* * *
School resumed at UCLA in the fall of 1958 on a somber note. Over the summer, Red Sanders had died from a sudden heart attack at the age of fifty-three. Sanders had become a larger-than-life character, earning the nickname the “Wizard of Westwood” as he rode his innovative single-wing offense to two Rose Bowl victories and a share of the 1954 national championship. Sanders was also quoted as saying “Winning isn’t everything, it’s the only thing” more than a decade before that phrase was first attributed to Vince Lombardi. The differences between Wooden and Sanders were illustrated by the circumstances of Red’s untimely demise: at the moment his heart gave out, he was sharing a motel bed with a prostitute.
Though there was much speculation that Wooden and Sanders were at odds with each other (the
Los Angeles Herald Examiner
once wrote that Wooden “suffered in silence” because he despised Sanders so much), Wooden always insisted that he liked Sanders. While Nell and John no longer had their eyes on returning to their native Midwest, they also never immersed themselves in the Los Angeles social scene. They were in love with each other and content to keep to themselves. “You never heard them arguing. They were a great pair,” Eddie Sheldrake said. “After games, we might go get something to eat with Coach’s brother and his wife, and maybe Eddie Powell, but beyond that there were very few others that I remember them socializing with. That wasn’t their thing.”
The squad that Wooden coached during the 1958–59 season was even bigger and slower than the year before. The roster included the tallest player the school had ever recruited, Warnell Jones, a six-foot-nine sophomore center from Conroe, Texas. Jones was black, earnest, and soft-spoken. He was also ill equipped to play up-tempo basketball. Another big sophomore, six-foot-six forward Kent Miller, was much more athletic, but he frustrated Wooden with his lack of effort.
Rafer Johnson was slated to play a bigger role during his senior year, though he would be a bit distracted by his election to student body president during the off-season, marking another proud chapter in UCLA’s racial history. Johnson was not the only two-sport athlete who was going to be featured on Wooden’s team that season. Bill Kilmer, a six-foot junior transfer from Citrus Junior College, had been one of the top basketball scorers in Los Angeles as a high school player. He was also a starting tailback on UCLA’s football team, and he would eventually play seventeen years as an NFL quarterback for the San Francisco 49ers, New Orleans Saints, and Washington Redskins.
The only full-time starter who had returned to UCLA from the previous year was Walt Torrence, a six-foot-three senior forward. By that time, Torrence had become a full-fledged star, twice being named to the All-PCC second team. He was also a distinguished high jumper on the school’s track team.
UCLA fought past a stagnant early start to put together five straight wins, including two over USC in Pan-Pacific Auditorium by a combined 6 points. The two games against Cal in early February would once again go a long way toward deciding who would win the final PCC title. Cal entered the first game leading the nation in defense by allowing just 47.8 points per game. The Bruins’ offense was averaging 63.1 points. Mal Florence wrote in the
Los Angeles Times
that “something or someone has to give,” but he made clear which side he believed would do the giving: “California’s style of play, as coached by Pete Newell, has always proved bothersome to John Wooden’s Bruins.”
The game wasn’t decided until the waning seconds, when Cal guard Al Buch sank a ten-foot jumper to deliver the Bears to a 60–58 win, giving Cal sole possession of first place. Two weeks later, in Berkeley, the Bears handled UCLA with far more ease, winning by 13 points to send the Bruins to their fourth consecutive loss.
Newell’s streak over Wooden now stood at five and counting. If Wooden found that bothersome, he didn’t let it show. “There was not one occasion when John Wooden would not come into the locker room and congratulate each one of us,” Bob Dalton said. “He was as gracious in losing as he was in winning.”
UCLA managed to complete its final PCC season by winning its last five games, but the Bruins’ 10–6 league record (16–9 overall) left them tied for third place for the second straight year. Cal, meanwhile, finished 14–2 to take the league crown. The Bears had a dominant defensive center in six-foot-ten Darrall Imhoff, whom Wooden often compared to Bill Russell. But they were essentially a no-name outfit. As the NCAA tournament got under way, the Bears were ranked eleventh in the country, and
Sports Illustrated
ranked them the fifteenth-best team in the sixteen-team field.
Cal did, however, have the luxury of playing a virtual home game for the NCAA’s Western Regionals at the Cow Palace in San Francisco, where the Bears rolled over Utah and Saint Mary’s by a combined 38 points. That sent them to Louisville, Kentucky, for a national semifinal showdown against No. 5 Cincinnati and the consensus best player in America, Oscar Robertson, who averaged nearly 33 points per game and was en route to winning the second of his three national scoring titles. Robertson, however, had never gone up against a defensive tactician like Newell. He scored just one field goal in the entire second half and ended up with 19 points as Cal prevailed, 64–58.
The following night, the Bears played in their school’s first-ever NCAA championship game. Their opponents were the West Virginia Mountaineers, who were led by yet another transcendent talent, six-foot-two junior Jerry West, a lithe, crafty guard who had averaged 26.6 points and 12.3 rebounds during the regular season. West was coming off a 38-point, 15-rebound performance in the semifinal against Louisville, and in the final he lifted West Virginia to a 10-point halftime lead. Cal, however, came back and clipped the Mountaineers, 71–70, to take the title.
It spoke volumes about the perceived inferiority of Cal’s talent that West, who finished with 28 points and 11 rebounds in the final, was named the tournament’s Most Outstanding Player, even though his team lost. Newell’s Bears also turned out to be the last all-white team to win an NCAA championship. When it was over, the players lifted Newell onto their shoulders and celebrated.
Cal was just the second western team in the past fifteen years to have won the NCAA tournament. But unlike that other western champ, San Francisco, the Bears did not possess a dominant player like Bill Russell. It was clear that the reason they had won was because Pete Newell was their coach. UCLA fans took notice. Wooden had left Indiana State partly because he wanted to avoid expectant fans, but now, for the first time, he was about to face real scrutiny. While Newell was riding his players’ shoulders in Louisville, Wooden was once again back in Los Angeles, where fans and sportswriters were starting to wonder whether their team would ever enjoy such a glorious view.
* * *
The good news for John Wooden heading into the 1959–60 season was that his three years in purgatory were finally up: his Bruins were finally eligible again to compete in the NCAA tournament.
The bad news was that it would be even tougher for them to get there.
In the wake of the PCC’s demise, Cal, UCLA, USC, Stanford, and Washington formed a conference called the Athletic Association of Western Universities, or AAWU. That meant the Bruins would now have to play the reigning NCAA champs three times during the regular season instead of two. Moreover, for the first time since coming to UCLA eleven years before, Wooden found himself in a rebuilding situation. Eight lettermen had departed from the previous year’s third-place team, leaving him to admit before the start of the 1959–60 season that these Bruins would be “the most inexperienced team since I’ve been at UCLA.”
As if that weren’t enough, Wooden pulled a muscle in his leg during one of the first practices while demonstrating something to his players. He hobbled on crutches for several weeks. The India Rubber Man, now less than a year from turning fifty, was losing his elasticity in middle age.
Bolstering UCLA’s talent would be Jerry Norman’s first priority after he was promoted to varsity assistant in the summer of 1959. It would not be an easy task. Norman was shocked to discover that the program’s entire recruiting budget was $500. His other task was even more difficult. He was supposed to help UCLA get past Pete Newell. “Maybe you can figure out what he’s doing,” Wooden told Norman. “I know I can’t.”
With the local high school well running dry, Wooden once again brought in six junior college transfers. Three had played for Long Beach City College, which had just won the Southern California junior college championship. The trio included Bob Berry, who at five-foot-ten was the smallest player on UCLA’s roster. Berry had served three years in the military before enrolling at Long Beach, so by the time he entered UCLA as a junior, he was twenty-five years old. Wooden had personally tried to convince Berry to come to UCLA the year before, but Berry wanted to stay at Long Beach for one more year.
There were also a few former high school players joining the varsity that fall. The most prominent was Gary Cunningham, a fluid six-foot-five sophomore forward who had averaged 20.7 points and 11.5 rebounds for the freshman team. An all-city player at Inglewood High School, Cunningham had originally committed to play for Newell at Cal, but Jerry Norman continued to pursue him. To Newell’s chagrin, Cunningham decided to switch to UCLA because it would allow him to remain close to home.
In many ways Cunningham was the model Wooden player—clean-cut, fastidious, mannerly, serious about the game. And he was as pure a shooter as Wooden had seen. Wooden called Cunningham “one of the most dedicated boys to the game of basketball I have ever coached.” Cunningham’s classmate, Johnny Green, a six-foot-three forward, recalled that Cunningham “did not mess around. He was probably the only one who really worked hard that first half hour of practice.”
Like most of his teammates, Cunningham revered Wooden. Unlike most of his teammates, he thought nothing of stopping by Wooden’s office unannounced for a chat—about school, basketball, life, whatever. “I always found that if I wanted to talk to Coach, the door was open,” Cunningham said. “A lot of guys were afraid of him, but I actually went to him rather than assistants, and we established a relationship. I don’t know why. I just felt like he’s my coach and I should go talk to him.”
Wooden’s new varsity assistant, however, did not feel the same way. Norman liked Wooden—the tension that had existed during Norman’s playing days was long gone—but he found his boss to be strangely distant. Some of it could be attributed to their age difference, but Norman sensed it was mostly because John and Nell still preferred to socialize with people who shared their tastes, their values, and especially their background. “They just had this distrust of people who were not from the Midwest,” Norman said. “They kind of stayed in their own little world.”
At least Wooden’s team would finally have a decent place to play. The “hole” that had been dug next to USC’s campus had become the Los Angeles Sports Arena, the finest indoor facility in a city that was fast becoming a sports haven. The Brooklyn Dodgers had moved to Los Angeles the year before, and the NBA’s Minneapolis Lakers would arrive the following summer. The pro franchises competed with UCLA for spectators, but Wooden recognized that there was a lot of upside in having Los Angeles develop into a pro sports town. It meant more people would want to live there, which meant the local high schools would be filled with more potential recruits.
Of course, building an arena and filling it with fans were two different things. When UCLA and USC played the first basketball game at the Sports Arena on December 1, 1959, the city greeted the historic occasion with a yawn. Just 6,880 people showed up to watch UCLA eke out a 47–45 win on two late free throws from Bob Berry. Three days later, a slightly larger crowd saw UCLA take on Adolph Rupp’s Kentucky Wildcats. It was a big game, and Wooden looked for every edge. He harangued the referees so mercilessly that he was assessed a technical foul after Kentucky took its first lead with under six minutes to play. Kentucky won, 68–66, but Rupp was unimpressed by the turnout. “This is the first time in three years that Kentucky has played to an empty seat,” he huffed.
After a pair of UCLA wins at home over Santa Clara, the Bruins were set to host Oklahoma State, the former Oklahoma A&M. The Cowboys were still coached by Henry Iba, whose teams had won two NCAA championships in the 1940s by playing eye-glazing, slow-it-down basketball. Between Iba and Newell, Wooden seemed to be losing his argument that racehorse basketball was the way to go. After the Bruins lost, 52–48, Wooden lamented, “We allowed Oklahoma State to play its game and you can’t do that.”
The Bruins’ annual late-December midwestern swing began with a visit to Purdue. It was the first time Wooden had taken his UCLA team back to his alma mater in West Lafayette, and it was not a pleasant experience as Purdue beat his Bruins, 75–74. The trip wasn’t enjoyable for Bob Berry, either. He had started against Purdue and thought he played well, but the next day he was not in the starting lineup against Butler. Instead, Berry came off the bench to score 4 points as the Bruins lost their third game in a row.
Over the next few weeks, Berry’s role continued to diminish until he was barely getting into the game. He was upset, but mostly he was confused. Wooden had expended considerable effort to convince Berry to come to UCLA, but he had demoted him without a word of explanation, just as he had done to Willie Naulls and many others. “Coach Wooden was supposed to be this great communicator, but he didn’t even communicate to me why I’m sitting on the bench. It wouldn’t have taken much time,” Berry said. “I mean, Wooden brought me to UCLA, not one of the assistants. If he had just explained to me that he had a sophomore who he wanted to give more experience to, or whatever, I would have accepted it. But he never said one thing about why he put me on the bench. Maybe he felt he didn’t have to.”
Berry was learning what many past and future Bruins would learn. John Wooden was an intelligent coach and a classy sportsman, but he was not the kind of man who went out of his way to help his young players sort through their feelings of rejection. For all they could tell, Wooden had no clue how they felt. It’s not that he didn’t care. Quite the contrary. In his own mind, his own heart, Wooden loved his “boys,” but he had grown up in an environment where love was to be demonstrated, not spoken; felt, not expressed. Now, he was dealing with young men who had grown up in a much different time and place. They had emotional needs he did not, or would not, understand. It was a shame, because Wooden had great command of the English language, yet he vastly underestimated the power of his own words.