No Retreat : Former Bruin Great Walt Hazzard Has Important Ally--His Family--in His Corner as He Fights Back From a Near-Fatal Stroke

Walt Hazzard wants to go back to work for the Lakers, doing West Coast scouting again, doing community relations in his dual role as special administrative assistant. Doing whatever.

But he moves slowly and walks with the help of a cane. He still struggles to speak and is so self-conscious about making a mistake that he used only two phrases, sparingly, during a recent visit--”Yeah” and “Oh, yeah,”--although Jalal Hazzard said his dad will go to therapy and ramble, same when he’s talking to a friend. He tires quickly. His right side is especially weak.

Work looks like a longshot. Even a day he once considered average looks like a longshot.

Or maybe not. A stroke he suffered in late March nearly killed him, but he has already come much farther than anyone had a right to expect, able to be self-sufficient in many ways. So why settle simply for surviving?

“From the very, very beginning, he was pretty beat up,” said his wife, Jaleesa. “But he had a good attitude. He’s strong. That’s what everybody has said--’He’s a fighter. He’s strong. He’s tough.’ And I’ve seen that come out of him. That toughness.”

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Hazzard was 32 years removed from starting at guard on UCLA’s first national championship team, 22 years after a 10-year NBA career that included three seasons with the Lakers and an all-star selection, and nine years after being named Pacific 10 Conference coach of the year for leading the Bruins to a 25-7 record. Hazzard, about two weeks shy of his 54th birthday, got up to go to the bathroom about 5 a.m. He returned and settled back into bed.

“Something didn’t seem right,” Jaleesa said.

She asked her husband if he was all right. He didn’t answer.

“I realized something had happened,” she said.

The kids were awakened, 911 called. Walt had suffered a stroke, later found to have been caused when an infection weakened a heart valve and threw an embolism. Doctors told the family--Jaleesa and their kids Yakub, Jalal, Khalil and Rasheed--that he may not survive. Friends who visited at the UCLA Medical Center painted a grim picture.

It didn’t look good.

“We just sort of hung in there,” Jaleesa said. “And he did too.”

Progress came. So did the support. UCLA responded in waves: John Wooden, Mike Warren, trainer Tony Spino, Athletic Director Pete Dalis. Cards, flowers, calls.

And the Lakers?

“They’ve been what I always thought the Lakers were,” Jaleesa said. “Extremely generous.”

Not just because they signed Hazzard to a two-year contract extension shortly before training camp, even though no one can say whether he will work again. Executive Vice President Jerry West, General Manager Mitch Kupchak, Coach Del Harris and Mark Scoggins, the executive vice president of California Sports Marketing, all have shown their concern.

There have been others, from near and far. A summer dinner to raise money for the Los Angeles Sports Academy, Hazzard’s foundation to help kids, and to deliver another emotional boost for Hazzard himself, drew more big names. Clipper General Manager Elgin Baylor. Jamaal Wilkes. Agent Fred Slaughter, also a former Bruin player. Cazzie Russell. Wali Jones, a friend for years and now vice president of community relations for the Miami Heat.

It helped keep the fire burning. Good thing. This beating-death thing takes it out of a guy.

“Get frustrated sometimes, honey?” Jaleesa says to her husband.

“Oh, yeah,” Walt responds, cracking a smile.

After about 2 1/2 months in the hospital, they are together again at home in Lafayette Square, neighboring the Crenshaw District. Family members and friends come in and out. People call wondering when it would be OK to come by and see Walt, trying to tread lightly because they don’t want to disturb him. Jaleesa laughs and says the trick is to find when Walt is sitting at home with enough free time to visit.

They go out to eat, to the movies. Of course, they’re also regularly driving him to therapy, five days a week. These days, the physical aspect consists of his walking the treadmill with the help of a harness, allowing his feet to touch the ground but not bear his full weight. The speech part, once limited to counting and naming the days of the week and repeating words, now is about talking in sentences, raspy voice and all.

The emotional side?

Home therapy.

“We’ve found we have a huge family support,” Jaleesa said. “We have our family and then we have the people who think they’re our family.

“It’s just a matter of seeing what we get. It’s just a building process. I don’t think anybody right now knows what he will or will not be able to do.

“My personal feeling? I think he’ll get most everything back. Maybe he’ll even get a better golf swing. Our attitude is that he’ll recover. Definitely recover enough to do all the things he wants to do.”

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“I thought he was gone,” Harris says now. “There’s not one of them that gave up, but we all knew those first two days. . . .”

He trails off.

“You know, they [Hazzard’s family] had more faith in it than I did. I didn’t think he was going to make it.”

Theirs is a friendship born out of adversity. They met in the early 1980s, at the summer league in Los Angeles when Harris was coach of the Houston Rockets and Hazzard was at Compton College. It was just a professional relationship then.

That changed in 1988, after Hazzard had been fired at UCLA. Harris had moved on to Milwaukee, as coach and vice president of basketball operations for the Bucks.

“He called me up and was looking for anything to do. I’d felt that he had gotten such a raw deal from a number of people, national media particularly, when he was at UCLA. I had gone through that . . . and I identified with Walt.

“I felt like Walt had done a good job, but people had been led to believe he hadn’t done a good job. Now he wanted to be in basketball so badly and nobody would give him an opportunity, and I just said, ‘I’m going to give him the opportunity to get back and do something. I’m going to give him a chance to reestablish himself.’ ”

So Harris gave him responsibilities as a West Coast scout for the Bucks. From time to time, Hazzard was brought to Milwaukee. He was included on trips to the scouting combines before the draft. Harris and Hazzard became golfing buddies. They connected.

To now see the link strengthened by trouble, therefore, is not a surprise.

“What’s Del been like?” Jaleesa said. “The best.”

Said Harris: “It’s still painful for me. It’s just hard to see it. On the other hand, you do see the improvement. I know how much he wants to be more actively involved and how much he wants to be hitting that little white ball, plus being with the Sports Academy. All those things are so important to him. But he’s making progress and the Lakers, Jerry Buss and West and Mitch ought to be commended for also sticking with him and keeping him on our staff. It’s a tribute to him and to his program [the Sports Academy] because we think that kind of program is an important kind of program for our community.”

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There are the struggles. Struggles that are put in perspective.

“As frustrated as he gets, it’s not a negative,” Jaleesa says. “It’s all positive. It’s, ‘I’ve got to get over that.’ I think the frustration in this sense is a good thing. It doesn’t lead to depression.”

Just the opposite. It leads to hope for a future that, unexpectedly to most, exists again. To move with ease, maybe even get that better golf swing. Maybe even go back to work.

Think Hazzard would like that just a little?

Oh, yeah.