She’s Voice, Spirit Behind Hazzard

If there is a woman behind every successful man, UCLA basketball coaches, whose need for backup is somewhat larger, ought to be entitled to a harem.

But no, one woman it’s going to have to be for Walt Hazzard, who has just the one for the job.

She is sitting seven rows behind him in Pauley Pavilion, a petite, vivacious mother of four.

If she didn’t have her kids with her, you could still identify her easily enough. She’s the one on her tiptoes in the bleachers screaming, “Let’s go Bruins!” and “Defense!” and “Block out!” Should the opposing center as much as place a toe in the free-throw lane, she’ll switch to “Three seconds!” loudly enough to be heard by the center, all three officials and the Pacific 10 supervisor in Walnut Creek.

“There’s a lady here,” confides Jaleesa Hazzard, looking around the bleachers, smiling. “I’m really making her life miserable. I’m really sorry for that. . . .

“But this isn’t just an evening out for us. This is business. I take it seriously.”

This is Mrs. Walt Hazzard, Jaleesa, the former Patsy Shepard of Washington, D.C., Hayward, Calif., and undergraduate days at Westwood, the new first lady of the UCLA men’s basketball program. In the manner of the other First Lady in Washington, D.C., Jaleesa’s involvement goes beyond old norms, even at UCLA.

John Wooden used to give Nell a little wave before every game. Walt Hazzard has carried on entire running conversations with his wife. At BYU, for instance, the action started getting out of hand and Hazzard kept turning to Jaleesa, sitting in the stands above him and saying, “This is going to be a war!”

Whatever it was, the Bruins lost it, although they all lived to fight another day.

“A lot of people ask me that,” Jaleesa says. “Am I afraid for him? No, I’m not afraid. I just want to see him do well. I wanted to see him do well at Chapman. . . .

“When he called me last spring and said, ‘I think they’re going to offer me the head coaching job,’ I said, ‘Take it. What are you, crazy?’ ”

This is not a timid woman. At that time, recruits with good options had started using Bruin scholarship offers as a street Rorschach. If you accepted, there was some question as to the number of oars you had in the water. But the view from Chapman College, where her husband was coaching basketball, teaching gym and driving the van on game days, was something else for these Bruins for life.

“I was the first black pompon girl at UCLA,” Jaleesa says. “Which my husband always tells me was because of him. Not that I was talented. . . .

“The first time we met, I was a freshman and he was a junior. I was walking up Bruin Walk and he was standing up there at the top, talking to Arthur Ashe. He had on a letter sweater, some kind of thongs sandals and a wild kind of Bermuda shorts, and he said: ‘That’s the girl I’m going to marry.’

“I think he was just showing off. I said, ‘Not if you don’t wear socks.’ ”

Did she know who he was?

Kind of. “But Fred Slaughter had always told me he was the star,” she says.

Was she very much into sports?

Kind of.

“I was a cheerleader all through high school,” Jaleesa says. “When you’re a cheerleader, you either get into sports or you look like a jerk out there. You never know when to say, ‘Hold the ball.’ ”

By her sophomore year, Patsy was a song girl, which gave her a chance to see more of Walt, who achieved the rarity for a scholarship basketball player of doubling as a cheerleader during football season. “He likes to cheer for people,” Jaleesa says now. “And he said he liked the seats.”

They became engaged right after that basketball season, in which the Bruins went 30-0 and won the national championship on which the dynasty was founded. Walt became an All-American. Patsy became a May bride. Walt became a territorial draft choice of the Lakers.

He went to the Olympics in Tokyo. She stayed home and sat up until 4 a.m. to watch him and his U.S. teammates in the Opening Ceremony. “When they came around the stands, they had these white LBJ hats and white bucks and blazers,” she says. “It seemed so funny. Luke Jackson in that stuff.”

Walt lasted three years with the Lakers before they traded him to Seattle, where he became a star. For one year, until Seattle traded him to Atlanta. In his second season, he quarterbacked a team with Lou Hudson, Joe Caldwell and Bill Bridges to a first-place finish ahead of the Lakers. The next year, the Hawks drafted Pistol Pete Maravich, and the next, the Hazzards were gone again.

“Eventually, we got a chance to go to Buffalo for a lot of money,” Jaleesa says. “Believe me, it takes a lot of money to get you to go to Buffalo.”

Now they were the Abdul-Rahmans. While in Atlanta, the Hazzards became Muslims. Walt became Mahdi, though he now uses his given name professionally. Patsy became Jaleesa.

“I think our parents have supported just about everything we’ve done,” Jaleesa says. “Our parents had questions and we had answers.”

After Walt’s pro career trailed away, they worked their way back to Los Angeles and the Crenshaw neighborhood where they still live. Walt finished work on his bachelor’s degree and coached youth ball.

Their family grew. Yakub, 20, now attends Stanford. Jalal is 14, Khalil 10 and Rasheed 8. Jaleesa went to work for the first time, as a manufacturer’s rep, selling gourmet food and gifts for a company named Rosalie and Friends, started by an old Atlanta friend. “I’m like the first friend,” she says.

All their sons, except Yakub, the family Cardinal, attend Bruin games, sitting beside their mother, but with more cool. Jaleesa handles the big cheering for all of them.

“Back when he was a pro, I did get in trouble, yelling at referees,” Jaleesa is saying. “Which ones? Mendy Rudolph. The Hawks’ wives all used to sit on the floor and he said I was inciting the group.

“I knew Mendy. When you play 10 years, you know everybody. He used to laugh when he’d see me and say, ‘You’re so nice here.’ I’d say, ‘So are you. Then you put on that striped shirt and I don’t know what happens to you.’ ”

But another tipoff approaches and Jaleesa is getting her game face on. Maybe the family that shouts together can keep from getting shipped out together. This ain’t no party. This ain’t no disco. This ain’t no fooling around.