Back from the Dead

by Bill Walton

  During the pregame warm-ups, one of the Notre Dame fans ran onto the court and up to me. He was dressed as a bumblebee, and he kept trying to sting me, hoping to send me into anaphylactic shock once again.

  At halftime, we had a 17-point lead, but Greg didn’t play at all in the second half.

  We had an 11-point lead and the ball with three minutes to go, in an era that predated the shot clock and the three-point shot. And we gave it all away, losing by one as we went scoreless for the rest of the game, stuttering and stumbling down the stretch, missing six straight shots and turning the ball over four times, while Notre Dame scored the final 12 points of the game, making their last six shots.

  I had my chances, but in the end I couldn’t get it done, missing some very makeable shots.

  It was our first loss since early in my junior year in high school, and it hurt—bad. The last time I’d lost, I walked home afterward. I wanted to do the same now, but Indiana was just too far. Plus I could barely move, what with my back, that corset, the steel rods, and the cold. The whole world now seemed frozen.

  * * *

  We got back to UCLA, but things were still not right, as my back continued to plague me and my knees were giving me a lot of trouble as well. My whole body was aching and out of—EVERYTHING!

  My practice time became limited and sporadic. Sometimes I could not even get there, as I was constantly trying to relieve the pain, soreness, and stiffness.

  But the games, like the sun, river, rain, and tide, kept coming.

  Our offense, the key to winning and championships, became erratic, inconsistent, and wildly unpredictable. And for the first time, its failures and limitations were not solely based on the other teams’ efforts to slow the game to a crawl.

  We sadly and sorrowfully became our own worst enemy. The relentless offensive attack that was the trademark of UCLA and John Wooden basketball became maddeningly, frustratingly, and elusively stagnant.

  There were many factors—my injuries, the failure to assertively initiate the attack—but, after forty years of reflecting on it, I’ve concluded there was nothing as devastating as the continued presence in the lineup of Tommy Curtis.

  Tommy’s increased role and playing time came at the expense of Greg, who was the real key to our team’s offensive flow. And all the things that made Greg so valuable and talented were the things that Tommy completely ignored, or simply considered worthless.

  Greg, as a solid position defender, could read and anticipate the defensive play that would start our fast break. Whether it came from a block, steal, deflection, or rebound and outlet, he was on the move, up the court, continuing to build on a play that had already been made.

  Tommy, no matter what, always came back to the ball, disrupting the flow and advantage that had already been created.

  Greg was always ready to make the next pass ahead, quickly moving things forward.

  Tommy seemed interested only in making the play himself, invariably off his own excessive and irritating dribble. And we were never a team that tried to do anything off the dribble, except when Tommy was in and had the ball.

  Greg was the master at delivering the ball to a teammate on the move, coming off a screen, on a backdoor cut or lob, or just flashing to an opening.

  Tommy was so insistent on dribbling for his own play and shot that we would be on the move, finding key openings, and calling for the ball, only to have to stop, wait, and ultimately lose our advantage as he pounded the ball, back and forth, through his legs, in and out—anywhere and everywhere except where it needed to go.

  And Tommy was always talking to the other team, their coaches, the refs, the fans. It was always “In your face,” “In your eye,” “Your mama,” “Too late,” “Get back,” “Stay down.”

  It was all so depressing. And every day, I would be in Coach Wooden’s office, pleading, explaining, begging for sanity, rationality, reason. But all to no avail. As Greg sat for extended periods and Tommy continued to get more and more of everything, Coach would just sit there with a blank stare as I tried to get him to see what was so painfully obvious to me.

  Early on, when we were winning everything by incalculably large margins, the ends of the games often came in the opening minutes.

  But after my broken back, everything started to tighten up, and the ends of the games actually came at the end, when Curtis was always at his worst, when he would get even more selfish, more irrational, more obnoxious, more intent on doing everything by himself.

  * * *

  Our play hit rock bottom in mid-February, on our annual trip to Oregon and the Willamette Valley. In eighteen hours we lost our rhythm, our confidence, our dignity, our self-respect, and our pride—all the things that made us unbeatable champions since we had arrived at UCLA three and a half years earlier.

  We couldn’t score, we couldn’t play. Greg hardly played at all in either game, and we combined for a total of 108 points in two entire games. Turnovers, uncertainty, hesitancy, and doubt plagued every aspect of our existence. And try as we did, we could not get out of our own way or funk.

  As we were leaving the court Friday night in Corvallis, having just lost to the Beavers, the fans stormed the court. One of them ran up to Coach Wooden and, winding up like a cricket pitcher, threw an apple at him as hard as he could from about fifteen feet away, hitting him right in the chest. Coach was sixty-five, and had already suffered at least one heart attack in this latest year.

  We gathered around him and carried him down to our locker room, where Ducky loosened Coach’s tie and opened his shirt, massaging his reddened and swollen chest as he slumped like the rest of us.

  Early the next day, we played even worse, if you can call what we did playing.

  When asked to explain things in a postgame interview and comprehend how our great team could possibly play so poorly, with no life, inspiration, fire, enthusiasm, or intensity, Greg quoted Bob Dylan: “When you’ve got nothing, you’ve got nothing to lose.”

  Coach was livid.

  * * *

  Back at UCLA during our next practice, Coach stopped practice early on and led us into the locker room for a first of its kind in all my years there “meeting.” And as he started to lay out his vision for the rest of our final season, a season that had just seen us lose our only two conference games of our entire time in college, Coach brought out a small portable tape recorder. Not as technologically savvy as some, he fumbled to turn the recorder on and get it working. He told us that while Greg would be returning to the lineup for the rest of the season, Coach would no longer tolerate any of the “Die-Lyn” quotes in the press, and that he would use the tape recorder to ensure that nobody misquoted, misinterpreted, or misunderstood his very carefully chosen words.

  It worked. Somewhat. For a while, at least.

  The offense came back to life, with more Greg and a lot less Tommy Curtis.

  But we still lacked the perfect consistency and flawless execution that had been our standard for years.

  We came into the last game of the conference season, against USC, in a rare position for us. Because of our two losses during the Lost Weekend in Oregon three weeks earlier, the USC game was a must-win for us. The rules of the day called for only the conference champion to make the NCAA tournament. So if we lost, we wouldn’t even make the tournament that UCLA had won the previous seven years.

  We delivered, playing as well as we had in quite some time. Jamaal and Greg were both dynamic defensively, stealing tons of passes and converting in the resultant transition game. I had more rebounds and points at the half than the entire USC team combined. We won by 30.

  * * *

  The NCAA Western Regionals were in Tucson, Arizona, that year, and our team hotel was quite a nice desert resort, with all the amenities that young college students on spring break could ever ask for. Although it was more than a break for me, as I had already graduated from UCLA, having gone to school at Sonoma State the previous summer.

  We played Dayton in
our NCAA opener on Thursday night. We had a big early lead that remained constant through the half. On the opening play of the second half, Dave Meyers slid smoothly backdoor, and Greg laid the ball in his wheelhouse perfectly. The ball went right through Dave’s hands and out-of-bounds. By the next dead ball, Coach Wooden had substituted Greg out of there, and by the time Greg got back in we had lost all our momentum and the Flyers were now red hot, on fire, and basically unstoppable.

  One of their front-court players, Mike Sylvester, was in such a zone that none of us could do anything with him. He went for 37 in the game, most of them in the second half. We all had our shot at him—me, Jamaal, Dave, Marques—but with no success.

  They took us into overtime, then a second one.

  They had two terrific little guards, Don Smith and a very young Johnny Davis—whom I would later play with in Portland. And, like Sylvester, they could not be stopped.

  With the score tied in the closing seconds of that second overtime, Dayton came rushing up the floor, pushing a frenetic pace. The ball went to Don Smith on the left side, he made his way close to the basket, and as the buzzer sounded he got off a little floater from about ten feet out, sort of along the baseline.

  The ball found the rim and easily swished through, ending it all. Or seemingly so.

  In the pandemonium of Dayton winning with that shot, as they were celebrating their upset victory and their fans surged onto the court in wild amazement, one of the refs came running up, waving off the game winner and indicating that Dayton’s Coach Donaher had called time-out as his team was racing up the court on the game’s final possession.

  The Flyers and their fans were outraged, but the ref was right.

  And so the game went to its third overtime, and we won by 11.

  * * *

  Our next game was significantly less dramatic. And, despite their remarkable and emerging guard, Phil Smith, we beat USF easily in yet another slowdown game.

  The next week we were off to the Final Four again, this time in Greensboro, North Carolina. We were to play NC State one more time, after having beaten them handily in St. Louis more than three months ago. We got there and it was miserable—bad motel, bad food, bad weather. I only brought sandals and T-shirts with me, and we woke up to snow on the ground on the day of the game.

  We played OK, but we needed more than OK, in a huge game, against a good team, literally on their home court. All the big plays that usually went our way went theirs. We had a number of 14-point leads late in the game, but turnovers, missed free throws, offensive fouls, and Tommy Curtis all cost us down the stretch. I missed a bunch of easily makeable shots—from point-blank range. And then NC State spent large chunks of time holding the ball without even attempting to attack the basket.

  The game went to overtime.

  They scored first in the extra period. We countered immediately.

  Then they held the ball for the last four minutes of the extra period.

  We went into a second overtime.

  We started strong, but the same nightmarish problems came back to haunt us—none more than the individual agenda of Tommy Curtis. We had a 7-point lead and the ball with just a little bit of time left, but we couldn’t or didn’t get it done. The decisive plays all went to NC State’s David Thompson, who was easily the best collegiate player that we ever faced. David was helped mightily by Tommy Burleson, who outplayed me. And Monte Towe played like a giant. We lost by 3 in the national semifinals.

  UCLA’s 38-game NCAA tournament win streak—gone. UCLA’s string of seven straight NCAA Championships—gone.

  March 23, 1974.

  Things were never the same again.

  If only . . .

  They wanted us to play for third place in the consolation game against Kansas a couple of days later. I said I wasn’t going to play. I had come to win the championship. I wanted no part of third-place action.

  In the miserable gloom and haze of defeat, we spent a lot of time in my dumpy, dingy motel room. Coach Wooden, my dad, and a number of the Marquette players, including Maurice Lucas, who were to play for the title on Monday, were there a lot.

  I was disconsolate. It was not as I had dreamed it. I told the guys that I would sit on the bench and cheer them on—as they had done for me for the previous four years.

  Coach wouldn’t stand for it. I was adamant. And we compromised on a token appearance—as a starter. It was awful.

  After the long plane ride back to LAX, I never saw Tommy Curtis again, which is fine with me. And as I got off the UCLA plane in L.A., I turned to Coach Wooden one final time as a player, and through the sadness, loss, anger, and disappointment, I said to him, “I’m sorry, Coach, for ruining it all.”

  He knew better than to get into it right there. He handed me a note, a new maxim that he had written for me. I opened it up and read: “To Bill Walton, It’s the things that you learn after you know it all that count. Coach John Wooden.”

  * * *

  I have spent the rest of my life trying to cleanse my spirit and soul of the stain that marks me to this day with the Curse of the Stolen Penny. We had it all. Think about how close we came. Think about how good it was. But we lost four of our last seventeen games after going undefeated for so long. We should have won them all. Every time I meet a UCLA alumnus, to this day, I am obliged to apologize for letting them, our school, our team, our coach, our family, and everybody else down.

  Coach was ultimately right about one thing here—you never do get over it.

  * * *

  CHAPTER 10

  * * *

  Feel Like a Stranger

  THE DAZE BETWEEN

  The first days are the hardest days.

  Coming back and climbing up from complete failure is really hard. And there are never any guarantees which way it will all go.

  One of the great things about basketball being the perfect game is that the many metaphors that define the sport are the ones you need most when everything falls apart. The rebound. The turnaround. Transition. The crossover. Change of pace, change of direction. The fast break. The relentless offensive attack. Time-out. Momentum.

  I needed all of this, but I just couldn’t seem to find my way home.

  Getting off that plane home from Greensboro to UCLA was eye-opening. All of a sudden everything was over. I had graduated already, so there was no reason to be on campus. And I was now so embarrassed about how it all turned out at the end for me at UCLA, all I could do was hang my head in disappointment, shame, and despair.

  Still, I had the biggest choices and decisions to date in my young life ahead of me. Where to go and what to do.

  And the business of basketball kept calling, as it had for the past few years, as much as I had tried to shut it out.

  I was spending time out in the desert, with extended backpacking trips up on Mount San Jacinto, particularly in Tahquitz and Palm Canyons. But push was coming to shove, and it was time to get started again—on to the next dream.

  Ernie Vandeweghe, who became everything in my life as both a mentor and a friend, had been telling me for years to take a step back and not rush into anything. He told me to become a Rhodes scholar, to go to England and Europe and continue my education for as long as I wanted. Come back when you’re ready, and then dictate what you want to do. He wanted me to pursue a business career that might or might not include basketball.

  The NBA was calling, interested to know my thoughts and plans. Basketball-wise, that’s what I wanted—the big league, and the big time—but I’d either be headed to Portland or Philadelphia, and I didn’t know which, as those were the two teams that would be flipping a coin to decide my future.

  The ABA kept showing up in many different shapes, offering everything from franchise ownership to my choice of cities, preferably L.A. One group’s entire presentation was a meteorological comparison of the rainy, dreary drizzle in Portland, the frigid misery of Philadelphia, and the beauty of Los Angeles—their ABA dream. It was all news to me. My idea of
winter was when the temperature dipped below 70 degrees for a few hours and it got dark earlier than we wanted. And when that happened we either went outside to run up, down, and around to warm up, or we took a Jacuzzi bath, or we simply went to bed, waiting the few hours before it would invariably warm up again. Rain was something that Bob Weir, Phil Lesh, Neil Young, and John Fogerty sang songs about.

  Jerry West kept telling me how cool Portland and Oregon were, and that there was a lot of potential and opportunity up there.

  Eventually I talked with the NBA. I told them that I had no interest whatsoever in Philadelphia, and that if the 76ers won the coin flip, I would look seriously at the ABA. Or the Rhodes scholarship that was out there.

  They flipped the coin, and Portland won.

  Sam Gilbert, a good friend and proud, loyal, and enthusiastic supporter of all things UCLA, who had helped other UCLA players with their pro contracts, worked with our mutual friend Ralph Shapiro, a UCLA alum, to get the deal done. We did it before the NBA Draft took place. Everyone kept asking me what I wanted, and I didn’t know. The only thing that I cared about after four years with Coach Wooden was that I didn’t want anybody telling me anymore when to shave, when to cut my hair, and what clothes to wear.

  I was up in Tahquitz Canyon during the draft, having lost all track of everything, and I ran out of supplies. I hiked down and off the mountain and into Palm Springs to re-up at the local market. When I was standing in the checkout line, the clerk said to me, “Hey, Bill, I just heard on the radio that the Blazers drafted you number one. Congratulations.” He told me he was from Oregon but now lived in the sunshine of the Imperial and Coachella Valleys. As I headed out and back up the canyon—fully and freshly loaded—he wished me good luck.