Back from the Dead

by Bill Walton

  For years and years, I tried to turn Coach on to the best of the finest things in life, and he was trying to do the same for me. For me, that always meant trying to pull him with us into the vortex of a Grateful Dead concert. Every time, he would kindly thank me and say that, no, he would not be coming. In return, he regularly offered to take me to an upcoming Lawrence Welk show that he and Nell would be attending. Sadly, I never took up his offer, either. We both missed out.

  Today, as the sun has set on so many things, I have come to realize that many of Coach’s students and players have fully become the proud, fierce, tenacious, determined warriors that he was trying to mold us into.

  I’m not sure that he ever realized what a fine teacher he really was.

  * * *

  CHAPTER 8

  * * *

  New Morning

  So happy just to see you smile,

  Underneath this sky of blue,

  On this new morning, with you.

  Standing on a tower

  World at my command

  You just keep a-turning

  While I’m playing in the band.

  Back to school. The freshness. The newness of it all. What could be better? New classes, friends, teachers, teammates—everything. And all at UCLA—the most applied-to school in the country—where today more than 100,000 people per year try to score one of the relatively few, coveted spots of entry.

  Back just in the nick of time for the first day of classes in the fall of 1972, I changed my major again. Disillusioned with the “science” of politics, which by now was dropping to ridiculous levels of tragedy and farce, what with Nixon and Reagan running the show, and inspired by my summer hitchhiking and backpacking trip through the western United States and Canada, I was chasing the new dream of geography—the where, when, why, and who of it all.

  I was also putting into full practice all the things I was learning along the winding road, particularly that it was not so much the subject but rather the teacher that made it all so interesting. And with so much brilliance available in the academic opportunities at UCLA, I was always ready for some high-altitude exploration and experimentation. And I found it all with the excitement and dizzying possibilities offered by the geography, history, music, and art departments.

  It was all right there in front of us—another fun season of basketball, with a team that I knew was going to be even better than the one that finished 30-0 in ’72, and now riding a 46-game winning streak.

  * * *

  The team was slightly different this year. We lost three key guys to graduation, although only one of them had actually played in the games. Henry Bibby moved on to the NBA and the Knicks, where he became the second of just a handful of players in history to win an NCAA Championship and an NBA title in consecutive years. Jon Chapman went on to play productively for a number of solid years in Germany before coming home to become an educator, helping countless youngsters chase their dreams and build their lives. And Andy Hill, completely frustrated with the way it had all played out for him on the UCLA basketball team, started an incredibly electric odyssey that included many tickets to ride, leading eventually to a fabulous business career in the entertainment industry. Sitting on the bench at UCLA, Andy had taken enough of the madness, and this was the beginning of what would turn out to be a twenty-five-year estrangement from Coach Wooden that Andy has chronicled in his own masterpiece of reconciliation, Be Quick, but Don’t Hurry, a fabled story built around the wonderful parable that forgiveness will set you free.

  Larry Hollyfield finally got his chance to start and play regularly, taking Henry’s spot on the left wing, joining the holdovers Greg, Jamaal, Larry Farmer, and me. Swen was already a lot better, and giving me all I could handle every day in practice. Tommy Curtis was still there, though playing way too selfishly, and now inexplicably with more playing time. And we had two newcomers, Dave Meyers and Pete Trgovich, who were very good—particularly Dave, who would eventually become a first team All-America himself. It was not enough to simply say that any one of us ever became a champion—we all did that, together.

  The routine of life as a UCLA basketball player was better than perfect on all fronts. Class all day, practice every afternoon, the fun and excitement of being a college student in Los Angeles. And the practices and the team just kept getting better. We understood so much more now. The lessons of life that Coach Wooden kept repetitively driving home were starting to take hold, particularly after a summer off to think about it all. And, most important, we were able to keep playing ever faster, as we began to master some of the fundamentals to the point where Coach would say, “Okay, that’s starting to become acceptable. Now let’s see you do it again. But FASTER this time.”

  Every day, we would try with everything we had to get Coach to acknowledge our success and progress on the court. No matter how well we did, about the best we could ever get out of him was maybe a twinkle or a gleam in his eye. If we did something really, really well, he might turn the corner of his lip upward in the slightest of smiles.

  Finally opening day came, and we were in the locker room getting ready with our push-ups and horseplay when Coach calmly walked in and gathered us around, just like he had a year earlier. Once again we sat there, enthusiastically and attentively, on our stools as he started his regular pregame speech about how it was now up to us, but then he seemed to lose focus as his eyes scanned the room. All of a sudden, he broke his train of thought and strode directly over to the same side wall of the room and bent over, coming up—beaming, glowing, ecstatic—with a penny between his thumb and index finger. “Men, look at this. Someone has lost a penny. Now this is a good omen for us. This signifies good luck. And hopefully this will mean we’ll have another good season.”

  Then he bent down and slid this lucky penny into the slot in one of his penny loafers. Now those of us who’d seen this before all rolled our eyes. I can’t speak for the new guys, who were still enthralled with just being there. But we could only hope that this was at least a different penny, and that he was filling the slot in the opposite shoe this time—who could remember? But we’d won a championship and were on track for another. So who could doubt the value of the lost but now found lucky penny?

  We started our season strong and were rolling when, one day in December, Coach shockingly wasn’t there. He had suffered a heart attack, and missed a game—his first miss in thirty-eight years of teaching—and a couple of weeks of practice. Coach Wooden was a lot of things, not the least of which was tough. He never said anything about the heart trouble, tried to keep it quiet, never whined, complained, or made excuses. He just came to get the job done—every day.

  We didn’t really pay too much attention to this developing saga. We were so young, naïve, and supremely confident in our own invincibility. And Coach was so old. Looking back later, we should have noticed the rapid deterioration of his health that was taking place right in front of us.

  When we had arrived at UCLA three years earlier, Coach, at sixty-one, was still spry, vibrant, and dynamic, with a real spring and bounce to his step. And he went from this dashing, upright, statuesque force du jour to someone who was now stooped, pale, hesitant, gaunt, and outwardly broken. Over the years, we have all learned ourselves to never discount the effects of stress on one’s health. But I can see how I wore him down and out.

  But the wins kept piling up and the magical mystery tour kept rolling on, including a really fun trip to New Orleans for a holiday tournament—and much more. But as we headed into the conference season after the holidays, it was clear that things were changing, that the other teams were no longer trying to beat us by playing basketball.

  Our game was speed, quickness, pressing defense, the fast break, and explosive offensive runs. The other teams clearly had no chance by playing that way, so they mucked it up, roughed us up, and slowed the pace of the games to a crawl, often holding the ball at midcourt for agonizing minutes at a time without even coming near the basket. After we graduate
d the NCAA instituted the shot clock to try to keep the games moving. At the time, Coach put in some new half-court defensive traps, a 3-1-1 zone—extended to the half-court line—that literally dared the other team to come to the basket and play. The scores were declining—we only topped 100 points once all season, and our average winning margin dropped by 9 points per game from last year, all the way down to 21.

  And the games continued to get a lot rougher as the other teams would try to disrupt our flow. We were not a physically powerful team, with the exception of Swen (who rarely played) and Larry Hollyfield. Our game was speed, and skill.

  When Coach made it back from his heart attack, it was time for our yearly trip to the state of Oregon for the start of the always critical conference games. Our game in Eugene got completely out of control. A year earlier, when we were sophomores, the Ducks had hired a new coach, Dick Harter, who had been very successful at Penn in the Ivy League. Determined to challenge UCLA’s supremacy, Coach Harter brought to Oregon a rough-and-tumble style that led their fans and media to proudly nickname the team the Kamikaze Kids. It did seem that death was their mission.

  The locker rooms at the old McArthur Court were downstairs, and while we would wait patiently for the game to start, the Duck players would gather around outside our locker room, where Coach Harter installed their team’s training equipment. Harter liked his Kamikazes to work themselves up into a raging frenzy before a game, and they did so by twisting and flexing on the machines, all the while grunting and growling—right outside our door.

  When everybody finally got up to the court for the game, things only got stranger. Now, the Oregon crowd in Eugene is one to behold. Bear in mind that every game we played in, from high school all the way through UCLA, was sold out. Ultimately the same would be true in Portland and Boston. We were used to playing before big, loud, and wild crowds, where anything goes, and usually did. But on the collegiate level, the only road crowd that came close in ferocity to Oregon’s was Notre Dame’s, and that was at least partly because, until 1972, the Irish student body was savagely all male.

  During warm-ups on Mac Court the home fans would go absolutely crazy, to the point that the overhead scoreboard would bounce up and down to their rhythmic roars. Still in the pregame, the Kamikaze Kids would line up across the midcourt line at perfect attention, facing us like statues, staring us down in a show of intended intimidation that was comical, if not so scary, in its weirdness. While we warmed up, and as this madness went on, Swen would walk right up and down the line of these petrified posers, who would not even blink as he nosed up as close as humanly possible without making contact. But they would never even flinch. Although if they ever had to play against Swen—seven feet tall, 275 pounds, and cut from stone—they surely would have. The whole thing was frightfully hilarious. I think Swen tried to kiss a couple of them. It seemed appropriate that they called themselves Kamikazes.

  Once the game started and we went about our business—on our way to yet another rout—the inevitable gloom of impending defeat and failure consumed the Ducks and their remarkable crowd. On one play, I got out in front on a transition opportunity and was knocked to the floor and sent sprawling into the front row of fans who, at Mac Court, are literally on the court and in the game—by design. As I tried to scramble back up and rejoin the game—no foul was called—some of the fans held me down so I couldn’t get up. As the game continued at the other end, one guy from down the row, maybe a dozen feet away or so, came along the baseline to where I was struggling to get up and back on defense, wound up his leg, and kicked me in the lower back. Then he walked back to his supposed seat, all to the roar of the crowd. They showed the replay several times on TV during the rest of the game. It turned out that the guy worked for the Oregon Athletic Department—at least that day. They fired him shortly thereafter. We won the game handily.

  Swen was becoming more and more important to the team in every way as he continued to blossom. With growing confidence, he started to speak up more, and he loved to tell jokes. They were not particularly good jokes, but we all liked Swen, and so every day in practice, as we were transitioning from one drill to another, Swen would stop us with the pronouncement that he had a new joke. We would all look at Coach—he was in charge of everything—and Coach would sheepishly, reluctantly, and begrudgingly acquiesce. And Swen would start and ultimately deliver his clearly well-rehearsed moment onstage. We would laugh politely, some would roll their eyes, and Coach would put his head down, smile a bit in an unseen way, and then mutter something about getting back to it. It became a daily ritual, and we all took pleasure in seeing Swen have so much fun as the center of our world.

  In our game that year against Washington State at Bohler Gym in Pullman, Swen was finally in for some minutes at the very end of another rout. Swen was always ready but he rarely got to play, so whenever he did get in, regardless of the situation, he was determined to go for it all. In the closing minutes at WSU, he was lined up on the lane as a potential offensive rebounder for a one-and-one free-throw opportunity by one of our teammates. Swen was matched up with the Cougars’ big man, whom he essentially dwarfed. As our guy was shooting his first attempt, Swen and his man started jostling for inside and superior position in case of a miss. With elbows, hips, shoulders, arms, and hands flailing from both of them, the first shot rolled in, earning the shooter a second shot.

  Swen and his guy disengaged, and the short, round ref stepped in to break it all up. Swen started talking to the ref about how the other guy was fouling him, committing crimes against humanity and the like. The ref wanted no part of Swen. All he wanted was to get this blowout over with. So he lined everybody back up for the second free throw, and as our guy got ready to shoot, the elbowing, leaning, and contact all started anew. The free throw swished, but the guy from WSU foolishly persisted in antagonizing Swen. As the ball dropped through the net, Swen just unloaded on the poor guy, leveling him and leaving him sprawled facedown on the court, Swen standing over him with a look of angelic innocence on his gentle face. The ref had had enough. He came running in and laid a technical foul on Swen, as everybody rushed in to see what was going down. Swen, realizing that the ref was blaming him for all this, now turned into a raging bull and went after the ref, grabbing and shaking him like a little rag doll, and pointing back at his fallen opponent, who was groggily starting to climb back up onto his knees. Everyone was stunned as Swen continued violently shaking the ref, all the while pointing at the other guy. We thought Swen was going to kill the poor ref, deservedly or not. Coach Wooden was mortified. He actually got up from his seat and started barking at me, “BILL, GET BACK IN THERE! GET SWEN OUT OF THERE! GOODNESS GRACIOUS SAKES ALIVE!”

  Swen, what are you doing? You can’t beat up the ref!

  Eventually, peace was restored, Swen calmed down, and it was all over soon enough.

  There was note made of our continued winning ways, particularly as we passed Bill Russell and USF’s NCAA record of 60 consecutive victories with another rout of Notre Dame in South Bend. That game was most noteworthy for the time Coach Wooden got up from his seat and walked up the sideline toward Notre Dame’s bench. The score was already out of hand, but now the game was getting excessively violent, and some of the Notre Dame players were taking extreme liberties with their home-court advantage and the refs.

  Coach had seen enough as he approached the devil himself—their coach, Digger Phelps—and told him, “Look, if you don’t call off your guys, and if they don’t get back to playing basketball instead of all this ridiculous fouling and trying to hurt our players, then I’m going to put Swen in the game, with instructions to personally restore order.”

  Coach went back and sat down, and things cooled down to the point where we could finish the whole thing.

  Larry Hollyfield—we called him Holly—was also turning out great for us, although his left-handed game was different than Henry Bibby’s. Holly was a big-time player who loved the light and loved to shoot. And could he eve
r! Holly played on the same, left side of the court as me, so he regularly got the ball from Greg. But much as he didn’t like it, Holly was well aware of Coach’s direction that when we didn’t have a fast break, the ball ALWAYS had to go to Jamaal or me. It was certainly frustrating for Holly. But now our fast break had become less effective because our opponents would regularly concede their offensive board to our defense, choosing instead to retreat quickly en masse to try to minimize their losses. They would invariably pack in their defense to try to slow Jamaal and me down in the paint. It was a strategy that opened up all sorts of opportunity for Holly, especially this season. He loved to score, and he was amazing at it when given the chance.

  We continued to roll up victories, and more was made of the record-setting streak that was now ours. We paid no mind to any of it. We had not played anybody yet who was better than we were, and so it was just the natural course of events for us to keep on winning. Which we did.

  * * *

  We finished the regular season unchallenged and unbeaten, and now we were on to the NCAA tournament once again, this time with the Western Regionals held at Pauley. Arizona State was our first opponent, and they tried to play their game—a fast, running style that was also our game—on our own court. They didn’t have a chance, and we moved on easily to play USF, Bill Russell’s school, which had taken care of Long Beach State in the other semifinal. Long Beach still had Tark, but they had lost Ed Ratleff to graduation, and that was an insurmountable loss. USF had some nice players, just not enough of them. Phil Smith was a rising and true star, and Kevin Restani had some solid attributes. But we had a whole team. And we had Coach Wooden.