Wooden: A Coach's Life (44 page)

Wooden had grown up in Indiana during the heyday of the Ku Klux Klan, yet he had never witnessed such overt racism. He frequently said that his years coaching Alcindor taught him about “man’s inhumanity to man.” One day, as he and Alcindor were walking through a hotel lobby, a white woman who was passing by exclaimed, “Look at that big black freak!” When Wooden tried to empathize, Alcindor told him, “You can say you understand, but you’re an older man, and you’re white. You can never truly understand what it’s like to be me.”

“Perhaps you’re right,” Wooden replied. “But I can try, can’t I?”

“Yes, you can try. But you can never really know.”

The treatment made Alcindor’s calm temperament on the court all the more impressive in Wooden’s eyes. The coach had always lectured his players about the importance of an even keel, but no player had done it as well, and under more duress, than Alcindor. His defenders were always smaller, slower, and less graceful, so their only hope was to be shove him around and hope the refs swallowed their whistles. After UCLA knocked off California in Pauley by 18 points in January, Wooden complained yet again that Alcindor was “not getting enough protection” and that several of his traveling calls came after he got pushed. “I’m still amazed at the way Lew can keep his poise in there and not get rattled,” Wooden said.

At this point, Alcindor’s numbers were so overwhelming that the only nit to be picked was the lopsided scores he produced. “How about you? I can’t get interested in college basketball this season,” John Hall wrote in the
Los Angeles Times
. “UCLA is so good there’s no more sport to it.” In early January, the
Saturday Evening Post
published an article under the headline, “Can Basketball Survive Lew Alcindor?” Of course, ten years earlier the magazine had asked the very same question about Chamberlain.

Boyd was determined to derail this powerful engine. When the Bruins returned from their trip to Chicago with a 16–0 record, Boyd and his Trojans were ready to spring their surprise. After UCLA jumped out to a quick 7–2 lead, Boyd called time-out. When play resumed, the Trojans went into their Newell-esque offense. Back and forth the ball went, around the perimeter, over and over, with the USC players passing up open shots. The Trojans’ seven-foot center, Ron Taylor, moved to the high post in an effort to draw Alcindor away from the basket, but Wooden told Lew to stay put. As the Trojans continued to pass it around, Alcindor simply stood under the basket with his hands on his hips, occasionally stretching down to touch his shoes.

According to the rules, the team that was behind on the scoreboard was required to force the action. The refs, however, did not know that rule. As Boyd acknowledged later, had it been properly applied the Trojans would have had to make a move. But it wasn’t, so the Trojans were able to go nearly nine minutes without attempting a shot. The home crowd at the Sports Arena booed Boyd mercilessly, but his offense was working. USC led at halftime, 17–14. As Boyd made his way to the locker room, the fans hurled paper cartons at him.

Still, he was committed to the strategy, and the Trojans surrendered their lead just once in the second half. By that time the home fans had become so unruly that Boyd found his athletic director, Jess Hill, and told him to get some more security around his team’s bench. The Trojans actually had a chance to win on their final possession, but Bill Hewitt’s jump shot from twenty feet was off. The second half ended in a 31–31 tie.

From there, UCLA owned the overtime. Sweek gave the Bruins a boost off the bench by providing two steals and a key late bucket, and UCLA emerged with a 40–35 win. Given how close the Trojans had just come to knocking off their rival, Boyd might have reasonably expected a standing ovation. Instead, he needed seven police officers to escort him across the court so he could do his postgame radio interview. “Even Trojan fans told me it was the worst thing they had ever seen,” he said later.

The treatment of the fans, however, was nothing compared to the sharp elbows thrown by his opposing coach a few minutes later. “It was a good game plan and it was executed well, but something like this is bad for the game, and I’ll tell Bob that too,” Wooden said. “I’m not critical of him for using it from a tactical standpoint, only from the standpoint of how much this can hurt basketball.” Asked whether he believed other coaches would attempt the same tactic against his Bruins down the road, Wooden allowed that it was possible. “But I don’t think most coaches will try it,” he added. “Too many coaches think too much of basketball to do it.”

While there was some validity to what Wooden was saying—if every game were played that way, most fans wouldn’t bother watching—his remarks were blatantly hypocritical. This was, after all, the same John Wooden who just thirteen months earlier had also ignored boos and slowed down a game in order to preserve a 9-point win at Cal. Wooden, in fact, had frequently used a stall throughout his career, most notably in 1955 when he brought UCLA’s game at Stanford to a complete standstill, prompting the
San Francisco Examiner
to publish that photograph of UCLA guard Don Bragg holding the ball under the headline, “Stall-Wart Bruins.” Yet now, after facing the same treatment from USC, Wooden was trying to have it both ways. He wasn’t saying that it was wrong to stall per se, just that it should be done in the proper manner, under proper circumstances, for an acceptable length of time. And who was the great sage deeming what was proper and acceptable? Why, John Wooden, of course.

For Boyd, it was a devastating accusation. He was a relatively unknown coach in his first year on the job, and he had darn near knocked off mighty UCLA. Yet, the most influential coach in the country had just vilified him. “It was the worst thing that ever happened to me. I got branded a staller,” Boyd said many years later. “We ran a deliberate offense with selective shooting and we made seventeen of twenty-four shots, but the L.A. media took John’s position. We weren’t stalling. We were trying to win the damn game.”

The controversy dominated the weekly writers’ luncheon that was held two days later at the Sheraton West hotel, where Wooden softened his tone but held to his opinion. “I want to make it very clear that there was no personal criticism intended and I want to apologize to Bob if he took it that way,” Wooden said. “However, if you want to hear me say I thought it was good, you’re crazy. Is it illegal? No. Is it bad for Bob to use it? No. I don’t profess to be right or wrong. I just think it’s bad for the game.”

As Wooden stepped away from the podium, he was followed by USC’s athletic director, Jess Hill. Seeing that Wooden was headed for the exit, Hill said, “I prefer you stay.” As Wooden took his seat, Hill pulled a newspaper clip from his pocket and read Wooden’s comments aloud. “There is a certain amount of accusation in that remark, and I resent it,” Hill said. “I can’t see anything that happened the other night that wasn’t good for basketball. Bob had my support in everything he did. Any team that attempts to run against UCLA is doomed for devastation. I don’t see much difference in stalling in the last four minutes of the game or at the beginning.”

Reached at home later that evening, Wooden was asked about Hill’s broadside. “I think I’d be belittling myself to comment on his remarks,” he said.

A few other coaches also jumped to Boyd’s defense. “All Wooden has to do when he beats somebody, which is all the time, is talk about his own team’s performance, compliment the efforts of his opponent and drop the subject,” Cal coach Rene Herrerias said. “I notice he didn’t have much good to say about the coaching job done by Bob Boyd. He just criticized the style of play Boyd used in the game. Wooden can’t expect us to lie down and play dead for him.” Sportswriter Dan Hruby asserted in the
San Jose Mercury News
that Wooden “has a knack for ungraciousness that is difficult to beat.… Wooden is active in the Fellowship of Christian Athletes and presents a powerful image, but opposing coaches underline that he is in a class by himself as an official baiter. He sometimes is referred to as ‘St. John’ by the coaching fraternity.”

Two weeks after the USC game, Wooden made his point in a more direct fashion. The Bruins were playing at Oregon, whose coach, Steve Belko, was one of the few coaches on the West Coast who also preferred up-tempo basketball. Having just been eviscerated by UCLA in a 34-point loss in Pauley Pavilion the week before, Belko decided he needed to try something completely different. As soon as the game got under way, he ordered his players to slam on the brakes. Like Boyd, Belko was booed by his own fans, but at halftime his Ducks trailed the Bruins 18–14.

Now it was Wooden’s turn to counter. First, he checked with his boss to make sure it was okay. Morgan gave his blessing. Then, in the locker room at halftime, Wooden told his team, “I want you to hold the ball.” The players were surprised, and more than a little confused. “We didn’t know exactly what he meant,” Shackelford said. “Did he want us to stand with the ball at halfcourt? ‘No, I don’t want you to just hold it. I want you to pass it around, but don’t shoot.’ We were a little mixed up there.”

At the start of the half, the Bruins got the ball and did as Wooden instructed. They passed it back and forth, never cutting, never shooting, over and over again. The crowd, realizing what was going on, now turned on Wooden. But he kept the stall in place, daring Belko to come out of his zone. Belko wouldn’t bite. Two minutes went by, then three, then four. Still no cutting, no driving, no shooting. Finally, after more than nine minutes had passed without either team attempting a field goal, Wooden gave his players the green light to resume their normal game. UCLA won, 34–25, to improve to 19–0.

Wooden believed that Boyd and Belko were making a mockery of the game. Now he had made a mockery of their mockery. “Their fans were so happy when they did it. I wanted to see how they’d react when we did it,” he said. “In no way did I do this because of what happened in L.A. All I am saying is that it is bad for basketball if it is used game after game. Did anybody who saw the game really enjoy what Oregon did? And what we were doing?”

Belko praised Wooden for using “fine, sound strategy.” As for his own decision to stall from the outset, Belko asked rhetorically, “How else can you possibly play UCLA and expect to beat them?” Meanwhile, Wooden’s claim that his maneuvers had nothing to do with the USC game was silly. A sports columnist for the
Oregon Journal
named Ken Wheeler called Wooden out for this falsehood. In reference to the counterculture movement that was blooming on so many college campuses, Wheeler labeled Wooden’s move “a sit-in protest of college basketball’s rules.”

The tit for tat forced everyone to adjust. Before UCLA’s next game, one referee quipped that he had been “studying the rule book more this week than I have in the last five years.” Wooden wanted to use a stall the next night against Oregon State, but the players, specifically Mike Warren, talked him out of it. From there, the games unfolded in a more normal manner, but opposing coaches continued to try every tactic they could think of. In advance of his team’s game at UCLA on February 25, Washington State coach Marv Harshman had his players use tennis rackets, stools, and paddles during practice in an effort to simulate Alcindor’s length. It didn’t exactly work: Alcindor scored 61 points in a 22-point UCLA victory. Wooden thought the world of Harshman, a fellow Christian whom Wooden would later call “one of the nicest people the Lord ever made.” That may have been true, but on that night, at that moment, Harshman was just another poor soul who happened to be standing in John Wooden’s way.

*   *   *

The win over Washington State clinched yet another conference title, and so the only remaining question was whether the Bruins would finish the regular season undefeated. They answered by sailing through their final three games by an average of 31 points, including a road sweep at Stanford and Cal that prompted Wooden to tweak his friends up north. “In my 19 years of coaching at UCLA, it was my most enjoyable weekend in the Bay Area, and that includes summers,” he said.

While Wooden floated above the fray and dictated how his players should act on the court, it was up to Jerry Norman to do most of the advance scouting as well as help the players manage their academics and work through personal issues. He and Wooden enjoyed a productive relationship, but it was hardly a close one. Norman was especially careful not to get on Nell’s bad side. He had seen how she reacted angrily when Fred Hessler interviewed a coach on his radio show who had disparaged Wooden in the past. “You had to be careful around Nell. She could be very reactive to anything she thought might be negative,” Norman said. “It goes back to the whole West Coast–Midwest thing. They didn’t trust anybody from out here. I don’t recall going out after a game with them at any time. He was very close with his family, and he would go home or get a sandwich or something. But there was no social relationship between us.”

By the time the Bruins arrived in Corvallis, Oregon, for the NCAA tournament’s West Regional, the public was beginning to appreciate that this was not just a one-man team. Alcindor’s fellow sophomores, particularly Shackelford and Allen, had complemented him well. The machine was lubricated by Warren, the lone junior starter, whom Boyd called “the equal of any guard ever to play at UCLA.” Articles mentioning Warren invariably referred to his good looks and Hollywood aspirations, but it was his midwestern upbringing that made him the ideal UCLA point guard. He and Wooden were connected by their South Bend roots. Like Wooden, Warren was smart, tough, and respectful. Unlike Wooden, he was an extrovert and a first-class communicator, whether it was with doe-eyed coeds, his fellow teammates, or his taskmaster of a coach. Wooden frequently called Warren the smartest player he had ever coached. It figures that Wooden would ascribe this label to a black player, while he would refer to a white one, Keith Erickson, as his most gifted athlete.

In their first tournament game, the Bruins disemboweled Wyoming by 49 points and then elbowed their way past a scrappy University of the Pacific team by 16. The season culminated in Louisville, where UCLA was scheduled to play No. 7 Houston in the national semifinals. Houston coach Guy Lewis had a nine-man rotation that featured a talented six-foot-five guard in Don Chaney plus six more players who were six foot six or taller—including six-foot-nine junior forward Elvin Hayes, one of the few post players in the country who was even remotely of Alcindor’s caliber.