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Wooden still commands respect
Woods took the headlines, but Wooden stole the hearts. Or that's the judgment of your correspondent, who attended Tuesday night's Sports Illustrated Sportsman of the Year gala at Manhattan's Beacon Theatre. Former UCLA coach John Wooden sat with stillwater patience through nearly 2 1/2 hours of taping for the nationally televised show, which will air on CBS at 10 p.m. Eastern on Thursday night. He endured the blue routines of a comic named Eddie Brill. He sat through double-entendre-laced byplay between Shaquille O'Neal and Dustin Hoffman. The crowd, from the tuxedoed swells in the orchestra seats to the bridge-and-tunnel rowdies in the nosebleeds, roared, few aware of the sensibilities of the man who never uttered an oath stronger than "gracious sakes alive."
And then Wooden joined them. He's 90 now, his face pruned, his posture stooped. Wooden needed a cane to mince his way across the stage, where Walton and Abdul-Jabbar jointly presented him with Sports Illustrated's Legacy Award as his 10 championship banners, airlifted in for the occasion, fell like a quilt from the rafters. Standing in front of that testimonial tapestry of greatness, he appeared to be a walking museum piece. He did, anyway, until he opened his mouth. Clear and firm, his voice shushed and re-seated the applauding, standing crowd, as if the coach were still commanding a practice back at Pauley Pavilion. He was immensely proud, he said. Humbled, too. But: "You and I know why I'm here. The reasons are right behind me. "All those who played guard, raise your hands." Allen, Bibby and Goodrich did so. Hazzard -- confined to a wheelchair as a result of a stroke -- tried his best. "All those who played forward, raise your hands." Johnson and Meyers, Wicks and Wilkes, all identified themselves. "If we'd only had a center, we might have won a championship or two." Cut! Great! Love ya, baby! The producers had their moment. Music came up. Voiceovers began thanking sponsors. Handlers materialized to trundle Wooden off the stage. But wait ... what was this? The old man wasn't leaving. He was moving back to the microphone. Who did he think he was? "Can I have another take?" he wanted to know He had spotted another one of his former players in the audience, an Olympic track gold medalist who had started for the Bruins basketball team in 1958-59. " Rafer Johnson, " Wooden said. "The greatest athlete of them all. He should have been up here with the rest." Should have been, but wasn't. Despite Wooden's heartfelt recognition of Johnson, and gentle reproach of his hosts, that amplification probably won't make the final show. Editors will have to shoehorn Tuesday night's many moments into a window of 44 minutes, if you account for commercials. Wooden won those seven straight NCAA titles, and 10 in 12 years, between 1964 and 1975, when college kids were least likely to heed some homily-spouting parson apparently transported from early-century Indiana. Over the course of the evening, I was reminded how this fuddy-duddy had his greatest success during America's most rebellious times. Simple truths have a power profound enough to confound fads. A great teacher helps his pupils form precepts in their own minds, and in their own idioms. That he got through to Walton, Kareem, et al., as well as he did resounds in this comment from Walton, who recalled the high those UCLA teams achieved in the NCAA tournament, when they were at their best: "We were like a rock-and-roll band, climaxing at the end of a great concert." Fitting, then, that Wooden's moment should have taken place on the stage of one of New York's most popular pop-music halls. Beacon Theatre; beacon honoree. Sports Illustrated senior writer Alexander Wolff is author of the forthcoming
Called for Traveling: A Year in the Country of Basketball. He can be
reached at awolff@si.timeinc.com.
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