Back from the Dead

by Bill Walton

  Being on the freshman team presented interesting challenges in part because for the first time there was no ultimate championship prize on the horizon, just a string of disconnected and individual games with no meaning, structure, or goal other than to play, win, and have fun. As shy as I’ve always been, I have also always craved playing on the big stage, as I had at Muni, then at Helix, with the Navy AAU team, and on to the world championship tour—at least the night I got to play for the other team.

  We won all our UCLA freshman games. But what I loved most was the practice. Wooden loved practice, too. Surprisingly, he had rules for it. Did he ever! I never played for a coach who wrote so many things down—after clearly thinking them all through.

  UCLA BASKETBALL

  John Wooden, Head Coach

  Re: Practice

  1. Be dressed, on the floor, and ready for practice on time every day. There is no substitute for industriousness and enthusiasm.

  2. Warm up and then work on your weaknesses and shoot some free throws when you take the floor and until organized practice begins.

  3. Work hard to improve yourself without having to be forced. Be serious. Have fun without clowning. You develop only by doing your best.

  4. No cliques, no complaining, no criticizing, no jealousy, no egotism, no envy, no alibis. Earn the respect of all.

  5. Never leave the floor without permission.

  6. When a coach blows the whistle, all give him your undivided attention and respond immediately without disconcerting in any manner.

  7. Move quickly to get in position to start a new drill.

  8. Keep a neat practice appearance with shirt tails in, socks pulled up, and hair cut short.

  9. Take excellent care of your equipment and keep your locker neat and orderly.

  10. Record your weight in and out every day.

  11. Do things the way you have been told, and do not have to be told every day. Correct habits are formed only through continued repetition of the perfect model.

  12. Be clever, not fancy. Good, clever play brings praise, while fancy play brings ridicule and criticism.

  13. When group activity is stopped to correct one individual, all pay close attention in order that you will not require the same correction.

  14. Condition comes from hard work during practice and proper mental and moral conduct.

  15. Poise, confidence, and self-control comes from being prepared.

  We loved the structure, discipline, and organization, even though it flew in the faces of our lives off the court. Coach Wooden was sixty-one years old when we started playing for him. Here was this old man dictating to a group of high-achieving, freethinking, totally diverse, and physically aggressive seventeen-to-twenty-three-year-olds. We wanted to win, and we wanted to be the best. And we knew that if we let him have his say, and did things his way, that we would win. We had no idea—nor were we smart enough yet to know—that our opportunity to study under him would also turn us into far greater human beings. Or that later in life we would find ourselves bringing our own children to Coach’s home so he could teach them how to put on their shoes and socks. Or that it would make us begin writing on our children’s lunch bags Coach’s timeless messages and maxims, like “Failing to prepare is preparing to fail” and “Never mistake activity for achievement.”

  I was cool with most of what was on Coach Wooden’s practice manifesto, although the hair command kind of jumped out at me. I had always kept my hair short, mostly because nobody ever told me I had to. I stood out plenty at UCLA in 1970 by being 6'11" with red hair. I stood out even more so because Coach wanted us to wear our hair as if we were cops or in the Army.

  But I did it. Nothing is more important than being on the team.

  Pauley Pavilion was very much like Muni Gym. The open floor space was large enough to house three full courts, laid out side by side, each running north and south. Unlike Muni, Pauley also had a center court, which ran east and west and overlaid the three stacked parallel courts. Center court was where the varsity practiced and the real games were played.

  The eight members of the freshman team would practice on the westernmost of the three parallel courts, behind a giant blue curtain that separated us from the varsity. Because there wasn’t another freshman anywhere near my size, Wooden hired a 6'8" ex-UCLA and NBA bruiser named Jim Nielsen to push me—every day. They said he was a coach, but it seemed to me his job was pretty much to come in and just rough me up. I thought I was done with the pampas grass.

  The freshman practices were fun, and Nielsen taught me a lot, mostly about getting up off the floor and how to avoid being undercut. We ran Wooden’s high-post offense, the same set offense that the varsity squad used. I have since learned that Wooden’s ingenious high-post creation was one of the great inventions in the history of civilization, right up there with the wheel, fire, birth control, and the thermos. But it was not for me. The center in that scheme basically sets screens, hangs around the free-throw line, and swings the ball from side to side so that other guys can shoot.

  I was a constant visitor to Coach Wooden’s office in the earlymorning hours before class started. I’d whine and complain that this was not what I came to UCLA for, and that I wanted to get down low where I could get to work, and handle the ball. Coach would patiently explain that all of that would come next year, on the varsity. This learning experience at the high post would ultimately help me develop the necessary skills for when the opponents would inevitably become bigger and better. I wasn’t buying it. And it was here that Coach began a ritual that would be repeated over the next four years with increasing regularity.

  “Bill,” Coach would say, “that’s very nice and admirable that you have these heartfelt and deep-seated convictions. But, you know what, Bill? I’m the coach here, and while we’ve enjoyed having you here, we’re going to miss you.”

  Each time we arrived at that point, I knew it was time to move on and fall in line, and that I was not going to change his mind—this time.

  * * *

  I became a college basketball player at an absolutely perfect time. The game was incredible. We came together at UCLA just after Kareem, Elvin Hayes, Wes Unseld, Spencer Haywood, Artis Gilmore, Bob Lanier, and Sidney Wicks had all taken the front-court action to unprecedented levels. On the perimeter, the incomparable Pete Maravich had just graduated from LSU after breaking the college all-time scoring and points-per-game records. And as I was a freshman at UCLA, a whole new generation of top-scoring perimeter players was finding its form—players like William “Bird” Averitt of Pepperdine and Austin Carr of Notre Dame.

  During our extremely competitive and spirited freshman practices, I was regularly called to come across to the other side of the curtain and practice with the really big boys, the four-time defending NCAA champs.

  Coach Wooden only had five or six drills that we ran in practice. He had invented, designed, and perfected all of them. We ran them day after day after day—to perfection, and ever faster—the fourth Law of Learning being repetition (after demonstration, imitation, and correction). Wooden was a teacher. He taught you how to think, how to learn, how to dream, and how to compete. And he would be up and down the sideline every day, dressed like he was ready to play, constantly driving us, egging everybody on. Among our drills were his shooting games, the winning team being the first to make fifteen shots from specific spots. To make those fifteen shots quickly, it was best to make sure that they were of the high-percentage variety of game-quality shots, by getting the ball to the next shooter as quickly as possible. “You expect to win a fifteen-basket shooting game by having to take more than seventeen shots?!” Wooden would bark. “That is not realistic!”

  Coach Wooden loved the trash-talking nature of athletic competition. He and Larry Bird were the most sophisticated and effective trash talkers I’ve ever come across. Wooden taunted us constantly, but always in a positive manner, with perfect elocution, and never any vulgarities or even colloquialisms. The nastiest i
t ever got for Coach was, “Goodness gracious sakes alive!” although we did hear him utter the word crap—once. We were seniors and totally out of control by then. Coach was basically through with us as well, fed up because by then we knew every one of his speeches. When he’d start one, we would mouth his words right back at him, showing off, teasing him. We were also faster than he was—ever so meticulous and detail-oriented, all the more so as he got older, by now sixty-five. So while we waited for him to catch up with us on his own speech, we would throw in endless Bob Dylan lines—maybe something like “Never understood why it ain’t no good / You shouldn’t let other people get your kicks for you”—and this would get him very flustered. Once as we were going down this road, he stopped dead in his tracks, midsentence, and looked across at us laughing and joking and thinking we were so brilliant. He fumed, “If I ever hear any more of this Bob DYE-lan crap out of you guys, I just don’t know what I’m going to do!”

  We fell over laughing.

  His team’s preparation was so perfect and proven that, to Coach Wooden, whoever the next opponent was never mattered. The other team was just in the way, necessary for the game, but certainly not worthy of particular consideration. Coach Wooden barely ever mentioned the name of the school we were playing, much less singled out an opposing player by name. In my four years at UCLA he did it twice. We lost both games. Thanks a lot, Coach.

  The first time, we were still freshmen, so we weren’t even going to play in the real game. It was Austin Carr and Notre Dame, the week the varsity was to play them in South Bend. The second time was David Thompson and North Carolina State, whom we played in the 1974 Final Four—on what turned out to be one of the bleakest days in the history of the known world.

  Coach Wooden invented many of the drills that are used by everybody in basketball today. He was part of a great cadre of basketball thinkers from California in the 1950s and ’60s that included Pete Newell, Bill Sharman, Tex Winter, and Alex Hannum, all of them in the Hall of Fame, all of them brilliant teachers. All of them instrumental in figuring out this team-basketball strategic movement, developing a brand of basketball that was so much fun to play and watch.

  While all the drills were building blocks toward head-to-head competition, there was always an edge to every one of them. The best, and last, of all the drills was Wooden’s Three-on-Two Conditioner—the greatest drill in the history of basketball, if not all of sport. Twelve guys constantly running, playing in a continuous fast-break world, encompassing every aspect of the transition game: offense, defense, shooting, rebounding, blocking, dribbling, passing, footwork, spacing, timing, strategy, everything. The ball never stops moving and neither do you. Just perfect. It’s exhausting, takes everything that you have, it’s the most fun, and you get in fantastic shape doing it, because you’re going for everything, all out, the entire time, for a full ten minutes—after which you have nothing left, until you take a breath and are then ready for what’s next. We lived for that drill. It was always the high point of the day.

  Our practices and drills at UCLA were the most demanding, most challenging, and toughest basketball I have ever played. During the run, there were never any chairs to sit down on. There were never any towels to dry off with. There was never any talking allowed except for the constant chatter necessary to play ball to. And there was never anything to drink. The entire time. Coach Wooden would have prepared the entire practice for hours beforehand—longer than the practice ended up lasting—and drawn up the progression on a three-by-five index card he glanced at throughout the practice. The whole thing was a symphony, with a masterful conductor, although we didn’t adequately appreciate it at the time. It was all we knew.

  The games—nothing more than memorized exhibitions of brilliance—were easy. In the games there were fouls, time-outs, and halftime. You got a chance to take a breath, towel off, get a drink—or at least a small cup of salt water. Also, in the real games the other teams simply were just not that good. Our second string was better than pretty much any other team we played.

  I often played on both sides of the curtain, and one day I was called over for the Three-on-Two Conditioner with the big boys. We cranked things up immediately, and I was absolutely on fire. I was blocking every shot, grabbing every rebound, making every shot I took, tipping in all my teammates’ misses (dunking was not allowed during my entire time in college or high school games), and celebrating the greatness of life and basketball.

  Sidney, who was the undisputed star of the reigning NCAA championship team and the reigning College Player of the Year, was starting to get mad because I was blocking shot after shot after shot of his. The madder he got, the better I played, loving every minute of it, and inciting Coach Wooden, who was having a high time as well. Every time I sent one of Sidney’s shots back, Coach Wooden would hoot and holler and taunt Sidney. “You’re letting this skinny, scrawny little redheaded seventeen-year-old freshman from San Diego block your shots?! You’re Sidney Wicks! You’re the College Player of the Year! How can this be?”

  Finally Sidney had had enough of this. In an explosive and wild rage he came down the lane one more time, and one more time he took off attacking the rim, flying with the ball cocked and ready, well behind his fire-breathing, smoke-belching head. I coiled, leaped, and extended as high as I could, and my left hand met Sidney’s right, high above the basket. Then he pulled back the ball even farther, all the way back, and swung out his left arm like a boom and just threw me out of the way, using that arm to catapult himself ever higher into the stratosphere. Then he unloaded his right arm with an explosive slam that darn near brought the whole basket down, stanchion and all.

  Had there been the customary 12,000-plus fans in the stands, the place would have come apart with the shock wave that rocked Pauley. As it was, every one of us froze and either gasped or screamed. No one was ever allowed to dunk in John Wooden’s practice—EVER (rule no. 12 above). Coach Wooden completely lost it. “Sidney, what are you DOING?! Don’t you EVER again violate the rules of basketball, sportsmanship, and human decency by doing something like that! Ever again! EVER!”

  We held our breath awaiting what was next, but Sidney was already on his way, completely ignoring Coach as he pranced around the court with both arms flung in the air in victorious and thunderous celebration. It was one of the greatest moments ever. Coach was smart enough to make nothing more of Sidney’s throw and smackdown, and quickly got on to what was next.

  * * *

  Great coaches and teams are always expert at getting to what is next, and that was the epitome of John Wooden and UCLA. What was soon to come was the varsity game at Notre Dame on January 23, 1971. Our guys were 14-0 for the season, 19-0 since the last loss, a late-season game against USC back in March of ’70. Two weeks later they won UCLA’s fourth straight NCAA title, over Jacksonville, when Sidney completely overwhelmed Artis Gilmore, sending big Artis home at every turn. Now Coach Wooden was uncharacteristically concerned about Notre Dame. I practiced all that week with the varsity, and we were shocked, stunned, and completely caught off guard to hear Coach Wooden repeatedly talk about Austin Carr. Carr was a great player, a 6'4" guard who had scored 61 points in one NCAA tournament game, and was now averaging almost 35 per game. Wooden was so obsessed with Carr that he gave Larry Hollyfield, a 6'7" sophomore backup swing man on our team, the special assignment of playing the role of Carr in our practices all that week.

  For Larry, this opportunity was a little like the one I got when I played for the other team against Team USA in Yugoslavia a year earlier. Larry, even more than the rest of us, was not used to sitting on anybody’s bench. He was a year ahead of Greg, Jamaal, and me, but he was a UCLA rookie who had played the previous season in junior college. When Larry committed to play at UCLA as a sophomore, he was the most famous and decorated player to join the program since Kareem, even more so than Sidney. Larry was from Compton, and one of the greatest winners ever. Through his junior and senior seasons at Compton High, his year at Compt
on Community College, and the first half of the 1970–71 UCLA season leading up to the Notre Dame game, Larry’s teams had a record of 109-0. By the time he graduated in 1973, his teams’ composite record would be 183-1.

  Sadly, the “1” came at the end of the week in which Larry played the role of Austin Carr. And played him to perfection. All week long, on instructions from Wooden to shoot early and often—which Larry didn’t need any encouragement to do—Larry kept killing our guys, just destroying Sidney, Curtis, and Steve. Nobody could stop him from making shot after shot, from outside or on slashing drives to the hoop, or crashing the boards and tipping in rebounds. Larry was looking like the greatest player ever, taking it right to our guys, who were on their own way to establishing themselves as one of the greatest college teams in history.

  As Larry continued his dominance all week long in practice, the tension was mounting. The varsity left for South Bend; we stayed home and watched the game on TV on Saturday afternoon in the dorm.

  What we saw looked like Austin Carr playing the role of Larry Hollyfield playing the role of Austin Carr against our guys in practice all week. Exactly as Larry had torched our main guys from all over the court in practice, Carr hit everything he threw at the basket, scoring 46 points, including 15 of Notre Dame’s last 17 on the way to an 89–82 upset.