Back from the Dead Read online

  Sadly, the Dons slowed the game to a snoring crawl, and we scored only 54 points in the entire game. And not because it was a terrific defensive struggle. Although we still won handily, it’s a wonder that anybody was even able to stay awake, what with the methodical nature of playing not to win but rather to lose by less.

  We were now off to the Final Four in St. Louis, where our first opponent was Indiana, whose young head coach seemed to spend most of his time yelling, cursing, screaming, and drawing attention to himself. The newspapers said his name was Bobby Knight. Coach Wooden never said a word about him, or anything else to do with his—or any other—team. Even with Coach’s deep roots in his home state. Even with the decision he made years earlier to pass on an opportunity to play at Indiana, which was much closer to his home in Martinsville, as he headed off to Purdue. Even though the whole thing had to have been extremely personal for him.

  Our team stayed in a typically awful motel in St. Louis, right on the expressway, with terrible rooms and food, furniture built for preschool children, and everything else simply miserable. When you go to college at UCLA, it’s not like the road trips are exotic jaunts where you get out and see the best the world has to offer. The fun was the team, and the ultimate challenge was to play well and win big on the road.

  This was also the first year that the NCAA played its championship game on a Monday night. The Final Four had always been staged with two semifinals on Thursday night and the third-place game and the final on Saturday afternoon. But with the recent success of the NFL’s Monday Night Football, the wheels were turning and the cash registers churning, and everything was changing—fast. UCLA was by now a huge national draw, having won seven straight NCAA championships, and nine of the last ten. The Monday-night final would be a ratings bonanza for NBC.

  Indiana had some nice players and played an entertaining team game with an assertive offensive style, but they clearly didn’t have the talent to give us any real trouble. The game saw both teams go on major scoring runs, ours coming first and making it look like we were putting the game away early on, only to have the Hoosiers come back with a faux run at us late. But there was no substance to their charge, other than to wake us up on our way to another run for the roses.

  After the game, as we were walking off the court at the majestic and historic Checkerdome, our athletic director, J. D. Morgan, who often sat on the bench next to Coach Wooden during the games—just to make sure everything turned out right—fell into lockstep with me as we made our way to the locker room. He asked me if everything was okay, indicating that things didn’t seem right with my contribution and performance that night.

  I told J. D. that I was having trouble sleeping at our motel, that my room was right on the expressway and the trucks rolling by kept me up all night, and that I could not fit in my bed, nor could I stand up in my room.

  He didn’t say anything—at first.

  Later, as we were leaving the arena, he came up to me and said that he had a very nice room with a very nice big bed at a very nice hotel in which he was staying in downtown St. Louis, and that he wanted me to take his room so that I could maximize my chances of helping the team do its job. I readily agreed to the switch, and it didn’t take me long to gather my few things from the motel and head over to the much nicer place where J. D. was staying. I didn’t tell anybody, and I can’t say that J. D. did, either. The upgrade was vastly superior, in every way.

  So now it’s Sunday night, and I’m in my new room and in bed early, what with the big game and everything the next night. As I’m sound asleep, and it’s really late, I’m jarred awake by the sounds of somebody at my door, trying to get in. I always lock my hotel room doors as tightly, securely, and as many times as possible. But this attempted intrusion was persistent, and seemingly not going away. Finally it all stops, and I try to go back to sleep, but I’m pretty awake now, and maybe a bit concerned—it’s the middle of the night.

  A few minutes later the phone rings, and I pick it up.

  There’s nobody on the other end of the line, and now I’m worried, maybe even scared, but the door is triple-locked—at least.

  Five minutes or so later, there’s a very loud rap on the door, with the snap command, “ST. LOUIS POLICE. OPEN THE DOOR . . . NOW!”

  I climb out of bed, throw on a pair of shorts, and peek out. Indeed, there is a squad of uniformed and armed St. Louis policemen outside the door and down the hall. This is not going well.

  There were some other people out in the hall as well. Turns out that when the hotel folks saw J. D. leaving his room to give it to me, they thought he was checking out. So they sold it to somebody else, and the guy was just getting in for the night, very late, and he thought the room was now his.

  When I explained what was going on, the police put their guns down. But now I had no room, as the guy was insistent that it was his. What could I say or do? The police and the hotel people asked me to leave. So I quickly gathered up my stuff, and soon found myself standing alone in the hotel lobby at three o’clock in the morning or so. And there are all these NCAA people, coaches, and fans just getting in themselves. And they’re all looking at me, standing there all by myself with my things at my feet, and the championship game countdown now under way, and they have the most puzzled and confused look on their faces. What’s he doing here? At this hour? All by himself? With all his stuff? Standing in the hotel lobby? There’s the game tonight!

  Lost, alone, and up against it, I called J. D. He was livid, but remained calm. He told me not to do or say anything, but to go and wait in a corner of the lobby. A scant few minutes later, as the parade of coaches, officials, and fans kept rolling in and looking at me with amazement, some little guy from the hotel came up to me with the most terrified look on his face. He had just spoken to J. D., and I can only imagine how that conversation went. Anyway, the guy said that he was really sorry about what was going down here, but what with the championship game going on, all the hotels were sold out; but they did have one room left that he would let me stay in.

  All I wanted was to go to bed. We had a game, it was getting closer and closer, and the Count was on.

  So I grab my stuff and follow this guy, who waddles over to some special and isolated elevator. He looks awful, I’m dead tired, and I need to get some sleep. The whole thing is a disaster. He pulls out a special key, and up and away we go.

  He soon delivers me to the nicest, and biggest, hotel suite I had ever seen. And playing for UCLA, we saw a lot of very nice things.

  I told the guy, who was incredibly apologetic, that this would be fine, that I would be able to make do with this, as my biggest problems were all immediately solved. I had a nice place to sleep, and we now had a better than perfect place for our upcoming championship postgame team party. YEAH! Here we go!

  I slept most of the rest of the day and then met the team at the Checkerdome. The guys were relieved; they hadn’t seen much of me and didn’t know where I was. But they were happy to learn that I had already found the spot for the postgame party.

  We played Memphis State that night, who had been able to beat Providence in their Saturday semifinal, a game that turned when the Friars’ Marvin Barnes hurt his leg and couldn’t continue. Memphis had some real players: Larry Kenon, Larry Finch, Ronnie Robinson, and Bill Laurie. Their coach, Gene Bartow, seemed very dignified and calm, the complete opposite of the madness that we saw on the Indiana sideline during our Saturday game.

  The game went back and forth early, very much an up-and-down affair that everybody was enjoying immensely. The Memphis State defensive strategy was one we had not seen before. Coach Bartow had correctly decided that Greg Lee was the key to our team, and his game plan was to shut Greg down. So their defense tried everything they could to deny his passing lanes and vision. They were wholly unsuccessful.

  Years later, when Jamaal was on the Lakers and they acquired a certain new player, everybody was all excited about how talented and transformative this young Magic John
son would be for the NBA. The media kept raving about what a great passer and creative playmaker Magic was—which was, and is, true. All the Laker players were constantly pestered into finding new ways to say how great Magic was, all the time. One day they pressed the always superquiet and reserved Wilkes: “OK, Jamaal, what’s it like to play with a guy who can pass the ball the way Magic does? We’ve never seen anything like it.”

  Jamaal, in his inimitable and low-key style, simply shrugged and said, “Hey, I played with Greg Lee!” And he walked off.

  That was Greg, and he was why our team was so good. He made it all work, fluidly, selflessly, and effortlessly. When you play against a top passer, the worst thing you can do defensively is try to double-team the ball. That just leaves the scorers wide open. But that’s what Memphis State did. They tried to close down Greg, and that just fed to our strengths. And our most basic strength was to take what the defense gave us.

  And so the game went on, at a very high level of offensive efficiency for both teams. It was tied at the half, but I had three fouls already, as my guy Kenon, the self-proclaimed Dr. K, was on a roll. As the second half started, I drew my fourth foul, and figured that it was time to stop playing defense entirely, to make sure that I stayed in this really fun championship game.

  Greg stayed perfect with his delivery, outsmarting the Memphis defenders every time, and Larry Hollyfield was in a complete passing zone as well, as all the defensive pressure on the perimeter kept allowing Jamaal and me wide-open opportunities wherever we wanted them.

  We kept running the same options, and the Tigers stayed—inexplicably—with their strategy. We never let up, and Memphis State ran out of whatever they had. During one of the time-outs midway through the second half, when we were scoring literally every time down the court by doing exactly the same thing every time—either Greg or Holly throwing it in to me for easy baskets—and pulling away on the scoreboard, Greg asked Coach Wooden if we could please do something else for a while. I think Greg was getting bored with how easy it all was. Coach just looked at him quizzically and asked, “Why?” Then he sent us back out for more of the same.

  We never looked back or slowed down, ultimately winning by 21 points. When they totaled up what Greg and Holly had been able to do, the record books had been rewritten, with 23 assists between them. Greg had an NCAA Championship game record 14 assists, and Holly had a career-high 9. When Larry Hollyfield gets nine assists in a game, you know it is a historic day. They would have had more, but the refs called me for dunking four times, when all I did was what I always did around the rim. I would simply lay the ball in the basket, always underhanded. But the refs ruled that my hands were inside the cylinder, and therefore those four baskets were disallowed.

  In the postgame comments, with a lot of the focus on my numbers, which were big and record-setting, Coach Wooden was quick to point out to me—as he did up until the day he died—that, “Walton, I used to think that you were a good player . . . until you missed that one shot.”

  Anyway, we won, and we were on our way to what was next—which for us was the postgame party at my very nice, incredibly spacious hotel room. I had told the cheerleaders. They were already on their way.

  As we were getting dressed in the locker room, Coach came up to me and said that there were some people who wanted to see me. He said they were from the American Basketball Association (ABA) and wanted to talk to me about joining their professional league. I wanted no part of any of it. I told him, “Come on, Coach. I love UCLA. I still have a year left here. I love playing for you, and with these guys. I don’t want to do this. We just won the championship. I want to be with the guys. Come on, Coach. Please, don’t ask me to do this.”

  But he was adamant and said, “Bill, you owe them the courtesy of a meeting.”

  Darn it!

  Finally, and very reluctantly, I said, “OK. Have them meet me at my hotel room.” And I wrote down the name, address, phone, and room number of the suite. I knew them by heart now, as I had already given them to the cheerleaders and the guys on our team. He seemed shocked when he saw that I had not written down anything pertaining to the team’s motel. J. D. must not have told him. I certainly hadn’t.

  So I get up to the room first, and as I’m getting things in order, there’s a knock on the door. A few guys, all dressed up in their suits and ties, come into this massive luxury suite, looking around the palace in awe. They’re carrying packages, briefcases, and suitcases, apparently on the move. After some brief introductions, they laid out their pitch, explaining that they wanted me to skip my senior year at UCLA and come join the ABA. They said they were prepared to do whatever it took to get the deal done. And that included giving me ownership of my own franchise, which would be located in L.A.; they would get Jerry West to be the coach or general manager, or both; and I could personally select any other players from the ABA to fill out our roster—with the exception of Dr. J, who they said they needed to keep in New York to maintain competitive balance and keep the whole thing interesting. Then they opened up the suitcases, which were filled with cash, and said that all this would be mine, and that there was plenty more of it to be had. Money, they said, was not going to be a problem in getting this deal done.

  I looked across at them and shook my head. I thanked them for their kindness, generosity, and vision. Then I asked them to just look around at what I had here. As their eyes roamed the expansive and luxurious hotel suite, with a wave of my hand I said to them, “Look at how great things are for me here at UCLA, and how wonderfully we’re treated. How can you guys possibly make my life any better?”

  They might have tried to argue, but I made it clear there was no way that they were going to get me to change my mind.

  I never gave any of it a first thought.

  I played for UCLA and Coach Wooden. And J. D. was always there to make things right. What more could you ask for in life?

  If only I could have stayed forever.

  As the suits were leaving, taking everything that they had brought in with them, the guys on the team, and the cheerleaders, too, were on their way in. Everybody really liked my room. I can’t say how many of them left before dawn, but we did all make the flight home.

  * * *

  Back at school, the business guys would not let it go. I wanted to play ball and go to school. With the season over, I had a lot of catching up to do on all fronts. But I could not get away from all the guys who were certain that I was ready to bolt Westwood for the pros—the NBA as well as the ABA. Strangers would wait in Dykstra Park or on Bruin Walk, or sometimes in the classrooms. I don’t know how they found me. I didn’t have a phone, and I spent most of my time—when I wasn’t in the library or in church—moving around on my bike. But find me they would, and they’d eventually fall in beside me and start it all up. Bill, you won’t believe the great deal I’ve got for you . . . !

  Sometimes I said “No” too easily, like the time I vetoed a whole basketball tour and cultural exchange trip to China with the UCLA team. J. D. was setting it all up and held a meeting in his office where he explained what a historic opportunity it was, since China had been closed to most of the world for a very long time. Just two years earlier, a team of Ping-Pong players had been the first Americans to set foot in China since 1949. Nixon went there in 1972. And now it was going to be our turn.

  Except midway through the meeting where J. D. was laying it all out, I raised my hand and said I didn’t want to go. A lot of people immediately got very disappointed and very mad, but somehow that was it for the trip. Nobody tried very hard to change my mind, and in retrospect I wish Coach, J. D., Ernie Vandeweghe, or somebody had pulled me aside and told me I was crazy. Years later, Coach would just shake his head if the topic ever came up.

  I was a twenty-year-old college student fleeing from everyone who was trying to make me into anything other than a twenty-year-old college student. So instead of China that summer, I did what I always did: I got another summer job, quit as soon as
I had enough money, then took off on a trip.

  Coach Wooden always preached the importance of taking time off from the game during the summer so that the body, mind, spirit, and soul could rejuvenate. The previous summer I had meandered through the West and up into and across Canada. This summer I decided to head up to Canada again—except this time on my bike, all by myself.

  I scored some gear from some friends and set out, knowing that it was a long way, and that time was short. I had never done anything like it before, and just three days in, I knew it was not going to work. The things that I love about my bike are the same things I love about playing basketball—speed, maneuverability, quickness, freedom, adventure, lightness afoot, figuring it out, chasing it down and all. But here I was loaded down with so much gear tied to my bike, carrying everything I’d need for my plan to camp out for several months along the winding road.

  So at the end of this three-day line, I made some collect calls from the pay phones out there. I was rescued by some friends and switched to a new plan to spend the rest of the summer going to school at Sonoma State College in Northern California. Some of my friends from high school, Jim and Laurie, were already living there full-time, and they had a nice little scene, which seemed ideal for me to slide right into. I could stay with them, go to school from 9 a.m. till noon, then come home for a quick lunch before heading out on my bike until nightfall—every day.

  I had an all-around grand time, riding my bike everywhere. One day after school I was riding down the country road to our little house when I began to feel a painful sensation down the front of my right leg. Looking down, I saw this big nasty bee relentlessly pumping his venom into my leg. Thinking nothing of it, and without breaking the power train home, I reached down and flicked the bee off me, which took some force, as it was quite dug in and well attached. The trip from school to Jim and Laurie’s place was no more than a few miles, so I was home quickly. I wheeled right into the house, where nothing was going on; we all had different schedules.