Having a Ball : Would-Be Cagers Live the Illusion of the Big Time

You could never mistake this Benjamin for Benoit Benjamin, the 7-foot center of the National Basketball Assn.’s Los Angeles Clippers.

Alan Benjamin is a 5-9, 150-pound, 35-year-old attorney with thinning hair who doesn’t look much like an athlete and could never command a fabulous salary for stuffing a ball through a hoop.

The attorney has never slam-dunked a basketball; he can’t jump that high. But he does play basketball once in a while--in occasional pickup games at the Santa Monica YMCA and twice at a Sportsworld fantasy camp for adults led by John Wooden, regarded by many as the best college coach in the history of basketball.

Benjamin and his fellow campers--lawyers, real estate developers, accountants, businessmen--don’t seem to mind spending good money at a three-day basketball camp. This year the fee for the camp, held at Pepperdine University, was $1,195.

The fee included food, lodging, a uniform with the participant’s name on the back, athletic shoes, a copy of Wooden’s book “They Call Me Coach” and a videotape of highlights of an individual’s performance at camp games. But $400 a day is still a stiff price.

Still, Benjamin and the other campers seem to think it is well worth it to learn about basketball from the 78-year-old Wooden, whose record of 10 National Collegiate Athletic Assn. championships before he retired at UCLA may never be equaled, let alone surpassed.

1964 Champions

The fee also includes a chance to play against Wooden’s first NCAA championship team at UCLA--the 1964 squad that included Gail Goodrich, Walt Hazzard, Jack Hirsch, Fred Slaughter, Keith Erickson and Kenny Washington.

Not only do you get to play against those basketball greats, but camp staffers make you look good doing it. The videotape each camper receives is skillfully edited. Your jump shot can turn out to look nearly as beautiful as one by Goodrich.

Benjamin grew up in Fullerton and attended Sunny Hills High School, where he played on the tennis team but did not play basketball for the varsity. He went on to UCLA, where he played intramural basketball for Sproul Hall. He did not have many opportunities to perfect his hook shot at UCLA, but he got hooked on basketball as a fan while he was getting a bachelor’s degree and a joint graduate degree in law and business.

He was at UCLA from 1970 to 1977, years that included four NCAA titles for Wooden and were great for UCLA fans. “College was fun, and I went to almost every game,” he said. “It was the thing to do every Friday and Saturday night.

“I used to camp out overnight to get season tickets. Initially, they were free (to students), and I think they later raised them to a quarter a game. We would talk about last year’s team and whether this year’s team would go all the way. Someone would save your place in line, and you would go to class and come back again.”

Surprise Gift

He did not stand in line to attend Wooden’s basketball camp last year for the first time. He said that his wife, Linda Engle, “decided that it (going to camp) would be good for me as a Father’s Day present and did not tell me about it till the week before.

“Of course, I tried madly to get in shape before, which didn’t work. But I enjoyed it, nonetheless.”

He said that his wife, also an attorney and UCLA graduate, “thought it would be fun for me and the fulfillment of a fantasy.”

He was fulfilled enough after his first camp to write the following testimonial on a brochure for this year’s session: “People like John Wooden come along once, maybe twice, in a lifetime. I’m lucky that my wife made sure I didn’t miss my chance. I will never forget it.”

He kept the camp in mind when it came time for Wooden to conduct his seventh--and possibly his last--such camp for adults in early June. He leads the camps with a staff of high school and college coaches and guest speakers. One of the guests this year was Jim Harrick, the former Pepperdine basketball coach, who recently was named UCLA’s coach, the sixth since Wooden retired in 1975.

“I went back a second time,” Benjamin said. “I just love listening to Wooden.”

What did he get out of listening? “I really thought there were two aspects to the camp. There was the basketball camp itself, where you’re taught by coaches the fine points of the game. Coach Wooden taught the high-post offense, defense and rebounding.

“I certainly enjoy watching the game on TV, and learning about defensive principles and different offensive alignments made it more enjoyable watching the games. I appreciate what’s going on among the players without the ball.

Coach’s Philosophy

“The second aspect was listening to Coach Wooden reminisce about basketball as well as talk about his philosophy of life. Coach Wooden is a good man, a sincere man, who has ideals and philosophies that we all should strive for. So it was both fun and a time to reflect.”

Were the philosophical talks something like a retreat for businessmen? “Very much so,” Benjamin said. “Coach Wooden talks to businesses like mine, to major corporations, about what their priorities should be, about how to motivate and to lead.”

(A partner with the law firm of Morrison and Foerster, Benjamin said that he has “never been to court in my life” and that he “represents banks, insurance companies and other financial institutions in their financing transactions,” trying to earn money for them “to offset their losses and expenses.”)

On the recent camp’s first day, a reporter sat in on an after-lunch session in which Wooden was scheduled to review the fast break.

In response to one questioner, Wooden said that players on offense should “try to cut in straight lines as much as possible (and) try to get opponents to run in arcs. Change of pace and change of direction, that’s the game in many respects.”

After a few more comments on techniques, his questioners changed the pace, turning much of the exchange into a bull session on his UCLA teams, the NBA game today and his ideas on the best basketball player he has ever seen.

More Like Wrestling

“Players are so much better today individually, but the team play is not as good,” he said. He said that the NBA game sometimes resembles wrestling more than basketball, adding that he heard someone say that the rough stuff in post-play “is going to continue till someone gets pregnant.”

More seriously, he said that he thinks television “has hurt the game of basketball “because it has emphasized showmanship and the individual. For him, there is “nothing better than a good screen-and-roll or give-and-go.

“I don’t want to knock contact, but I think it’s become a little too physical. . . . I think the league (the NBA) is more concerned with marketing and entertainment. . . . I don’t know how you can clean it up, to be honest with you.”

Wooden was asked about his ideas on the best basketball player he ever saw, and he mentioned such names as Oscar Robertson, Larry Bird, Magic Johnson and Michael Jordan.

He said he thought that Robertson could have entered pro basketball after he left high school and could have been an immediate star and that Bird excels “in every aspect of the game.”

He never wanted to pick a best player among those he coached at UCLA, he said. He added that Bill Walton might have earned better grades on the fundamentals than Kareem Abdul-Jabbar but that he would want Abdul-Jabbar on his side if he were going to establish a team.

When he thought about molding a perfect player, he said, he often wound up saying, “Why not take (Jamaal) Wilkes and let it go at that.”

One questioner wanted to know if a team like his first NCAA champions, the 1964 team that compensated for its lack of height by using a full-court press to harry opponents, could win a national title today.

“Sure,” Wooden replied. “One of my big mistakes (was that) I did not utilize the full-court press earlier.”

Afterward, Wooden told a reporter that when he was first approached about conducting the fantasy camp, he didn’t want to do it. But he found that he enjoyed it and came back to do six more.

In this year’s camp brochure, he said that may be his last year conducting camps, that he is “not getting any younger.”

But on the first day of camp he told the reporter that he would return for more next year, “if I feel physically up to it.” He enjoys the camps, he said, but he doesn’t want to conduct them, “unless I can actively participate. I don’t want to be a figurehead.”

Benjamin recalled that Wooden said as much at last year’s camp but thinks the coach may return for another adult camp. “In my opinion, he obviously enjoys it,” Benjamin said. “If his health permits, I think he would do it again.”

If Wooden comes back, Benjamin probably will go for a third time. “I certainly would give it serious thought.”

Serious thoughts are a big reason he has gone to the camps, the attorney said. He said that he has already drawn on the qualities of loyalty, friendship and self-control that Wooden discusses in his “Pyramid of Success” philosophy.

“I’ve been involved in transactions already where I’ve been more thoughtful and careful of my reactions to potentially inflammatory situations. I’ve tried to think of the other guy and still get my point across in a less harsh way.”

He has also made more frivolous use of other things he got out of the camps. He said that when he played against Wooden’s 1964 UCLA team this year, “I’d like to think I was brilliant.”

He said that he is sure that the tape of his performance in that game “will make me look brilliant” and that friends who visit him at his home may be able to convince him to run the tape for them.

If he had his choice, Benjamin said, “I would probably rather watch ‘The Maltese Falcon.’ But when I want to show off, I can play a few minutes of what it was like at camp sometimes.”