MIRROR IMAGE? : Hazzard Struggles to Build Program of Wooden Blocks

At UCLA, in its shrine of college basketball called Pauley Pavilion, there is an enduring image of a basketball coach.

He should sit on the bench with one leg crossed over the other and look like a mild-mannered schoolteacher.

He should speak softly and carry a rolled up program. He should be like John Wooden.

“I am not John Wooden,” said Walt Hazzard, who is UCLA’s basketball coach nevertheless. And when he returns next fall for the fourth and final year of his current contract, Hazzard will reach a milestone in the post-Wooden era at Westwood.

Since Wooden retired in 1975, none of his successors has lasted as long as Hazzard will have. Gene Bartow, Gary Cunningham and Larry Brown coached at UCLA for two years each, and Larry Farmer spent three seasons there.

There will be an important meeting on campus Thursday when negotiations begin to renegotiate and extend Hazzard’s contact beyond next season, negotiations that are already becoming controversial.

Hazzard, who wants to continue coaching at UCLA in his own manner, said he also wants to project his own image.

“I am not a criminal,” Hazzard said. “I think I have an understanding of the game and our team was 25-7. Now, the dust has settled.”

But some more dust may just be getting kicked up. Hazzard’s image and that of his team have drawn increasing criticism and may very well become part of the discussion about a new contract.

Do all these images connect? There is the image of UCLA players such as Greg Foster and Dave Immel scowling when they come out of the lineup. There is the image of Reggie Miller putting his sneaker in his mouth every other time he says something.

There is the image of UCLA players getting into fights on the court. There is the image of an NCAA inquiry. And there is the image of Hazzard, one that took quite a beating this year.

“Obviously there have been some image problems,” Athletic Director Pete Dalis said. “These are the kinds of things we are working with Walt on. But I don’t think it serves anyone’s interest to discuss personality behavior in the newspapers.”

Hazzard’s coaching record was probably underrated this season. But he was chosen the Pacific-10 Coach of the Year for taking a UCLA team that was picked to finish fourth to the conference championship, a Pac-10 tournament victory and UCLA’s first NCAA tournament appearance in four years.

Along the way, though, Hazzard ran into problems:

--The NCAA and Pac-10 are investigating UCLA’s recruitment of prep star Sean Higgins.

--The Bruins got into three fights in a five-game span. Hazzard had roles in two of them, stepping in front of game officials and pushing a Louisville player and a California player out of the way to break up fights.

--Then after UCLA was eliminated by Wyoming in a second-round game, Hazzard kicked a ladder and broke a mirror near the UCLA locker room.

What else was broken? Did Hazzard also shatter, once and for all, his chances for a better public image?

“I was just very upset,” he said. “You have to learn to live with these things. I was just disappointed. I did withdraw a little bit, but there were a million things happening, all kinds of allegations flying in the air over the Sean Higgins deal.

“I’m learning,” he said. “I’ve learned some already.”

But now that it’s all over, have you mellowed?

“I am not mellow,” Hazzard said.

Wooden, to whom all UCLA coaches will forever be compared, did not want to discuss at length Hazzard or his image. Wooden did say, however, that he is opposed to the type of contract negotiations that Hazzard intends to conduct.

“I’d be a hypocrite if I didn’t tell you,” Wooden said. “I’m very much against doing anything until a contract is fulfilled. When people want to renegotiate their contracts, I’m very much against it.”

Attorney Jerry Roth, who represents Hazzard, said he would like to see a long-term agreement with UCLA.

“I would think that three years would be appropriate,” Roth said.

Dalis would not comment on whether three years would be appropriate or not.

Hazzard’s original three-year deal was extended for one year after his first season at UCLA. According to the UCLA athletic department budget, Hazzard’s base salary is $50,000, plus $13,500 in appearance fees.

The only other income Hazzard makes from his association with UCLA is through his contract with Reebok, which provides sneakers for the Bruin players.

“I think it’s in everyone’s best interest to extend his contract,” Roth said.

Although UCLA was cleared of any wrongdoing when Higgins was released from his letter of intent, the NCAA infractions committee could still come down on the school next month if it were found in violation of accepted recruiting practices. Both Roth and Hazzard said they are not pushing for a contract extension in advance of any action by the infractions committee.

“I don’t think we’re going to hear from the NCAA anyway,” Hazzard said. “I’m confident they won’t find anything.”

In what could be a related matter, however, Dalis said that the summer-jobs program for basketball players would no longer be administered by just the basketball office but will instead be shifted under the direction of the UCLA athletic department.

“That’s one of the areas you would be vulnerable in,” said Dalis, who believes that summer jobs for athletes need close monitoring to prevent problems with the NCAA.

Miller, Montel Hatcher and several former UCLA basketball players worked some summers for Steven Antebi, a stockbroker and a UCLA supporter accused by Higgins of offering him illegal inducements to sign with UCLA. Antebi denied the allegations by Higgins.

Jack Hirsch, an assistant coach with Hazzard who is also represented by Roth and seeking a similar contract extension, said he and Hazzard are only seeking security and that the NCAA is not a factor.

“That has absolutely nothing to do with renegotiating the contract,” Hirsch said.

Dalis said there are many factors taken into consideration when contracts are reviewed after each season, which he said is standard procedure at UCLA. Dalis and Charles Young, the UCLA chancellor, will decide on Hazzard’s request.

“It’s premature to say what will happen,” Dalis said. “My perceptions are going to be influenced by what other people think. I’m not God. You look at all kinds of things.”

Image will certainly be one of them. UCLA may decide whether it’s all right just to win, or whether one must win with a higher degree of class. What constitutes class is another matter. So far, on at least some levels, UCLA has shown an interest in style.

Joe Bruin, the team’s mascot, was disciplined after he showed up at a game as Rambo carrying a water rifle. The image of a gun-toting bear was not acceptable, a school spokesman said.

The image of Hazzard that has come across, that of a combative, feisty chip-on-his-shoulder coach whose pregame observation all season long was, “It’s going to be a war!” may not have helped how the public has perceived him.

“We’re in a high-pressure situation where I think we have to have some compassion for human frailty,” Dalis said. “It’s part of an education process. Walt is a very straightforward, highly competitive and aggressive guy who played that way as a player. Some of those characteristics come through as a coach.”

None of Hazzard’s actions, from kicking chairs to breaking mirrors, from antagonizing reporters to administering his own brand of justice in settling fights, are probably any more outrageous than those of Bob Knight of Indiana, Rick Pitino of Providence or Gary Colson of New Mexico. But neither do they remind anyone of Wooden.

The former UCLA coach did not want to talk about image as it relates to Hazzard.

“I’m very fond of Walt, UCLA and all my former players,” Wooden said. “I’m afraid that anything I could say in regard to that would look like I’m singling Walt out.

“But I’ve always felt you have to keep your emotions under control. If you want your players to remain unemotional, you should to. That’s the way I’ve always been, so I’m not being critical in regard to that.

“People know he was competitive,” Wooden said.

Hirsch has known Hazzard for 25 years. They were teammates on UCLA’s first NCAA title team in 1964 and Hirsch has been Hazzard’s top assistant for seven years, beginning at Compton College in 1980 and then at Chapman College before coming to UCLA in 1984.

Hirsch said he probably knows Hazzard as well as anyone, and he thinks Hazzard is taking a fall because of an inaccurate image.

“I think the media has a preconceived notion of people,” Hirsch said. “The media rarely gets to know people. They project a perception.

“You’re not going to change Walt. He’s such a complex person. . . . He’s a man of many moods. He’s a man of success, a black man in a white man’s world. The drive to be a success is misconceived, I don’t want to call it racist, but a black man has to be twice as good as a white man.”

Hirsch, who rarely talks to the press, is as sensitive as Hazzard on the subject of the inquiry by the NCAA into UCLA’s recruiting. He showed it when he challenged Dave Strege of the Orange County Register in a telephone conversation.

Strege wrote a story quoting UCLA transfer Jerald Jones as saying he once received from the basketball program $17 in the shape of rose petals.

Hirsch told Strege not to show his face around him or he “would make your life miserable.”

Said Hirsch: “The only reason I did that was because I had a confrontation with Mr. Strege before. You don’t keep coming after me for sensationalism. So I went after him. Players are bought and sold, but $17 flowers? I mean, give me a break.”

Hirsch said Strege accused him previously of buying black players for Chapman. Strege said he received such information, but after checking it out, never wrote a story.

“I’m just the mailman delivering the news and if he’s part of it, so be it,” Strege said. “But I never wrote any story that said he paid players.”

Hirsch remains Hazzard’s staunchest supporter. “He’s perceived as not knowing basketball and as not a nice person,” Hirsch said. “That’s totally wrong. I tell him to just do the best he can and forget everything else.”

Hazzard isn’t forgetting, yet. Anyway, there may be nothing wrong with his image that a new three-year contract and a raise wouldn’t cure.

No, he isn’t Wooden, although he continues to genuflect before UCLA’s icon and invoke his name whenever possible.

Hazzard says that his image, or that of his team, and how it compares to someone else, should never have become an issue.

“Sometimes you have to let it out and get it over with,” he said. “Sometimes I don’t pick out the best times to do it, but what are you going to do? Have a coronary?

“People think I’m combative, but I’ve been married to the same woman for 23 years, I’ve got four kids going to school and I’ve lived in the same neighborhood for 12 years.

“My image is that I try to be a good man. If that’s not what is accepted or perceived, there’s nothing I can do about it.”