Wooden: A Coach's Life

by Seth Davis

  For Jeff Weiss, it was the experience of a lifetime. For John Wooden, it was another day in the life. He was so gentlemanly, so avuncular, that people whom he had never met felt as if they knew him. Once, when Wooden was sitting in his usual seat at a UCLA game, his granddaughter Cathleen got up to go to the bathroom. She returned to see a man sitting in her seat and talking to Wooden, so she shifted one seat down. Wooden chatted with the man for the rest of the game. Afterward, Cathleen asked Wooden who the man was. He said he had no idea.

  Wooden prided himself on never turning down a request for an autograph. “I wouldn’t say he loved it,” Erickson said. “He just didn’t want to disappoint anyone.” That was especially problematic at UCLA games, where Wooden signed and posed for pictures during time-outs and halftimes. “I won’t say that I’m not flattered by things of that sort, but I’m not comfortable with it,” Wooden said. Nan was his primary protector, just as her mother had been. If they were eating somewhere and a stranger approached by saying, “I’m sorry to bother you,” Nan, like Nell, would interject with a sharp, “Then don’t.” When Nan learned that Erickson was bringing Wooden mail by the cartload so he could sign and return each item personally, she put a stop to it. “You can’t believe all the people who want to make money off his name,” she said. “I get so mad at all the mail he gets. He gets big boxes of basketballs people expect him to sign. I can’t believe people are that stupid.”

  The network of UCLA employees that supported Wooden stretched well beyond the former players. There was Marc Dellins, the sports information director who once interviewed Wooden alone in his hotel room during the 1975 Final Four, back when Dellins was a student reporter at the Daily Bruin. One day in 2009, Dellins called Wooden because he had heard a rumor that Wooden had died. “Not yet, but I’m well on my way,” Wooden said. Dellins called back one more time just to make sure.

  Dellins’s longtime assistant, Bill Bennett, was the primary point of contact for Wooden in the UCLA athletics office, the designated keeper of the flame. Bennett was a gentle soul who was renowned for wearing canvas high-tops with his suits. He and Wooden shared the same birthday. Wooden was smitten with Bennett’s wife, Joanne.

  Then there was Tony Spino, the mercurial, emotional, opinionated, hardheaded athletics trainer who became as devoted to the old man as any of his blood kin. Spino first got to know Wooden when he was a trainer for the UCLA freshman teams in the 1970s. After Wooden retired, Spino worked briefly for the NBA’s Milwaukee Bucks before returning to Westwood in 1981. For years, Spino would drive to Wooden’s condo a few mornings a week to massage him and help him exercise before taking him to breakfast. Wooden once compared Spino to Sam Gilbert because “you can’t tell him anything. He’s going to do what he wants to do.” The two of them had a wonderful rapport. “Tony’s a New York Italian. They enjoyed going back and forth at each other,” Doug Erickson said. “After being together so long, Tony was not afraid to tell him what he needed to do.”

  One day in February 2008, Spino opened Wooden’s front door and found the coach facedown on the hallway floor, shivering from shock. He had fallen at around 10:00 p.m. the night before and had broken his left wrist and collarbone. Because no one was staying with him that night, and because he was too stubborn to wear a wireless device that could be activated in just such an emergency, Wooden had no choice but to lie on the floor all night long and wait for Spino to show up. Asked later how he spent those eight hours, Wooden replied, “Sometimes I’m crying. Sometimes I’m laughing.”

  Spino scooped Wooden into his arms and carried him to bed. He called for an ambulance, wrapped Wooden in a blanket, and hugged him in an effort to warm him up. After Wooden finished recuperating, his family and close friends devised a schedule so that someone would be sleeping in the condominium every night. Wooden fought them at first, but for once, he had to let his stubbornness give way.

  After that incident, UCLA athletic director Dan Guerrero assigned Spino to be Wooden’s full-time caretaker. Spino spent more time with the coach than with his own wife and children. He put a baby monitor beside Wooden’s bed, talked to Wooden as he fell asleep, and then slept in a separate bedroom.

  Ironically, with all of these men bidding for Wooden’s time, the person with whom Wooden became closest was a female gymnastics coach. Her name was Valorie Kondos Field, a 1987 UCLA graduate and former ballet dancer who took over UCLA’s gymnastics program in 1991. Valorie grew curious about Wooden after marrying Bob Field, an associate athletic director who had gotten to know Wooden while Bob was a UCLA assistant football coach. She suggested that they invite Wooden over for dinner, but Bob didn’t want to because he feared too many people were already bugging him. “The worst he can do is say no,” she said. Wooden accepted the invitation, and from that day forward, he dined at the Fields’ house several times a year.

  Bob and Valorie regularly drove Wooden and Nan to UCLA football games. If they had trouble finding a parking space, Valorie would drive up to a security guard, tell Wooden to sit up straight and smile, and roll down the window so the guard could see who her passenger was. “I could have parked on the field if I wanted to,” she said. Valorie frequently brought her gymnasts to visit Wooden at his condo. “He just loved being with all those pretty young girls. They would sit around him and ask questions and he would tell stories,” Keith Erickson said. “Valorie was his favorite person on the entire campus.”

  Wooden, in turn, became a regular at UCLA gymnastics meets. He rarely missed a competition, although he did come close one time when Nan and Kenny Washington showed up ten minutes late to pick him up. He was ninety-five years old, but he was tired of waiting. So he drove himself. Nan was so furious that when she and Washington arrived, she walked right by her dad in a huff and sat on the other side of the bleachers. When it was over, she huddled up with the Fields to figure out how Wooden was getting back. “Never mind,” he told them. “I got myself here, I can get myself home.”

  Valorie and Wooden became so close that she was occasionally invited to take part in forums alongside the likes of Keith Erickson, Rafer Johnson, and Andy Hill. She loved hearing stories about how tough and cold he used to be. “I knew him as the sweet, kind, older man with the twinkling eyes. I didn’t know him as a feisty coach,” she said. “Mike Warren said to me, ‘You’ve experienced a side of him we rarely got to see.’”

  Their more poignant interactions occurred when they were alone. On a day when the UCLA football team was playing on the road, Valorie invited herself over to watch the game with Wooden at his place. During halftime, he looked at her and said, “You know, Nellie and I made love every day.” Valorie said, “I stopped and thought, am I gonna get the sex talk from Coach Wooden?” Wooden explained that not a day went by when he and Nell didn’t kiss, or hold hands, or say they loved each other. “That was his definition of making love,” Valorie said. “I told him I understand.” Later, Wooden fixed her a sandwich and handed her a bottle of Ensure. “Drink this,” he said. “They tell me it’s good for me.”

  He had stayed alive and sharp for so long, it appeared he was defying science. Eventually, alas, he started losing the battle. In July 2009, the Sporting News assembled an expert panel to vote on the top fifty coaches in the history of American sports. Wooden finished first, ahead of Vince Lombardi, Bear Bryant, Phil Jackson, and Don Shula. The magazine honored Wooden with a luncheon at one of his favorite restaurants in Sherman Oaks. He was ninety-eight years old, and as he addressed the room, the listeners strained to hear him, and at one point, they sat through an extended, uncomfortable silence while he tried to gather his thoughts. After Wooden followed that by stumbling through a one-on-one interview with ESPN, Nan made clear that there were to be no more public appearances. “Most of the time, he’s not who he was,” Nan said. “As a family, we want people to remember him how he has always been.”

  * * *

  Andy Hill wanted to throw Wooden a ninety-ninth birthday party at his house that October, but Nan said
it would be too much for him. “Wouldn’t it be great,” Hill told her, “if he blew out the candles in front of everyone and just dropped dead right into the cake. Wouldn’t that be amazing?” Nan did not think it would be amazing. So instead, Wooden spent his birthday having dinner with his family at a local restaurant. In early 2010, Wooden went to Pauley Pavilion to help the school celebrate the fortieth anniversary of the 1970 championship team, though he was unable to leave his seat during the halftime ceremony. After the game, the school held a party where each member of the team was invited to speak—including Bill Seibert, who had single-handedly killed the postseason banquet. “I didn’t think I’d ever get to speak at this place again,” Seibert cracked when he came to the microphone. The room broke up.

  Over the next few months, Wooden continued to have periodic hospitalizations. A do-not-resuscitate order was posted on the refrigerator. “I thought the guy was going to die a dozen times,” Hill said. “He was just so damn tough.” As Wooden’s friends and family steeled themselves for what they all knew was coming, UCLA did the same. Dan Guerrero, who had been hired as athletic director in 2002, asked Bob Field to talk to Wooden about the public memorial the school would hold after he died. It was a delicate conversation, but Field picked his moment one night when he was staying over at the condo. “Coach, there’s going to be a time where you’re going to be with your Nellie,” he said. “I know there’s going to be a private family service, but there will also be a memorial service at UCLA, and I’d like to talk to you about what you’d like that to be.” At first, Wooden demurred that he didn’t need a public memorial. Field responded that he might not need it, but his friends and former players would want to come together and celebrate his life. “He looked at me for about fifteen seconds and got misty-eyed,” Field said. “Then he said, okay, let’s talk about it.”

  The parade of visitors continued throughout the spring. Johnny Green came by with his granddaughter and a camcorder. Dick Enberg sat with some friends in Wooden’s living room. (As he got up to leave, Wooden pointed to his own forehead, and Enberg planted a soft kiss on that spot.) In April, Pete Blackman, Jamaal Wilkes, and Mike Warren visited the condo together. “Wooden had all three of us to poke fun at. He was very much himself,” Blackman said. “He remembered all kinds of things that each one of us had done. He was sharp and completely together, but you could see the handwriting. The mind was as clear as could be, but his body was gradually checking out.”

  Marques Johnson stopped in the Friday before Mother’s Day. Wooden slept for an hour, and when he woke up, Johnson mentioned that he was going to conduct a coaching clinic out of the country. Suddenly, Wooden came to life, rattling off details about his favorite drills. Johnson asked him to pause so he could get a pen and paper.

  Larry Farmer continued to call Wooden several times a week, even though he usually ended up just talking to Spino. One day in May, Spino told Wooden who was calling, and the coach came to the phone. “He had just gotten back from a doctor’s appointment, and his speech was a little bit muffled,” Farmer said. “Before I could ask him how he was doing, he said to me, ‘How’s your family?’ I said, ‘Coach, they’re fine, but I’m calling to find out about you.’ He said something to the effect that he was struggling but doing well for a man his age. When Tony came back on the phone, he said Coach had not been that clear in his speech for quite some time.”

  Doug Erickson and Bill Bennett visited every few weeks. Jim Harrick, who had lost his wife in 2009, tried to do the same. “He was in pretty good shape until about the last three or four months,” Harrick said. “Then he got to a point where he didn’t want anybody to see him in that condition.” Gary Cunningham also brought his wife that May. “I saw an incredible decline,” he said. “He was in his recliner. When my wife would talk, he just kept looking at me. I didn’t sense an alertness, honestly, and I couldn’t understand most of the things he said.”

  As Wooden continued to deteriorate, there was some hope that he would live long enough to see two landmarks—his one hundredth birthday on October 14, 2010, and the birth of his first great-great-grandchild that fall. Alas, his body could not hold up. He was so uncomfortable at home that his doctors suggested that his family check him back into UCLA’s medical center the last week of May. The official reason for his admission was dehydration. Nan and Jim made clear that they did not want anyone taking extreme measures to prolong their father’s life.

  Wooden was heavily medicated while lying in his hospital bed, but his mind remained lucid, defying science to the end. His face was uncharacteristically shaggy when Ben Howland, the current UCLA basketball coach, came to see him. Looking up at Howland from his bed, Wooden caressed his whiskers and said weakly, “I feel like Bill Walton.”

  On Wednesday, June 2, news broke of Wooden’s condition. A group of UCLA students gathered to hold a vigil outside the hospital. Wooden’s favorite local pastor, Dudley Rutherford, was a constant presence in his room. At one point, Rutherford asked Wooden if he loved the Lord. “I’m working on it,” Wooden replied. Valorie Kondos Field was also there a lot. During one of the rare moments when Wooden was awake, she asked if there was anything she could do for him. “Move my leg,” he said. She moved it twice, and both times he winced in agony.

  “I’m hurting you,” Kondos Field complained.

  “I told you to move my leg,” Wooden replied. “I never said it wouldn’t hurt.”

  When Gary Cunningham learned of Wooden’s condition, he cut short a vacation and visited the hospital room on the evening of June 3. “We got there about six o’clock. He was drifting in and out of consciousness,” Cunningham said. “I went up to him and said, ‘Coach, I love you. Thank you for all you’ve done for me.’” Another former assistant, Ed Powell, an old man himself at eighty-nine, also made it that day. So did Jim Harrick, Lucius Allen, Henry Bibby, Kenny Washington, and Andy Hill. Bill Walton was having back issues that were so severe he could barely get out of bed, so he never saw Wooden in the hospital. But he didn’t have to. “He knew that I knew, and I knew that he knew,” Walton said. “We had said our good-byes.”

  On the morning of Friday, June 4, 2010, Doug Erickson went to see Wooden along with Bill and Joanne Bennett, just as they had done every morning that week. Wooden was unconscious. As they were leaving, Joanne asked Jim Wooden if she could give his dad a kiss. “Give him two,” Jim said. Keith Erickson also stopped by for about a half hour that morning. “He had lost a lot of weight,” Erickson said. “He was weak, his head was back, and his mouth was open. His hair was disheveled. Jim was there. Coach Val was there. Tony was there. They were all fine. They knew he didn’t want to be like that.”

  Marques Johnson had been reluctant to visit Wooden in the hospital because he didn’t want to see his coach in that state. On Friday afternoon, however, he was overcome by a strong urge to see him. Johnson got dressed quickly and called Nan as he was riding up the 405 freeway. “There’s no need to come now,” Nan said. “It’s pretty much over.” So he turned around and went home.

  When th’inevitable hour arrived in the early evening, the circle of people around Wooden was small, just a few immediate family members, Pastor Rutherford, and Spino. As Wooden’s family, friends, and former players learned the news, they felt sadness, of course, maybe even a little surprise that he had actually died. But there was also joy because they knew he was no longer in pain, that he was finally where he wanted to be. There was even some relief that he had, in fact, not made it to his hundredth birthday. “It would have been a spectacle,” Hill said. “He would have hated it.” Better to avoid that peak.

  After nearly a century on Earth, John Wooden died much as he had lived. His pillow was softened by a clear conscience. He had scant money but a peaceful mind. Most of all, he was prepared for his death—physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. He was not a perfect man and he did not live a perfect life, but he left this world in perfect balance, a success by any definition of the word.

 
When the ordeal was finally over, Nan called Bill Bennett and gave permission for UCLA to put out the official word. Bennett dialed a sportswriter friend and delivered the news the only way he knew how.

  “Coach is with Nell,” he said.

  EPILOGUE

  The Poet

  I can’t be certain that John Wooden was reciting poetry at the moment he died, but I have reason to believe he was. On September 5, 2006, I was sitting alone with Wooden in his den when he told me that he liked to recite poems in order to help him fall asleep. He had a rotation of a half dozen or so that he used. When I asked Wooden if he spoke them aloud, he replied, “Sometimes out loud and sometimes in my head. But I’ll never know. I may go to sleep in the second or third, or maybe the fourth. When I wake, I think, ‘I wonder which one I fell asleep to.’”

  So I like to think that Wooden was whispering rhymes when he left this world on the evening of June 4, 2010. Like many sports fans of my generation, I have no recollection of Wooden as a basketball coach; I was not quite five years old when he claimed his last NCAA title. I didn’t know the fiery guy who ran his players ragged and rode referees until their ears burned. I only knew the sweet old fella who liked to read poetry in his den.

  I had three lengthy visits with Wooden in that den between 2003 and 2009, the last of which occurred ten months before he died. Our sessions were memorable, but hardly unusual. During the last decade of his life, Wooden loved sitting for interviews. He enjoyed telling all the old stories, even the ones he had repeated more times than he could count. The appointments also allowed Wooden to keep his calendar full and his mind engaged.

  Like many writers who cover college basketball, I had always carried a natural curiosity about Wooden, so I finally came up with an excuse to fulfill it. In the spring of 2003, when UCLA fired yet another basketball coach, Steve Lavin, and replaced him with Ben Howland, I hatched an idea for a column: I knew that Wooden ate breakfast at the same restaurant each morning, so I decided to invite Wooden and Howland to breakfast and write about what they talked about. My angle would show that when a man gets the UCLA coaching job, he also gets John Wooden, for better and worse. Yes, he has to deal with the shadow of the Wooden legacy, but he also gains access to one of the greatest coaching minds in the history of American sports.