Back-Door Play Fools Wooden, but Not Enough

Basketball loses a little more of John Wooden today when, after 17 years, he presides over the last session of his annual summer camp at Cal Lutheran University.

Campers and organizers haven’t let him go quietly, though. Thursday, in a surprise luncheon on the Thousand Oaks campus, in a room filled with big hopes and big names, they tried a little emotional arm-bending to get him to reconsider retirement.

“JUST SAY MAYBE,” read T-shirts printed especially for the occasion. Just say maybe you’ll come back for 1989, several speakers told Wooden. At this point, a firm yes wasn’t even needed, just some hope.

To be sure, this was no minor league effort. Halfway through lunch, the door opened, and a good chunk of college basketball history strolled in: Bill Walton, Kiki Vandeweghe, Walt Hazzard, Jack Hirsch, Fred Slaughter and Andre McCarter, among others. Tom Landry, whose Dallas Cowboys train at Cal Lutheran, was there, too.

“They really surprised me, completely,” Wooden said. “Maybe I should have caught on in my morning session, when everybody had on the T-shirts. One of the blocks in my pyramid of success says to pay attention. I guess I was just concentrating on teaching the kids so much I didn’t notice. I should also have realized that after all these days of playing, they shouldn’t have smelled so clean.”

Alas, Wooden said the day’s events, while nice, probably won’t make a difference in his plans to drop the camp he began teaching in 1972, while still coaching at UCLA.

At 77, his future will be filled with a motivational book he’s writing that’s due out in about a year, the collection of 100 poems he’s writing solely for family members, work at the annual McDonald’s high school all-star game and appearances around the country. He can use the time, and his aching knees can use the rest.

“I’m very appreciative, and everyone is very kind, but that will not make my decision,” Wooden said afterward. “The decision has been made. I’m constantly bothered by my arthritic knees, so I can’t be as active as I’ve been in a camp that bears my own name.

“I doubt very much (there will be a 1989 camp). I’m not one, most people have realized, who makes hasty decisions. Also, those who know me realize that as a general rule I make a decision and stand by it.”

But there is still some hope for the future. A final decision isn’t needed until October or November, and Wooden said there is a 1-in-99 chance he’ll return. “A loophole,” he said

Those are bad odds, but Thursday’s mind-changing committee will take ‘em.

“The door is not completely closed, but it’s not open very wide, either,” said Max Shapiro, president of Sportsworld, which organizes the Wooden camp and 16 others in basketball, baseball, volleyball and golf. “We’re here today trying to push it open a little more.”

The Wooden basketball camp, supported by a staff of coaches and counselors, is among the most popular of Sportsworld’s weeklong clinics. People have come from all over the world to say they’ve called Wooden “coach”, which makes him wizard of lands beyond Westwood. There have been 600 students, ranging in age from 8 to 18, spread over three sessions this year.

Said Slaughter, a former Bruin: “These kids can say later on in life, ‘I really had some exposure to a great man. Even if I’m not getting it now, sometime in my life I’ll know that I hit the high-water mark here.’ They’re going to realize what he meant to them.”