As Good as It Got

J.R. Henderson and Charles O’Bannon will be playing against each other this week in the Japanese league playoffs. Toby Bailey calls from the Athens airport, on his way to Poland and another basketball game in a dreary league far away from UCLA. George Zidek has a doctor’s appointment near his home in the Czech Republic. His knee is swollen again. Surgery is likely.

Tyus Edney is starring at point guard for a team based in Rome. Kris Johnson plays in Lebanon, but that’s only a sidelight. He is most proud of the documentary film he is working on.

Ed O’Bannon’s knees have forced him to the sidelines but not away from the sport. He is a volunteer coach at a high school outside Las Vegas. Cameron Dollar coaches too, but at a higher level. He tells stories of “the play” to the Washington Huskies, with whom he is an assistant for Lorenzo Romar, who was an assistant at UCLA when Dollar played there 10 years ago.

And Jim Harrick has gone from hero to pariah to a spectator at college games, his opinion valued by the Denver Nuggets, for whom he scouts. He sits down near the floor at Pauley Pavilion sometimes, receiving handshakes and back slaps from UCLA fans who vividly recall Edney’s 4.8-second dash to glory but whose memories of Harrick’s transgressions have been softened by time.

It has been 10 years since the Bruins last won an NCAA basketball championship, the 11th in their history. A decade since three weeks of March Madness magic in Westwood:

There was the drama of Edney’s game-winning basket at the buzzer to beat Missouri, 75-74, in the second round; the dunk fest in a 102-96 dash past Connecticut in the West Regional final; the grueling 74-61 semifinal victory over big, tough Oklahoma State and its massive center, Bryant “Big Country” Reeves; and, in the final, an 89-78 race past Arkansas and Coach Nolan Richardson’s “40 minutes of hell” defense, even though Edney, his wrist injured in the semifinal, played less than three minutes.

Dollar, a quiet sophomore, replaced Edney in the final and provided a steadying hand to the frazzled Bruins. Ed O’Bannon, a fifth-year senior whose career had almost been ended by a serious knee injury four years earlier, had 30 points and 17 rebounds. Bailey, a freshman guard, roared through open lanes for dunks and layups and scored 26 points and took nine rebounds.

“It changed my life,” Ed O’Bannon says of the championship.

“It was a defining moment for me,” Bailey says.

Ten years after their triumph, team members and coaches tell stories of camaraderie and comeuppance, of determination and desperation, and of stardom followed by peripatetic professional careers that have taken them all over the world -- and proved to each how much they love the sport.

“I think,” says Ed O’Bannon, the 1995 college player of the year, “that what we’ve all done since is a testament to how much basketball means to us. None of us have been big stars in the pros, but everybody is still involved in the game. That championship gave me everything. It made me what I am.”

UCLA received an NCAA tournament bid Sunday, its first since 2002. There have been no championships -- or even another Final Four appearance -- since that 31-2 team from 1994-95.

There have, however, been many tough times and plenty of turmoil.

Nineteen months after leading the Bruins to their only national championship without legendary coach John Wooden in charge, Harrick was dismissed over irregularities in his expense account from a meal where recruits were entertained.

Athletic director Peter Dalis replaced Harrick with assistant Steve Lavin, who took UCLA to the Elite Eight in 1997 (with Harrick’s players) and to the Sweet 16 four of the next five years, but was fired two years ago after the Bruins went 10-19, their first losing season in 55 years.

Coach Ben Howland is now in his second year of trying to rebuild a program that bottomed out with back-to-back losing seasons and an 11-17 record a year ago.

“I think when you look at the landscape,” Ed O’Bannon says, “it’s not so surprising UCLA hasn’t won another title. It’s a different world now and it’s hard to repeat. Maybe that’s why our season stays so fresh for people.”

What stays fresh for most is the memory of a particular 4.8 seconds against Missouri in a second-round NCAA tournament game at Boise.

The Bruins, ranked No. 1 and carrying a 15-game winning streak, were top-seeded in the West but trailed eighth-seeded Missouri, 74-73, after Julian Winfield had scored with less than 10 seconds left.

“Coach Harrick called a timeout with 4.8 seconds to go,” center Zidek recalls by telephone from his home near Prague. “Our hopes of going further in the tournament seemed over. Coach was trying to stay calm but it seemed like it was over.”

Zidek, who plays for Nymburk in the Czech pro league, had come to UCLA not knowing of the Bruins’ great basketball history -- and the expectations that accompanied that tradition. “I came from Eastern Europe; it had just become free,” he says. “I was 18 years old. I really didn’t have an idea of college basketball. But the pressure increased the more I was at UCLA. You couldn’t help it, you looked up at all the national championship banners, you must realize the pressure.”

Zidek was among three senior leaders on the 1995 team, along with Ed O’Bannon and Edney. It was the seniors, Romar says, who “created a wonderful team dynamic that I still try and re-create.”

Romar says Zidek led through his work ethic and Edney with his confidence. Having played only 66 minutes as a freshman, Zidek worked in the gym before and after class almost every day. Edney believed there was no play he couldn’t make.

And Ed O’Bannon led with his will and loud voice.

“Two examples,” Romar says. “First day of practice, Ed runs sprints and every time he hits the line, he’s shadow boxing.

“Another example. Ed would not let anyone get full of themselves. In the second game of the season we played Kentucky and Toby Bailey only played about eight minutes. Bailey was a pretty highly regarded freshman. We won the game and in the locker room everybody was hugging, jumping around, celebrating. Except Toby. He was kind of pouting in the corner. Ed wasn’t too happy. He went over to Toby and said, ‘We win as a team. We lose as a team. You join us in the celebration.’ Toby got up and did.”

It was against Kentucky, in the inaugural game of the Wooden Classic in Anaheim, when the Bruins let it be known they were contenders. Another freshman, Henderson, made two free throws with less than a second left to give UCLA an 82-81 victory.

“Everybody remembers the Tyus Edney game,” Henderson says from Japan. “I remember those two free throws. Those were my highlights.”

The core of the 1995 team is scattered around the world now.

Henderson, 28, and Charles O’Bannon, 30, Ed’s younger brother, will be playing against each other this week in the Japanese league playoff semifinals. Henderson stars for the Aisin Seahorses. O’Bannon plays for the Toyota Alvarks -- and don’t ask him what an Alvark is.

Edney, 32, whose bobbing, weaving, end-to-end mad dash to glory is immortalized annually around this time as television commemorates tournament “buzzer beater” highlights, is a well-regarded guard for a team in Rome. He has three children -- daughters 6 and 3, who live with their mother in Los Angeles, and a year-old son -- and a fiancee. He has played for Sacramento, Boston and Indiana in the NBA, in Italy and Lithuania in Europe.

Zidek, 31, who suffered his knee injury just last week, says his second proudest moment in basketball after the national title came when Charlotte made him the 22nd pick in the NBA draft. He has played in Lithuania, Slovenia, Turkey, Germany, Poland and Spain. “There’s always a shortage of big men,” said Zidek, a 7-footer, “and that’s lucky for me.”

Bailey, 29, plays for AEK Athens in the Greek A-1 league. He remembers being awed at the reception the Bruins received 10 years ago.

“On the bus coming home from the airport, people were standing on rooftops,” Bailey says. “We were going to movie premieres. There was an announcement about special guests in the theater and we’re all looking around to see who could be so special, we’re looking at Wesley Snipes and Will Smith in front of us and then they announced we were the special guests. There’s been nothing like it since.”

Kris Johnson, son of former UCLA great Marques Johnson and brother of current Bruin Josiah Johnson, plays in Lebanon and is working on a documentary film recounting the fight for democracy in the formerly war-torn Middle Eastern nation.

“Man, we’re everywhere,” Charles O’Bannon says. “It’s weird.”

His brother Ed, 32, is an assistant coach at Green Valley High in Henderson, Nev., and is also beginning a career as a car salesman.

By his count, Ed says, “I’ve played for 12 different teams in at least six countries and for 15 different coaches” since he left UCLA. He was chosen by the New Jersey Nets in the first round of the 1995 draft, but his bad knees had slowed him too much to ever be an NBA star.

In fact, none of the championship Bruins thrived in the NBA. “But we have nothing to complain about,” Bailey says. “Tyus is a king over here in Europe. We’ve had successful careers and we make good money.”

And then there is the coach.

Harrick lives in Rancho Santa Margarita with Sally, his wife of 44 years. He has eight grandchildren -- “my Elite Eight,” he calls them -- and plays golf regularly with the fathers of the O’Bannons and Edney. He does some scouting for the Nuggets and thinks UCLA senior Dijon Thompson will make a fine shooting guard in the NBA.

The 1995 championship was a “beautiful moment,” Harrick says. His college coaching career “was a marvelous run for me.” He adds that he has love for everybody at “UCLA, Pepperdine and Rhode Island,” places where he was head coach.

He says nothing about Georgia, though. Two years ago this month, Harrick resigned as coach of the Bulldogs in the wake of a scandal involving academic irregularities that included his son and assistant coach, Jim Jr.

And maybe UCLA’s most recent championship is not as celebrated now, its last championship coach accommodated uneasily instead of enthusiastically when he comes to Pauley Pavilion, because Harrick’s scandals are more recent than his triumphs.

“Coach Harrick doesn’t get his due,” Ed O’Bannon says. “I think it was a travesty when UCLA fired him and I don’t think people understand what a great coach he was. Push all that other stuff aside and look at the court. Out there, coach was the best. And so were we.”