At UCLA, He Was Never Far From Home

You didn’t know it, but Marques Johnson was a poet.

For Johnson, a member of John Wooden’s last team in 1975 and winner of the inaugural Wooden Award in 1977, a fringe benefit of playing college basketball at UCLA was the proximity it afforded to his boyhood home in Windsor Hills. He often made the short drive to grab a bite or drop his laundry, sometimes leaving a verse for Mom.

She kept this one:

I was here but now I’m gone

I’ve left my clothes to carry on

Wash them good, make them sweet

Scrub them with your hands and feet

I’ll be back another day

To take them back to UCLA

“It was Coach Wooden, it was UCLA, I’d been watching the Bruins since the mid-’60s,” Johnson, a sports broadcaster and actor, said of his decision to sign with UCLA out of Crenshaw High, where he was City Section player of the year.

“I was one of those guys that stayed up for the 11 o’clock replays with Dick Enberg, especially during the Wicks and Rowe years. Sidney Wicks was my all-time idol.”

Johnson, a 6-foot-7 forward, loved Marquette’s uniforms, with the shirttails hanging out, and coach Al Maguire’s colorful personality. He visited Oregon, Oregon State, Drake and California, and George Raveling got him to visit Washington State.

At UCLA, an early pattern was established by Johnson.

After his parents and two older sisters dropped him off at his dorm room -- a blubbery, emotional scene, as Johnson recalled -- he seemingly was on his own for the first time. But by the time his family had made it back home, after a few stops along the way, an already homesick Johnson was there to greet them.

“I was sitting there like, ‘What took you so long?’ ” he said.

-- Jerry Crowe