big man made a basket, he cracked up as he heard Wooden yell, “You think you’re really good. Let’s see you do that on Walton!” Walton also claimed that during one pregame talk, Wooden told his players that the coach of the opposing team was “bad for the game of basketball” and that he wanted them to win so decisively that the coach would get fired. “John Wooden liked to win,” Walton said many years later. “He and Larry Bird were the biggest trash-talkers I ever knew.”

  Walton was so antsy before games, the last thing he needed was for his coach to fire him up. Wooden’s bare-bones pregame speeches were designed to appeal to Walton’s mind, not his gut. “He never talked about basketball. He always talked about life, big-picture stuff,” Walton said. “When the game came around, he would walk in the locker room and say, ‘Men, I’ve done my job. I’ve prepared you for this game. When the game starts, don’t look over at the bench and look for instructions. If you play to your potential, you will be pleased with the results.’” Knute Rockne, he wasn’t.

  Away from basketball, they had their conflicts, but once practices and games began, all that washed away. “He worked as hard as any player could possibly work. He was a great player, an unselfish player, and a good student. You never had to worry about his classwork,” Wooden said. “The only thing I ever had to worry about him was between practices because he was very active in the anti-establishment era. But as a basketball player, from the time he’d come on the basketball floor until he’d finish, Bill Walton was perfect.”

  * * *

  The folks who closely monitored UCLA’s streak figured that it was a foregone conclusion that it would at least reach 105 games. That would take the Bruins through the NCAA championship game in Walton’s senior year. The only question was whether Walton would stick around that long. Both the NBA and the ABA were positioning themselves to scoop him up if he decided to bolt at the end of his junior season. That included the ABA team in Walton’s hometown, the San Diego Conquistadors, whose owner, Leonard Bloom, announced that he would select Walton in the draft just in case.

  Meanwhile, the Bruins continued their march through the Pac-8. One of their toughest tests came on February 22 at Oregon. Digger Phelps’s former boss, Dick Harter, had come to Oregon precisely because he wanted to take on Wooden, and he imbued his teams with a pugnacious, Philadelphia-bred mentality. The Ducks dove on the floor so often that they were labeled the “Kamikaze Kids.”

  The game in McArthur Court was an ugly slugfest. After UCLA won, 72–61, Wooden castigated Harter’s methods. “I don’t remember being in a rougher game,” Wooden said. “They ran under us when we went to the basket three times in a row and it was only called once. That just isn’t basketball.” Harter agreed it was “an exceptionally rough game,” but he made no apologies. “The days when they yelled, ‘Hey, hey, UCLA, go by and score,’ are over,” he said. “Our style is aggressive and tough, but it’s not rough. I’m amazed that quality coaches can’t appreciate good defense.”

  Aside from a 51–45 home win over Stanford, during which they trailed at halftime by 7, the Bruins breezed through yet another perfect regular season, pushing their streak to seventy-one entering the NCAA tournament. The West Regional was played in Pauley Pavilion, where UCLA’s advantage went beyond the partisan crowds. Wooden had arranged for the nets to be woven extra tight. That way, after every basket, the ball would hang an extra second or two before hitting the floor, which would give the Bruins a couple of extra ticks to set up their full-court press.

  Not surprisingly, UCLA beat Arizona State and San Francisco by a combined 32 points to advance to the NCAA semifinals in St. Louis. From a competitive standpoint, the championship weekend didn’t augur much suspense. The greater intrigue surrounded Walton’s plans for the draft. Reports circulated that the Philadelphia 76ers were prepared to offer him a $4 million contract as soon as the tournament was over. (The actual figure was $2 million, still a princely sum.) The Conquistadors were preparing their counteroffer. Rumors were also swirling that the ABA was willing to put a team in the Los Angeles Sports Arena if Walton agreed to play and that the league would sweeten the pot by making Sam Gilbert a part owner. “I’d rather get cancer,” Gilbert said. “I want to be Bill’s friend, not his owner.”

  UCLA’s semifinal opponent was sixth-ranked Indiana. The Hoosiers were led by another aggressive young coach, a high-octane Ohio State grad named Bob Knight. He had coached for six years at Army before taking the Indiana job the year before. Knight’s temper was so volatile that the Indiana press dubbed him “Ragin’ Robby.” Knight liked to compare himself to George S. Patton, but Wooden often said he was not a big fan of Patton’s leadership style. He preferred Omar Bradley, a soft-spoken general who was known to say “please” when giving out orders.

  Indiana’s offense may have been the only one in the country that was less structured than UCLA’s. Instead of drawing specific plays on a blackboard, Knight put his players in position to read the defense and make decisions on the fly. He called this a “motion offense,” and he had formulated it with help from Pete Newell, whom Knight had cultivated as a close friend and mentor. Knight’s relationship with Newell also led him to become close friends with Henry Iba and Bob Boyd. In other words, he knew all about Johnny Wooden.

  Knight insisted that his team would not be intimidated by UCLA, but the Hoosiers were badly outclassed in the early going. U
CLA built a 40–22 lead at halftime and owned a 22-point advantage early in the second half, thanks partly to a technical foul on Knight. But then something happened that was rare for a John Wooden–coached team: the Bruins got blitzed. Indiana forced UCLA into a slew of turnovers, many of which ended up in the hands of Hoosiers center Steve Downing, who would finish with a game-high 26 points. By the time they were through, the Hoosiers had scored 17 unanswered points. With 5:51 to play, UCLA led by just 2 points, 57–55. “You bet I was worried,” Wooden said afterward.

  The game’s pivotal play came at the 7:57 mark, when Walton drove to the basket and collided with Downing. Both players had four fouls, so the referee’s decision would be decisive. The call was a block on Downing. He left the game with UCLA up by 5 points, and though the Hoosiers later cut the deficit to 2, they could not sustain the momentum with Downing on the bench. UCLA pulled away to win, 70–59. The hero for the Bruins turned out to be Tommy Curtis, who scored 22 points, many of them on long jumpers. After the game, Wooden said he believed his team would have won even if Walton had fouled out instead of Downing. Knight believed Wooden should have been more generous. His team did win, after all.

  Toward the end of the game, Walton told Morgan, who was sitting in his customary spot on the Bruins’ bench, that he felt worn out. When Morgan asked why, Walton said it was because his room at the team’s hotel was way too small. To Walton’s delight, Morgan offered to give Walton his room at the Chase Park Plaza, which had a king-sized bed.

  When Morgan left the hotel, however, the reception desk assumed he had checked out and assigned his room to someone else. At 2:00 a.m., Walton was awakened by a loud knock but ignored it. A few minutes later, the police were pounding on his door. Walton called down to the front desk to explain the mix-up. The hotel manager spoke to Morgan and then immediately hustled Walton to another room. It was a magnificent penthouse, with a huge bed, multiple rooms, and several baths. Big Red was livin’ large.

  Walton’s hotel switch ignited yet another firestorm of speculation that he was going to sign that contract with the 76ers after the final. Gilbert denied it, but only after a rash of stories had been published. Walton was furious. Wooden was so concerned by the external pressures that he abandoned his protocol and ended the next day’s practice with an extended dunk contest. “It was a calculated risk on my part, but I thought we had gotten a little taut,” he said. “We showed it when we lost our poise against Indiana.”

  Their opponent in the final was unranked Memphis State, which surprised the field by upsetting No. 9 Kansas State and No. 4 Providence in its previous two games. The Tigers’ coach, Gene Bartow, was similar to Wooden in presentation and style. He was a southerner, not a midwesterner, but he was a homespun churchgoer with a scholarly aspect. He eschewed profanity and alcohol, which is why he was given the nickname “Clean Gene.” Bartow also had a pretty good center himself in Larry Kenon, known as “Dr. K,” who Bartow thought might be able to defend Walton one-on-one.

  He was wrong. Memphis State came out in a straight-up man-to-man defense, with the six-foot-nine Kenon playing directly behind Walton. Big Red shredded him. With Greg Lee floating pinpoint lobs, Walton made every shot imaginable up, over, under, and around the helpless Kenon. Walton missed a short bank shot early in the first half, but every other shot he tried was true. When UCLA built an 11-point lead, Bartow switched to a zone, but he still played Kenon behind Walton with precious little help.

  Though he shined on offense, Walton was out of sorts on defense. Kenon made a lot of buckets himself and forced Walton into foul trouble. With the game tied 39–39 at halftime, Bartow fumed as Morgan gave the referees an earful on the way to the locker room.

  Early in the second half, Walton had to go to the bench after committing his fourth foul, which allowed Memphis State to briefly take the lead. When Walton returned, he immediately helped the Bruins turn a 45–45 tie into a 57–47 lead with twelve minutes to go. From there, as Walton continued to drop in shots from in close, UCLA pulled away. With under three minutes to play, Walton broke Gail Goodrich’s NCAA championship game total by scoring his 44th point. A few seconds later, he injured his ankle and left the game to a huge ovation.

  UCLA won, 87–66. The game was Larry Farmer’s last at UCLA, ending his college career with an incredible 89–1 record, but the only thing people wanted to talk about afterward was Walton. He had made an astounding twenty-one of his twenty-two shots, giving him by far the highest field goal percentage in the history of the NCAA championship game. “He’s super, the best collegiate player I’ve ever seen,” Bartow said. “We played him wrong. We tried three or four things but I guess we didn’t try the right one.”

  Now that the season was over, the national press savored the chance finally to hear directly from the best player in college basketball. Once again, they were disappointed. When several dozen sportswriters entered UCLA’s postgame locker room, Walton was already showered, dressed, and itching to leave. “I’m in a hurry to go see some friends. Would you please excuse me?” he said. When someone tried to ask him about the game, Walton snapped, “I don’t want to talk about it, man.”

  Once again, Wooden was left to explain his center’s enigmatic behavior. “I’m very surprised he did that, but he was very upset over something that was written about him this week,” Wooden said. Though he was usually reluctant to compare his teams, he anointed this as the finest he had ever coached. “Yes, I’d have to say this one is. I don’t think I’ve ever had a greater one,” he said. “Except for that one game [against Indiana], this is a team that never lost its poise. What we did was a team accomplishment, built around the tremendous ability of Bill Walton.”

  Walton’s latest Garbo act only intensified the questions about his future plans. “If he has been offered what he has reportedly been offered, with no gimmicks, and he does return to school, I’d take him down to our psychiatric ward,” Wooden said. As for Wooden’s future, he acknowledged that it had been “a trying season for me, first because of the pressure of the long winning streak, then some books about me have caused me some problems.” He said he planned to return, but his wife was not so sure. “I hope this will be his last season,” Nell said, “and I intend to try to do all I can to make it his last.”

  * * *

  Walton never wavered on his intent to come back to UCLA for his senior season. Still, Sam Gilbert convinced him that he at least owed the 76ers the courtesy of a meeting. So after the game, the two of them returned to Walton’s palatial penthouse at the Chase Park Plaza, where they received the pitch from team owner Irving Kosloff, general manager Don DeJardin, and coach Kevin Loughery. Walton listened politely for an hour. Then he told them no thanks.

  “I don’t need any reasons for coming back,” he said later. “I’m here and that’s it. Money has never been a factor. I wish people would understand that.”

  After the 76ers’ brass left, Walton called his teammates and invited them over to celebrate. They were college kids, national champs, happy hippies reveling in the last throes of the Age of Aquarius. Now they had their very own penthouse. The UCLA Bruins cut loose something awful that night. Walton would one day joke that the scene should have been labeled “Fear and Loathing in St. Louis.”

  29

  Intolerable

  The backlash was in full swing.

  To the national press, the message delivered in St. Louis was loud and clear: we’re UCLA, and you’re not. They blamed John Wooden as much as Bill Walton for the redhead’s rudeness. “Far more disturbing than Walton’s behavior is that of the UCLA athletic officials,” wrote William Gildea in the Washington Post. “At the major tournaments over the years, UCLA has treated the interview of an athlete—even after a game—like the security guards at the CIA plant would an approaching stranger. What does UCLA have to hide?”

  Gildea also tweaked Wooden for plugging his book during the televised postgame interview following the Memphis State win. “The Wooden sales effort—and gall�
��reached a rare level,” Gildea wrote. Then there was this censure from a columnist at the San Bernardino Sun: “UCLA’s Bruins, who beat everybody, won’t talk to just anybody.… Basketball writers usually get an inquisitive crack at just one handpicked Bruin after each game. Coach John Wooden runs an off-limits locker room. Center Bill Walton is practically unapproachable.”

  Frank Dolson suggested in the Philadelphia Inquirer that UCLA’s win streak had become “a cancer” and asked: “Isn’t there something wrong with a coach who wins his seventh consecutive national championship, his 75th straight game, and then acts as petty, as petulant, as insecure as Wooden acted Monday night?” An editorial in Long Island Newsday argued that Wooden was “guilty of self-serving arrogance.” Ken Denlinger added in the Washington Post that Wooden “often assumes the pompous air of his days as an English teacher at South Bend Central High.” The Sunday News asserted that Wooden’s closed-door policy was a dereliction of his duties as a teacher: “When any college coach abdicates this responsibility, with the result that one of his star players cannot cope with the world outside, then the coach has not developed a star, he has used him.”

  Those were just the complaints about Walton’s silent treatment. The broader indictment contended that UCLA’s hegemony was hurting college basketball. Of all the criticisms directed Wooden’s way over the years, this was the most misguided. The NCAA tournament had never been more popular, more watched, and more valuable. UCLA wasn’t the biggest reason for that. It was the only reason. The Bruins’ dominance had compelled NBC to convince the NCAA to move the 1973 NCAA final to Monday night. ABC had enjoyed huge success with Monday Night Football the previous few years, and NBC wanted the game played on the biggest viewing night of the week. The previous year’s final between UCLA and Florida State had generated a rating of 16, meaning it was watched in approximately ten million homes by thirty million people. The highest rating for an NBA game to that point was 15.5, earned by the Los Angeles Lakers and New York Knicks in their play-off final the previous May. UCLA was the only school in America that could garner consistent national television exposure for regular season games. Everyone in the sport benefited from its popularity.