Basketball to Honor Wooden : Packer Helps Bring Former North Carolina, UCLA Stars Together

The UCLA-North Carolina alumni basketball game scheduled at Pauley Pavilion June 28 to establish the Nell and John Wooden Scholarship Fund, was the brainchild of Billy Packer. It will be nationally televised by ABC.

Figure that one.

Packer played at Wake Forest, coached at Wake Forest and is now a commentator for CBS. Before that, he was with NBC.

So where’s the connection?

“The idea was to do something that would be a tribute to Coach,” Packer said, referring to former UCLA Coach John Wooden with that universal title of respect. “I have always admired him. I played against him in 1962 in the NCAA tournament. Our team was the last team to beat UCLA in a Final Four game until North Carolina State did it 12 years later.

“He was my coaching idol when I started coaching. . . . I was with NBC in ‘75, which was his last year. That was my first assignment to a national championship.

“Actually, I’ve been developing the idea for many years. I’ve just always thought that there should have been a tribute to Coach on a national basis. I really want this whole weekend to be high profile, high quality, to show an appreciation for Coach and to establish a scholarship in his name.”

The weekend will include a dinner the night before the game in honor of Wooden. But dinners are routine. The nationally televised all-star game is a step beyond the norm.

Packer concocted a plan to match great Bruins of the past with great Tar Heels of the past to maintain the theme of establishing tradition in college basketball.

The telecast will include nine taped segments reflecting on such historical highlights as North Carolina’s string of Olympic players, UCLA’s Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Bill Walton, North Carolina’s 1967 champions. . . .

“I think it is significant that the game will be played in Pauley Pavilion,” Packer said. “There is no basketball arena anywhere that is more a part of basketball tradition over the 25 years we’ll be reflecting on.”

Packer made some preliminary calls to some of the players early in the planning stages just to see if there would be any interest and said that the enthusiasm was overwhelming.

Among the players who have said they will play:

From UCLA--Walton, Kiki Vandeweghe, Walt Hazzard, Curtis Rowe, Lucius Allen, Rod Foster, Kenny Fields, Andre McCarter, Reggie Miller, Lynn Shackleford, Gail Goodrich, Jamaal Wilkes, Roy Hamilton, Greg Lee and Steve Patterson.

From North Carolina--Sam Perkins, Phil Ford, Kenny Smith, James Worthy, Michael Jordan, Charlie Scott, Dudley Bradley, Joe Wolf, Mitch Kupchak, Lenny Rosenbluth and Bob McAdoo.

Wooden will be on the bench to coach the Bruins and Dean Smith will coach the Tar Heels. But, Packer said: “They will really be more like honorary coaches, because we aren’t expecting this to be a really serious knock-down, drag-out kind of game. It won’t be a game of strategic substitution.

“In fact, it’s going to be orchestrated to some degree, so that we get players from the different eras represented at different points. We haven’t really worked out all the details.

“It’s designed to be more of a celebration of basketball. I think it will be exciting just to have all these great players on the same court at the same time.”

And, of course, ABC is hoping that others share Packer’s excitement.

Mike Burg of Jefferson-Pilot Teleproductions in Charlotte has been involved, with Packer, in making this game a reality. Jefferson-Pilot had a contract with ABC to provide some sports programming this summer.

Packer lined up some other corporate sponsorship and showed that there would be interest.

“It’s not expected to be a blockbuster money-maker for TV,” Packer said. “But neither is it a trash-sport event. It will be unique, quality, summer programming. A nice, historical review of some of the great days of college basketball.

“The most important thing, though, is it gives us a chance to pay tribute to Coach. There probably will never be another coach to duplicate what he did--not just in terms of wins or championships, but in terms of his impact on the game and the way people respect him.

“Coach was never one to talk about how many games he had won or how many championships. He wasn’t ever, in any way, self-promotional. But if anyone deserves a tribute, it’s Coach Wooden.”

Notes Tickets for the game, which will begin at 1 p.m., are priced at $15 and $10 and are available at the UCLA central ticket office and at TicketMaster locations. For more information on tickets, call (213) 825-2101. Tickets for a banquet the night before the game at the Century Plaza Hotel are priced at $200. For information on banquet tickets, call (213) 251-4654. . . . Proceeds from the banquet also will be used for establishing the Nell and John Wooden Scholarship Fund for postgraduate studies by UCLA students. Also sharing in proceeds of the game will be the University Fund at North Carolina, which is already in place to help minority students. . . . Kareem Abdul-Jabbar told game organizers that he had to be out of the country on the day of the game.