Post by tmax on Nov 12, 2021 20:19:14 GMT -8
I posted this on the bruinzone site as well.
I don’t want to. I have to’: The real story behind John Wooden’s decision to retire
31 MAR 1975: UCLA coach John Wooden during the NCAA Photos via Getty Images Men's National Basketball Final Four championship game against Kentucky held at the Sprots Arena in San Diego, CA. UCLA defeated Kentucky 92-85 for the title.
By Seth Davis Nov 12, 2021 86
It was quite the one-two punch. A pair of Hall of Fame coaches, leaders of college basketball’s most storied rivalry, making their revelations two months and 11 miles apart. “I no longer feel I am the right man for the job,” now-former Tar Heels coach Roy Williams said at his retirement news conference on April 1. “It’s time,” soon-to-be-former Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski admitted on June 3 as he revealed this would be his final season. Those twin announcements rocked the sport, but for surprise, drama, impact and narrative, they paled in comparison to the spectacle that unfolded in San Diego on March 29, 1975.
That was the date and site of the NCAA Tournament’s semifinals. The nightcap pitted top-ranked UCLA against No. 4 Louisville. Adding to the game’s high stakes was the fact that Louisville’s head coach, Denny Crum, was a UCLA alum who had spent eight years as John Wooden’s assistant. The game more than lived up to the hype. Crum’s Cardinals built two seven-point leads in the first half and led by four with 1:06 to go, but UCLA clawed back and forced the game into overtime. With 20 seconds on the clock and Louisville leading by one, Cardinals guard Terry Howard, who had been 28 of 28 on free throws that season, went to the line for a one-and-one opportunity and a chance to put the game away. He missed. UCLA got the rebound, and with two seconds remaining sophomore center Richard Washington buried a baseline jumper to deliver the Bruins a thrilling 75-74 victory.
Amid the bedlam, the two coaches, teacher and pupil, shook hands. Wooden, 64, was delighted his team had won, but it pained him that it came at Crum’s expense. By the time Wooden reached his team’s locker room, he was totally drained. He complimented the players on how they performed and said he thought they had a great chance to beat Kentucky for the title two days later.
Then, as the players hushed, Wooden landed his haymaker. No matter the outcome, Monday would be his final game. “I’m bowing out,” he said. “I don’t want to. I have to.”
Wooden then proceeded to the interview room to meet the press. He made a few remarks about the game, and then let the rest of the world in on his secret. “I’ve asked (UCLA athletic director) J.D. Morgan to release me from my coaching duties at UCLA,” he said. “I have done that for a number of reasons I’d rather not go into. I just told the players.”
Those words unleashed a mad scramble, and it set the table for the most dramatic culmination in the 36-year history of the NCAA Tournament. Wooden’s impending retirement was naturally the dominant topic at the Sunday press conference featuring the game’s two coaches. (Kentucky coach Joe B. Hall, who took over for Adolph Rupp three years before, suggested he should be UCLA’s next coach because “there’s no sense destroying two people.”) The reverberations of Wooden’s decision were amplified by the manner in which he said he reached it — namely, that it came to him like a thunderbolt as he was walking off the court following the win over Louisville.
The championship tilt between UCLA and Kentucky didn’t carry quite the same competitive tension as the Bruins’ game with Louisville, but the circumstances rendered it historic. UCLA had an 82-75 victory by the time it was over, and John Wooden had his 10th NCAA championship. Wooden lived another 35 years, and during that time he was often asked to recount the events that concluded his career. The story was always the same. In his book “Wooden: A Lifetime of Observations and Reflections On and Off the Court,” he describes in vivid detail how disquieted he felt after shaking hands with Crum. He dreaded going into the interview room to speak to the press for the first time since he could recall. Wooden then wrote: “While I was walking to the dressing room, I thought, ‘If this is bothering me now, after a beautiful game like this, well, it’s time to get out.’ I just knew it at that instant.”
Wooden gave the same version during a 2000 interview with ESPN. “Two minutes before, I had no intention of retiring for two more years,” he said. “Gary Cunningham about fainted. Mr. Morgan, my director, spent most of the night trying to talk me out of it, but it came that quickly. No one had any idea, even my wife.” He repeated that description for HBO’s 2007 documentary, “The UCLA Dynasty.”
The tale had all the elements of powerful storytelling. A legendary coach, a landmark decision, made in the spur of the moment, shocking his boss, his assistants, even his own spouse. There was just one problem.
Not a word of it was true.
Wooden didn’t win his first NCAA Tournament game until his 14th season at UCLA. Two years later, he won his first title. The pressure he felt to reach that summit was nothing compared to his pressure to stay there. This is why Wooden often said he wished that all his good friends in coaching would win an NCAA championship. “And those I don’t think highly of,” he quipped, “I wish they would win several.”
By the time the 1974-75 season started, UCLA had won nine championships. Each triumph set the bar higher. In the rare instances when UCLA lost a game, Wooden was besieged with questions about what went wrong. If his Bruins won too much, as was the case during their epic 88-game win streak from 1971-74, they were accused of hurting college basketball with their dominance. Wooden was self-driven but thin-skinned, and he felt every cut. He had a heart attack in December 1972, and as the seasons wore on he had increasing difficulty sleeping. And his wife was a mess.
The 1973-74 season was especially trying. UCLA’s win streak was snapped at Notre Dame in January, and a month later the Bruins dropped back-to-back games at Oregon and Oregon State. In the semifinals of the NCAA Tournament, they blew a seven-point lead with 3:27 to play in overtime and lost to NC State to end their championship streak at seven.
Afterward, Wooden was uncharacteristically noncommittal when reporters asked if he would return for another season. He was due to turn 64 the following October. That was one year shy of UCLA’s mandatory retirement age, but there was no question the school would scuttle that rule if Wooden wanted to keep going. Wooden’s wife, Nell, was adamant it was time to quit — “What more does my husband have to prove?” she lamented — and it didn’t help that after UCLA’s win over Kansas in the 1974 third-place game, Nell went to a local hospital complaining of chest pains.
After taking a month to think it over, and after checking in with his own doctor, Wooden decided he would return to UCLA for one more season, and then retire. He told very few people of his plans, for fear it would adversely impact recruiting. Wooden informed his boss, athletic director J.D. Morgan, as well as the team’s radio broadcaster, Fred Hessler. He also told his top assistant, Gary Cunningham, who Wooden knew would be a candidate to replace him.
Beyond that, Wooden shared his secret with very few people. One of them was Kansas coach Ted Owens, whom Wooden told during lunch one day that summer while Owens was visiting friends in Los Angeles. Owens was surprised Wooden confided in him since they weren’t that close, but he kept his promise not to share the information. “I honored that,” Owens told me when I interviewed him for my book, “Wooden: A Coach’s Life.” “I never told anybody.”
At least the expectations would be a little more reasonable for Wooden’s final season. With Bill Walton gone, the Bruins dropped all the way to No. 2 in the AP’s preseason ranking. They had two of the country’s top forwards in Dave Meyers and Marques Johnson, but the overall roster was a far cry from what UCLA had had in the past. Johnson also started the season weakened from a summertime bout with hepatitis. Still, when UCLA won its first 12 games, it was clear this team would be in the title hunt again.
As Wooden went about his business, Morgan quietly went about his. He wanted Wooden’s successor to be in place by the time the team played its last game. Morgan favored Cunningham, but though Cunningham was only 35 years old, he had seen the burdens that weighed on Wooden and had no desire to carry them forward. Cunningham mulled it over for two months, and then informed Morgan he was not interested.
That sent the AD scrambling. Crum was considered by many to be the most likely successor, but Morgan thought Crum was too rough around the edges and wouldn’t fit with UCLA’s pristine brand. That also ruled out another prominent candidate, Jerry Tarkanian, who was in this second year at UNLV. So Morgan set his sights on a coach who no one else had thought about, Illinois’ Gene Bartow. Morgan was impressed with the way Bartow guided his Memphis State team when it lost to UCLA in the 1973 NCAA Championship game, and he especially liked the reputation for integrity that had earned Bartow the nickname “Clean Gene.”
Bartow was shocked when Morgan called. Citing his new five-year contract at Illinois, he told Morgan he couldn’t possibly accept. Eventually, Morgan convinced him to agree to an interview. On Feb. 9, Bartow secretly flew to Los Angeles, met with Morgan for two hours over lunch in Santa Monica, and then flew home. He told Morgan he would think about it, but he could already feel himself getting to yes.
Morgan did not inform Wooden of his maneuverings. He figured the coach had enough to worry about. Even as Wooden was leading UCLA toward yet another Pac-8 title, Wooden was beset by many of the same demons. He slept less and less, which meant his daily morning walk, which he had been taking ever since his heart attack, was starting earlier and earlier. Before the regular-season finale at USC, Wooden pulled aside Trojans coach Bob Boyd, his longtime rival, to let him know this would be the last time they would coach against each other.
Wooden had been able to coach his team without having to answer a lot of questions about when he would retire. That changed on March 8, when an enterprising columnist for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer broke the news. “The public announcement won’t come until mid-April, but John Wooden won’t return as head coach at UCLA next year,” the columnist wrote. “Several sources up and down the coast have told me of Wooden’s pending retirement.”
The columnist’s name? George Raveling, the head coach at Washington State. Raveling wrote a regular column for the paper, and though his reporting was spot on, his presentation was not fully honest. Raveling didn’t have several sources, he only had one, but it was a good one. He and Bartow had become close friends, and a few weeks beforehand Bartow had let Raveling know what was happening. Bartow gave Raveling the go-ahead to publish his scoop as long as he protected his source. The story created quite a stir and prompted Morgan to call Raveling to demand he reveal his source. When Raveling refused, Morgan convinced the Pac-8 commissioner to reprimand Raveling publicly.
Raveling’s report put Wooden in an uncomfortable position. He could admit he had been untruthful all those times he assured folks he hadn’t made a decision, or he could keep up the ruse until the tournament was over. He chose the latter. “I’ve said it before and I can say it again,” he said. “I’ve made no decision about retiring next season yet.”
The NCAA Tournament began with a field that had just been expanded to include 32 teams. UCLA didn’t exactly romp its way to the semifinals — it needed overtime to beat Michigan in the first round, and it squeaked by Montana by three points in the second — but once again the Bruins found themselves back on the game’s biggest stage. Bartow still had not officially accepted the job, but he flew to San Diego knowing that he was likely to tell Morgan he wanted it. Meanwhile, Wooden was having a harder time keeping the lid on things. During a gathering on Friday night, he was surrounded by four L.A. sportswriters who wanted to know if the rumor was true that he planned to retire as soon as UCLA played its last game. “It might be,” Wooden conceded. “I won’t want to lie. I would announce it to my players first and I haven’t yet. I wouldn’t be surprised if a decision came this weekend. It’s been a troubled time. It’s not what I’d really want. If I did it, it would be for the best.”
The following morning, two L.A. papers reported that Wooden would resign whenever UCLA’s season ended. Wooden realized he could no longer hold the story at bay, so he broke the news after his team’s win over Louisville. It was an immense relief, and though Wooden was concerned it would distract his players from their remaining task at hand, that proved to be unfounded. When he walked out of the locker room that night, the team’s senior captain, Andre McCarter, brought the team together and said, “There’s no way that we are going to let this man lose.”
It was a shame Wooden felt compelled to leave the game, because he was still as good as he had ever been. The 1974-75 UCLA Bruins were less talented than any of his previous championship teams, yet he had expertly steered them to another title. Still, he and his wife knew that he could never do enough, or win enough, to keep people happy. That was driven home to him late Monday night, when a wealthy alumnus shook Wooden’s hand and said, “Congratulations, Coach. You let us down last year, but this made up for it.”
You let us down last year. It was an obnoxious remark, but that man did Wooden a favor. If there was any doubt in his mind, the alum had just extinguished it. Wooden knew at that moment that he had made the right choice. It was time to bow out.
Cunningham did not know Wooden was going public with the news, and he wasted no time removing himself from consideration. Crum was taken completely by surprise. He had no idea that Wooden had long ago decided to retire, much less that Morgan had already tapped his replacement. Wooden also was surprised to learn of Bartow’s hiring, and though he wished the job had gone to Crum, he still lent his public support. When Bartow was introduced as UCLA’s next coach three days after the championship win over Kentucky, Wooden stood by his side.
Over the next 35 years, until his death in 2010, Wooden was a quiet but commanding presence in the city and across the sport. He was generous with his time with coaches, former players, fans and reporters alike, and he made a comfortable living as a speaker and author. He dispensed his homilies and wisdom with good cheer, and he proved himself to be a masterful storyteller.
In the case of his retirement decision, perhaps Wooden was too masterful. As soon as he stepped away, Wooden added his embellishments. It wasn’t the timing of his decision that came to him as he walked off the floor after the Louisville win, but the fact of it. He claimed his wife was shocked, his AD tried to talk to him out of it, and his assistants were caught completely off-guard. Not true, not true, not true. The question is, why? Why would Wooden take a story that was already compelling and spin it into fiction?
Alas, I never got to ask Wooden this question. By the time I pieced together what really happened while working on his biography, he had passed away. The most charitable explanation is that memory is a tricky thing. Wooden also added a twist to an oft-told story about how his Indiana State team first integrated the 1948 NAIB tournament. The Sycamores had been invited into the field, but the team had a Black player named Clarence Walker, and the NAIB did not allow Black players to participate. The NAIB rescinded the rule, which led to Walker becoming the first Black player to compete in a national postseason basketball tournament. Many decades later, Wooden claimed that it was his refusal to play without Walker that forced the NAIB to change its rule, but Walker’s diary, as well as the public record at the time, leaves no doubt that Indiana State had accepted the invitation and planned to leave Walker behind. It was only at the insistence of some schools in New York that the NAIB made the change. There were many, many instances in Wooden’s life when he took admirable, principled stands on behalf of his Black players, but that was not one of them.
There were other ways in which Wooden stretched the truth over the years. His assistant from his early years, Jerry Norman, noticed that Wooden would tell reporters that the coaches requested five letters on every prospect before deciding whether to recruit him. According to Norman, that was never the case. Wooden and Walton both often recounted in colorful detail the argument they had in Wooden’s car after Wooden bailed his center out of jail following his arrest during a Vietnam War protest. It was a fine tale, except Wooden was actually speaking at a coaching clinic in Portland at the time. Nor was Wooden ever quite able to close the loop on his explanation as to why he allowed prominent booster Sam Gilbert to lavish gifts on his players in violation of NCAA rules. Wooden claimed the NCAA looked into Gilbert’s activities during the years when Wooden was coach and found nothing. No such full-scale investigation took place, although the NCAA later penalized UCLA for violations Gilbert committed after Wooden retired, and ordered the school to disassociate Gilbert from the program.
At least in that instance Wooden was committing an act of self-preservation. The motivations behind his whopper about his retirement decision is harder to discern. We’ll never know for sure what Wooden’s intent was, or even how aware he was that he was relating something that hadn’t happened. Perhaps the simplest explanation is that, like many high achievers, Wooden possessed a good old-fashioned streak of insecurity. It motivated him, drove him, and lifted him to great heights — but it also tormented him, inhibited him, and drove him from the game before he was ready to leave. Over the last three-and-a-half decades of his life, Wooden was approached by more people than he could count who asked him to regale them with tales from his glory days. Wooden complied graciously, eloquently, and most of the time accurately. And every once in a while, he didn’t let the facts get in the way of a good story.
I don’t want to. I have to’: The real story behind John Wooden’s decision to retire
31 MAR 1975: UCLA coach John Wooden during the NCAA Photos via Getty Images Men's National Basketball Final Four championship game against Kentucky held at the Sprots Arena in San Diego, CA. UCLA defeated Kentucky 92-85 for the title.
By Seth Davis Nov 12, 2021 86
It was quite the one-two punch. A pair of Hall of Fame coaches, leaders of college basketball’s most storied rivalry, making their revelations two months and 11 miles apart. “I no longer feel I am the right man for the job,” now-former Tar Heels coach Roy Williams said at his retirement news conference on April 1. “It’s time,” soon-to-be-former Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski admitted on June 3 as he revealed this would be his final season. Those twin announcements rocked the sport, but for surprise, drama, impact and narrative, they paled in comparison to the spectacle that unfolded in San Diego on March 29, 1975.
That was the date and site of the NCAA Tournament’s semifinals. The nightcap pitted top-ranked UCLA against No. 4 Louisville. Adding to the game’s high stakes was the fact that Louisville’s head coach, Denny Crum, was a UCLA alum who had spent eight years as John Wooden’s assistant. The game more than lived up to the hype. Crum’s Cardinals built two seven-point leads in the first half and led by four with 1:06 to go, but UCLA clawed back and forced the game into overtime. With 20 seconds on the clock and Louisville leading by one, Cardinals guard Terry Howard, who had been 28 of 28 on free throws that season, went to the line for a one-and-one opportunity and a chance to put the game away. He missed. UCLA got the rebound, and with two seconds remaining sophomore center Richard Washington buried a baseline jumper to deliver the Bruins a thrilling 75-74 victory.
Amid the bedlam, the two coaches, teacher and pupil, shook hands. Wooden, 64, was delighted his team had won, but it pained him that it came at Crum’s expense. By the time Wooden reached his team’s locker room, he was totally drained. He complimented the players on how they performed and said he thought they had a great chance to beat Kentucky for the title two days later.
Then, as the players hushed, Wooden landed his haymaker. No matter the outcome, Monday would be his final game. “I’m bowing out,” he said. “I don’t want to. I have to.”
Wooden then proceeded to the interview room to meet the press. He made a few remarks about the game, and then let the rest of the world in on his secret. “I’ve asked (UCLA athletic director) J.D. Morgan to release me from my coaching duties at UCLA,” he said. “I have done that for a number of reasons I’d rather not go into. I just told the players.”
Those words unleashed a mad scramble, and it set the table for the most dramatic culmination in the 36-year history of the NCAA Tournament. Wooden’s impending retirement was naturally the dominant topic at the Sunday press conference featuring the game’s two coaches. (Kentucky coach Joe B. Hall, who took over for Adolph Rupp three years before, suggested he should be UCLA’s next coach because “there’s no sense destroying two people.”) The reverberations of Wooden’s decision were amplified by the manner in which he said he reached it — namely, that it came to him like a thunderbolt as he was walking off the court following the win over Louisville.
The championship tilt between UCLA and Kentucky didn’t carry quite the same competitive tension as the Bruins’ game with Louisville, but the circumstances rendered it historic. UCLA had an 82-75 victory by the time it was over, and John Wooden had his 10th NCAA championship. Wooden lived another 35 years, and during that time he was often asked to recount the events that concluded his career. The story was always the same. In his book “Wooden: A Lifetime of Observations and Reflections On and Off the Court,” he describes in vivid detail how disquieted he felt after shaking hands with Crum. He dreaded going into the interview room to speak to the press for the first time since he could recall. Wooden then wrote: “While I was walking to the dressing room, I thought, ‘If this is bothering me now, after a beautiful game like this, well, it’s time to get out.’ I just knew it at that instant.”
Wooden gave the same version during a 2000 interview with ESPN. “Two minutes before, I had no intention of retiring for two more years,” he said. “Gary Cunningham about fainted. Mr. Morgan, my director, spent most of the night trying to talk me out of it, but it came that quickly. No one had any idea, even my wife.” He repeated that description for HBO’s 2007 documentary, “The UCLA Dynasty.”
The tale had all the elements of powerful storytelling. A legendary coach, a landmark decision, made in the spur of the moment, shocking his boss, his assistants, even his own spouse. There was just one problem.
Not a word of it was true.
Wooden didn’t win his first NCAA Tournament game until his 14th season at UCLA. Two years later, he won his first title. The pressure he felt to reach that summit was nothing compared to his pressure to stay there. This is why Wooden often said he wished that all his good friends in coaching would win an NCAA championship. “And those I don’t think highly of,” he quipped, “I wish they would win several.”
By the time the 1974-75 season started, UCLA had won nine championships. Each triumph set the bar higher. In the rare instances when UCLA lost a game, Wooden was besieged with questions about what went wrong. If his Bruins won too much, as was the case during their epic 88-game win streak from 1971-74, they were accused of hurting college basketball with their dominance. Wooden was self-driven but thin-skinned, and he felt every cut. He had a heart attack in December 1972, and as the seasons wore on he had increasing difficulty sleeping. And his wife was a mess.
The 1973-74 season was especially trying. UCLA’s win streak was snapped at Notre Dame in January, and a month later the Bruins dropped back-to-back games at Oregon and Oregon State. In the semifinals of the NCAA Tournament, they blew a seven-point lead with 3:27 to play in overtime and lost to NC State to end their championship streak at seven.
Afterward, Wooden was uncharacteristically noncommittal when reporters asked if he would return for another season. He was due to turn 64 the following October. That was one year shy of UCLA’s mandatory retirement age, but there was no question the school would scuttle that rule if Wooden wanted to keep going. Wooden’s wife, Nell, was adamant it was time to quit — “What more does my husband have to prove?” she lamented — and it didn’t help that after UCLA’s win over Kansas in the 1974 third-place game, Nell went to a local hospital complaining of chest pains.
After taking a month to think it over, and after checking in with his own doctor, Wooden decided he would return to UCLA for one more season, and then retire. He told very few people of his plans, for fear it would adversely impact recruiting. Wooden informed his boss, athletic director J.D. Morgan, as well as the team’s radio broadcaster, Fred Hessler. He also told his top assistant, Gary Cunningham, who Wooden knew would be a candidate to replace him.
Beyond that, Wooden shared his secret with very few people. One of them was Kansas coach Ted Owens, whom Wooden told during lunch one day that summer while Owens was visiting friends in Los Angeles. Owens was surprised Wooden confided in him since they weren’t that close, but he kept his promise not to share the information. “I honored that,” Owens told me when I interviewed him for my book, “Wooden: A Coach’s Life.” “I never told anybody.”
At least the expectations would be a little more reasonable for Wooden’s final season. With Bill Walton gone, the Bruins dropped all the way to No. 2 in the AP’s preseason ranking. They had two of the country’s top forwards in Dave Meyers and Marques Johnson, but the overall roster was a far cry from what UCLA had had in the past. Johnson also started the season weakened from a summertime bout with hepatitis. Still, when UCLA won its first 12 games, it was clear this team would be in the title hunt again.
As Wooden went about his business, Morgan quietly went about his. He wanted Wooden’s successor to be in place by the time the team played its last game. Morgan favored Cunningham, but though Cunningham was only 35 years old, he had seen the burdens that weighed on Wooden and had no desire to carry them forward. Cunningham mulled it over for two months, and then informed Morgan he was not interested.
That sent the AD scrambling. Crum was considered by many to be the most likely successor, but Morgan thought Crum was too rough around the edges and wouldn’t fit with UCLA’s pristine brand. That also ruled out another prominent candidate, Jerry Tarkanian, who was in this second year at UNLV. So Morgan set his sights on a coach who no one else had thought about, Illinois’ Gene Bartow. Morgan was impressed with the way Bartow guided his Memphis State team when it lost to UCLA in the 1973 NCAA Championship game, and he especially liked the reputation for integrity that had earned Bartow the nickname “Clean Gene.”
Bartow was shocked when Morgan called. Citing his new five-year contract at Illinois, he told Morgan he couldn’t possibly accept. Eventually, Morgan convinced him to agree to an interview. On Feb. 9, Bartow secretly flew to Los Angeles, met with Morgan for two hours over lunch in Santa Monica, and then flew home. He told Morgan he would think about it, but he could already feel himself getting to yes.
Morgan did not inform Wooden of his maneuverings. He figured the coach had enough to worry about. Even as Wooden was leading UCLA toward yet another Pac-8 title, Wooden was beset by many of the same demons. He slept less and less, which meant his daily morning walk, which he had been taking ever since his heart attack, was starting earlier and earlier. Before the regular-season finale at USC, Wooden pulled aside Trojans coach Bob Boyd, his longtime rival, to let him know this would be the last time they would coach against each other.
Wooden had been able to coach his team without having to answer a lot of questions about when he would retire. That changed on March 8, when an enterprising columnist for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer broke the news. “The public announcement won’t come until mid-April, but John Wooden won’t return as head coach at UCLA next year,” the columnist wrote. “Several sources up and down the coast have told me of Wooden’s pending retirement.”
The columnist’s name? George Raveling, the head coach at Washington State. Raveling wrote a regular column for the paper, and though his reporting was spot on, his presentation was not fully honest. Raveling didn’t have several sources, he only had one, but it was a good one. He and Bartow had become close friends, and a few weeks beforehand Bartow had let Raveling know what was happening. Bartow gave Raveling the go-ahead to publish his scoop as long as he protected his source. The story created quite a stir and prompted Morgan to call Raveling to demand he reveal his source. When Raveling refused, Morgan convinced the Pac-8 commissioner to reprimand Raveling publicly.
Raveling’s report put Wooden in an uncomfortable position. He could admit he had been untruthful all those times he assured folks he hadn’t made a decision, or he could keep up the ruse until the tournament was over. He chose the latter. “I’ve said it before and I can say it again,” he said. “I’ve made no decision about retiring next season yet.”
The NCAA Tournament began with a field that had just been expanded to include 32 teams. UCLA didn’t exactly romp its way to the semifinals — it needed overtime to beat Michigan in the first round, and it squeaked by Montana by three points in the second — but once again the Bruins found themselves back on the game’s biggest stage. Bartow still had not officially accepted the job, but he flew to San Diego knowing that he was likely to tell Morgan he wanted it. Meanwhile, Wooden was having a harder time keeping the lid on things. During a gathering on Friday night, he was surrounded by four L.A. sportswriters who wanted to know if the rumor was true that he planned to retire as soon as UCLA played its last game. “It might be,” Wooden conceded. “I won’t want to lie. I would announce it to my players first and I haven’t yet. I wouldn’t be surprised if a decision came this weekend. It’s been a troubled time. It’s not what I’d really want. If I did it, it would be for the best.”
The following morning, two L.A. papers reported that Wooden would resign whenever UCLA’s season ended. Wooden realized he could no longer hold the story at bay, so he broke the news after his team’s win over Louisville. It was an immense relief, and though Wooden was concerned it would distract his players from their remaining task at hand, that proved to be unfounded. When he walked out of the locker room that night, the team’s senior captain, Andre McCarter, brought the team together and said, “There’s no way that we are going to let this man lose.”
It was a shame Wooden felt compelled to leave the game, because he was still as good as he had ever been. The 1974-75 UCLA Bruins were less talented than any of his previous championship teams, yet he had expertly steered them to another title. Still, he and his wife knew that he could never do enough, or win enough, to keep people happy. That was driven home to him late Monday night, when a wealthy alumnus shook Wooden’s hand and said, “Congratulations, Coach. You let us down last year, but this made up for it.”
You let us down last year. It was an obnoxious remark, but that man did Wooden a favor. If there was any doubt in his mind, the alum had just extinguished it. Wooden knew at that moment that he had made the right choice. It was time to bow out.
Cunningham did not know Wooden was going public with the news, and he wasted no time removing himself from consideration. Crum was taken completely by surprise. He had no idea that Wooden had long ago decided to retire, much less that Morgan had already tapped his replacement. Wooden also was surprised to learn of Bartow’s hiring, and though he wished the job had gone to Crum, he still lent his public support. When Bartow was introduced as UCLA’s next coach three days after the championship win over Kentucky, Wooden stood by his side.
Over the next 35 years, until his death in 2010, Wooden was a quiet but commanding presence in the city and across the sport. He was generous with his time with coaches, former players, fans and reporters alike, and he made a comfortable living as a speaker and author. He dispensed his homilies and wisdom with good cheer, and he proved himself to be a masterful storyteller.
In the case of his retirement decision, perhaps Wooden was too masterful. As soon as he stepped away, Wooden added his embellishments. It wasn’t the timing of his decision that came to him as he walked off the floor after the Louisville win, but the fact of it. He claimed his wife was shocked, his AD tried to talk to him out of it, and his assistants were caught completely off-guard. Not true, not true, not true. The question is, why? Why would Wooden take a story that was already compelling and spin it into fiction?
Alas, I never got to ask Wooden this question. By the time I pieced together what really happened while working on his biography, he had passed away. The most charitable explanation is that memory is a tricky thing. Wooden also added a twist to an oft-told story about how his Indiana State team first integrated the 1948 NAIB tournament. The Sycamores had been invited into the field, but the team had a Black player named Clarence Walker, and the NAIB did not allow Black players to participate. The NAIB rescinded the rule, which led to Walker becoming the first Black player to compete in a national postseason basketball tournament. Many decades later, Wooden claimed that it was his refusal to play without Walker that forced the NAIB to change its rule, but Walker’s diary, as well as the public record at the time, leaves no doubt that Indiana State had accepted the invitation and planned to leave Walker behind. It was only at the insistence of some schools in New York that the NAIB made the change. There were many, many instances in Wooden’s life when he took admirable, principled stands on behalf of his Black players, but that was not one of them.
There were other ways in which Wooden stretched the truth over the years. His assistant from his early years, Jerry Norman, noticed that Wooden would tell reporters that the coaches requested five letters on every prospect before deciding whether to recruit him. According to Norman, that was never the case. Wooden and Walton both often recounted in colorful detail the argument they had in Wooden’s car after Wooden bailed his center out of jail following his arrest during a Vietnam War protest. It was a fine tale, except Wooden was actually speaking at a coaching clinic in Portland at the time. Nor was Wooden ever quite able to close the loop on his explanation as to why he allowed prominent booster Sam Gilbert to lavish gifts on his players in violation of NCAA rules. Wooden claimed the NCAA looked into Gilbert’s activities during the years when Wooden was coach and found nothing. No such full-scale investigation took place, although the NCAA later penalized UCLA for violations Gilbert committed after Wooden retired, and ordered the school to disassociate Gilbert from the program.
At least in that instance Wooden was committing an act of self-preservation. The motivations behind his whopper about his retirement decision is harder to discern. We’ll never know for sure what Wooden’s intent was, or even how aware he was that he was relating something that hadn’t happened. Perhaps the simplest explanation is that, like many high achievers, Wooden possessed a good old-fashioned streak of insecurity. It motivated him, drove him, and lifted him to great heights — but it also tormented him, inhibited him, and drove him from the game before he was ready to leave. Over the last three-and-a-half decades of his life, Wooden was approached by more people than he could count who asked him to regale them with tales from his glory days. Wooden complied graciously, eloquently, and most of the time accurately. And every once in a while, he didn’t let the facts get in the way of a good story.