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The book title implies the UCLA men’s basketball program dealt with issues much more difficult and significant than winning multiple NCAA championships.
In “Kingdom on Fire,” author Scott Howard-Cooper details extensively how the late UCLA head coach John Wooden, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar(Lew Alcindor), and Bill Walton both thrived as basketball savants and struggled amid differences in their life experiences and worldviews.
Scott Howard-Cooper on Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Bill Walton, John Wooden
Howard-Cooper spoke with Sportskeeda for an extensive Q&A.
The topics: the dynamic between Wooden, Alcindor, and Walton, how Wooden initially struggled with confronting the racism Alcindor faced on campus, and why one of Wooden’s sons even felt tempted to punch Walton after getting arrested as part of the Vietnam War protest. Howard-Cooper also entertains how Wooden, Alcindor and Walton would have handled college basketball’s NIL era.
Editor’s note: The following one-on-one interview has been edited and condensed.
You’re familiar with UCLA and covered them. But as you did the reporting for this book, what do you think is the biggest thing you learned regarding either John Wooden, Lew Alcindor, Bill Walton, or the UCLA basketball program itself?
Scott Howard-Cooper:
There were a few things that really excited me because the last thing I wanted to do was a rehash of everything that people had written before.
One was how close Lew Alcindor came to choosing the ABA over the NBA when he came out of college.
That would’ve changed sports history, of course. He wanted to go to the Nets. That was probably his first choice. He was that anxious to go back to New York, his home. But the ABA botched it (laughs). This was a classic case of inept management.
The ABA could’ve had Lew Alcindor before he became Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. They had set themselves up perfectly and spent a lot of money putting together a plan of attack, a psychological profile, and talked to a lot of people to determine the best way to appeal to him. They had everything in place. But when it came down to the moment of making their proposal, they tripped over themselves and they mishandled it.
They did not understand that even though this was a young man just finishing his college career, he was very mature and a man of his word.
He said: ‘I’m taking one offer from the ABA and one offer from the NBA and then deciding. It’s not going to be a bidding war back and forth.’
The NBA made a good offer. The ABA made not just a bad offer, but a worse offer than it signaled it was going to make. So the ABA lost the best prospect and maybe lost its best chance to survive. It hung on another several years, but never recovered."
Second was more about how connected UCLA basketball was in those times
I was going into this thinking this would be a story of UCLA set against the backdrop of America becoming unhinged in the 1960s and 1970s. The whole premise of the book was about everything going on around them and these guys were the model of stability with their non-stop winning at a time when there was very little stability in the country.
I thought that it was UCLA as part of those times. But I had no idea even with that buildup going in how much John Wooden and his program were a part of those times. They were more connected than anybody really knows.
John Wooden was friends for the rest of his life with H.R. Haldeman, Richard Nixon’s Chief of Staff.
John Wooden basically had a direct line to the West Wing. Haldeman was a UCLA guy and loved the Bruins. Bruins basketball was his No. 1 passion.
When there was discussion about sending a basketball team on an exhibition tour of China as part of what later became known as ‘Ping-Pong diplomacy,’ it was part of opening up relations with China. It was this huge international moment. Haldeman wanted UCLA to go. Most of the Bruins wanted to go. But as soon as Bill Walton gave the thumbs down, they weren’t going.
Haldeman followed the Bruins and kept his season tickets. He was the chief fundraiser for Pauley Pavilion and got season tickets that first year. He and his family kept them for the rest of their lives. As of last season, the family still had season tickets. The ties were that deep. When Haldeman went to prison for Watergate, Wooden went to visit him. This was something that lasted a lifetime."
What are your thoughts on the bond between Kareem Abdul Jabbar and Muhammad Ali, considering both had similar journeys about faith in life
Scott Howard-Cooper:
Kareem Abdul Jabbar was not just an admirer of Muhammad Ali.
He was one of the people that [Muhammad] Ali listened to.
Abdul-Jabbar was just finishing his sophomore year at UCLA. Muhammad Ali refused to enter the [military] draft and was a conscientious objector. There are threats that he will be sent to prison and certainly stripped of all of his boxing titles.
Some people in Ali’s camp called up Jim Brown and asked, ‘Can you get some people together and talk to Muhammad and talk this through with him? You don’t have to change his mind. But can you give him some feedback?’
So Jim Brown says to one of his close friends and top advisors in his business, ‘Let’s get the guys together.’ There was a group of 12 or 14 people that were some of the all-time greats. You have Bill Russell, Jim Brown, and Muhammad Ali.
Who is sitting up at the front table with him at the press conference, front and center? It’s the college kid. That’s how much they respect Lew Alcindor. One of the people who organized The Cleveland Summit told me that even at that point, Muhammad Ali loved Kareem.
He didn’t just like or respect him. He loved Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. The depth of that connection was unbelievable.
How would you compare Wooden's dynamic with Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (Lew Alcindor) and Bill Walton both on the court and with their social activism?
Scott Howard-Cooper:
It was pretty similar. One of the things I say right at the start of the book is that people have to suspend what they know about Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Bill Walton in 2024. This isn’t them. They are different people in college, as most people are.
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and John Wooden ended up having this wonderful friendship with a great deal of warmth and appreciation back and forth. The exact same thing with Bill Walton. He became to be almost considered family. They were very close.
But it was not like that in college. They respected each other, whether it was Wooden and Alcindor or Wooden and Walton. They appreciated each other. However, I described the relationship that Wooden had with Alcindor as more of a friendly business relationship in college. They disagreed on some things, but there was never a big conflict.
Wooden and Walton disagreed on things, probably more on things than Alcindor and Wooden. But no big conflicts. Bill was often frustrated and upset that he had to get his haircut the day before practice or else he would be off the team. That’s probably the worst of it.
That’s not a bad thing – having a disagreement over haircuts.
You mentioned that Wooden and Walton disagreed on things, probably more than Alcindor and Wooden. Could you tell us more about the small conflicts that were part of the earlier days between Wooden, Walton, and Abdul-Jabbar?
Scott Howard-Cooper:
The most upset John Wooden was ever at Bill Walton was after Bill got arrested during a campus protest. Wooden was angry because there was some destruction of property involved. But it was nothing major and certainly nothing compared to what was going on at other universities and up in Northern California at Cal and Stanford. But John was mad at Bill because he got arrested, and broke the law. Bill was not destroying property himself. But he helped it.
John Wooden disagreed with Bill’s stands on a lot of things. Wooden disagreed with Lew Alcindor’s stands on a lot of things.
'He was against a lot of things that his players were for and he made it clear with some of his comments on marijuana use and interracial dating. He had a problem with Muhammad Ali staying out of the draft. He didn’t like that at all and made a few comments to Lew Alcindor along the way.'
He respected that people had their own opinions. Once you stepped between the lines, it was John Wooden’s rules. But what you did in the rest of your life, he understood that he could not police that. He also understood that people were allowed to have different opinions.
'He could tell you how long your hair could be during the basketball season and decide what you’re going to eat during the pre-game meal. But when you’re away from the team and it’s the offseason, he not only respected it, but he encouraged his players to have an awareness of what was going on in society. He encouraged them to have their own opinions.'
Another thing is that Wooden and Kareem had completely different backgrounds as far as race and life experiences. How did those different perspectives shape their partnership?
Scott Howard-Cooper:
It was really fascinating. In some ways, John Wooden learned as much from college student, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, as it was the other way around. Not in basketball, but in life situations. John Wooden was very comfortable with different races. That was never a problem for him. He had several Black players on his team.
UCLA was known as a place that was very progressive and liberal. I don’t mean that in a political sense, but you were much more accepted as a Black student at UCLA than you were at most other campuses around the country. That’s one of the reasons that Lew Alcindor picked UCLA.
He saw Rafer Johnson on TV as the student body president. He knew of Ralph Bunche, a former UCLA basketball player going on in great things in government work. John Wooden understood that he was a grandfatherly type from Indiana and did not grow up nearly the same way as Lew Alcindor from Manhattan. But it wasn’t until they joined together at UCLA that John Wooden really saw what it was like.
'For all the Black players he had coached before, they never drew the kind of attention that Lew Alcindor did.'
They went out to dinner. One time a lady poked her umbrella tip into Lew Alcindor and used these really derogatory terms. That lady and other people would say things like ‘animals’ or ‘big Black guy.’ He would hear the “N” word at several arenas. While that has not changed in some places in America in 2024, at the time it was more focused on so much more on Lew Alcindor because he’s also 7’1 and also unstoppable.
Road crowds had even more of a reason to dislike him. Their teams certainly can’t beat him. So they are angry at him. John Wooden came to say that it opened his eyes to how people treated Lew Alcindor, a person who’s so humble and so selfless and so mature. He cared about his studies. He was not good around other people. But once you got to know him, you could see he had a very good side to him. John Wooden learned a lot in that relationship.”
I remember Kareem shared in his book that he observed that Wooden was uncomfortable with witnessing the racism, but also was uncomfortable with directly confronting it. What did you learn about that?
Scott Howard-Cooper:
“It was something he was trying to come to grips with himself. He didn’t have to live it, obviously. He had the advantage of not being the target of all of these comments. But at the same time, he cared about Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and all the people in his life. That had always been one of the John Wooden trademarks. So he was very uncomfortable with it, and there were times that he didn’t handle it well. He does not speak out at the moment as it’s happening. He’s either taken aback, doesn’t respond for that reason or he’s trying to get away from the lady with the umbrella tip so it doesn’t turn into a giant confrontation at either a restaurant or on campus. Whatever the comment may have been, he didn’t want to escalate it."
'I don’t think there is any doubt that there were times that he didn’t speak out as forcefully as his players would have liked.'
Instead, he may have said something the next day or months later when something reminded him of another bad incident. John Wooden was deeply introspective. So when something happened, he would think about it. It took him some time to conclude that his players would have liked to have come to on the spot.”
Based on your reporting, how do you put Sam Gilbert’s involvement with UCLA’s program in context?
Scott Howard-Cooper:
I lay out what happened. I don’t think there is a great moral stand in the book, one way or another, whether it’s claiming that he’s the worst thing to ever happen to college basketball or saying that he was a victim who was wrongly persecuted over the years.
People can make their conclusions on what Sam Gilbert’s impact was on the history of college basketball.
There was no question that he was part of the success. And there’s no question that he is the big stain on the Wooden legacy.
Even all of these years later, people will still point to the big factor in the winning as that they cheated all the time. I wouldn’t say all the time. What we know is that Sam Gilbert had a role in keeping players there and keeping them happy once they arrived. There’s no indication that he was involved in recruiting any of the players during the John Wooden years. But there are certainly mountains of evidence that he was involved with breaking the rules. And that John Wooden and the athletic director, J.D. Morgan, were at least aware of it and therefore, complicit. Even if they were not encouraging it, they both hated it. They just didn’t step in to do anything about it.
He did impact things. But to what degree, people can decide for themselves. Everything is pretty much laid out there from the very beginning when Sam broke through and became the force that could never be denied again.
Even when an NCAA investigator went to his bosses and told them that there was a lot of bad stuff going on at UCLA and we needed to open a file and look into these guys, the top bosses at the NCAA said, ‘No, we’re just going to leave that alone.’ The NCAA didn’t want its cash cow, UCLA basketball, to get in trouble. They didn’t want John Wooden to come off looking bad. So only when Wooden was far removed did the investigation begin.
In light of your biography on Steve Kerr, what similarities and differences did Kerr and Wooden have with their philosophy even when accounting for the different circumstances with professional/college sports and different eras?
Scott Howard-Cooper:
They’re very connected. That’s one of the best compliments that you can give Steve Kerr. John Wooden was one of his idols. The connection is pretty amazing. Steve grew up a giant UCLA fan and would’ve loved to have gone to UCLA. He would’ve paid them (laughs). But they didn’t even offer him a campus visit, even though he went to high school [locally at Palisades Charter].
'Anytime he was in the United States, he was living 10 or 12 miles from the UCLA campus. His dad was the head of the political science department at UCLA. His mom later went on to run one of the scholarship foundations at UCLA. The ties were very deep. He would’ve given anything to go there. But UCLA didn’t want him.'
Steve Kerr went to the John Wooden Basketball Camp. Steve Kerr played in high school for a John Wooden guy. Several other people in Steve Kerr’s life were somehow connected to John Wooden, whether playing for him or having gotten to know him. Steve Kerr was a ballboy during the Gary Cunningham years (1977-79). Cunningham was a John Wooden assistant.
They are similar in personality in that they allow players to have opinions and they encourage them to be aware of what’s going on in the outside world. They never wanted just basketball only. They wanted players to be part of the greater community. The coaching style is also a little bit similar. The same ball movement that John Wooden always preached and playing fast has been one of the successes of the Golden State Warriors.
Did UCLA miss out on any other legends, apart from Wilt Chamberlain and Bill Russell?
Scott Howard-Cooper:
UCLA could’ve had in the backcourt and at the same time: Steve Kerr, Michael Jordan, and Reggie Miller. I say Michael Jordan because Roland Lazenby’s outstanding biography says he would have loved the chance to consider UCLA.
He liked UCLA a lot and would have given it a long look. But UCLA didn’t really recruit him. This was many years after John Wooden retired. But still. It’s not bad to have Reggie Miller because he was obviously terrific in college. That is an incredible ‘what if.’
I presume Kareem and Walton would be successful in any era. But how do you think those two would have handled all the changes in college basketball: the game, most players don’t stay four years, and the NIL component?
Scott Howard-Cooper:
It would’ve been different for Kareem and Walton because you just don’t stay four years anywhere. Kareem, or Lew Alcindor at the time, was anxious to get away from UCLA. He was not anxious enough that he claimed hardship after his junior year. But he thought seriously about transferring. He was over the whole college thing after his junior year, maybe even sooner. He loved the academic side of college. He was deeply committed to classes and loved the learning aspect of college. But the basketball part, he was done with. Bill would be a little bit different. I think he struggled with the social aspect of college because he had a horrible stuttering problem and did not associate with many people."
The Bill Walton you see today is much different than the Bill Walton of the 1970s in Westwood. But also, he had people running at him after his junior year saying that he should turn pro. The ABA not only wanted to give him a contract as the ABA did with Lew Alcindor.
The ABA would let Bill not only pick his team but also pick his roster.
They approached Bill Walton after he made 21 out of 22 shots in that historic game against Memphis State in the [1973] championship game.
They said, ‘If you come to the ABA now after your junior year, you tell us who you want on your team. Except for Dr. J [Julius Erving], we’ll put them on your team. Pick your roster.’
The only thing they knew for sure is they wanted Dr. J in the East and they wanted Bill Walton in the West. They wanted that competitive and marketing balance. That’s why Julius Erving was not an option.
Bill still said no. He loved college. If he wanted to be anywhere for his senior year, I still think it would’ve been UCLA. I don’t know if it would’ve been automatic that he would have turned pro. But I think he would’ve been tempted because he had a lot of frustrating moments along the way with college life.
Now coming on to John Wooden. The transfer portal, NIL, and recruiting. How would that have changed things for him?
Scott Howard-Cooper:
The John Wooden answer is easy. He would not have done well at all.
He didn’t like recruiting. He had to be forced to recruit Lew Alcindor in New York. If it was up to John Wooden, they would’ve never made a recruiting visit or given him a campus visit. He thought that he and his assistant coaches should be home with the family on weekends, and not on the road scouting opponents.
They did very little scouting. The 'John Wooden Way' would not fly either way. That has to do with his personality. He would not have done well with the players’ personalities. And if you would’ve told him about things like NIL and you have to re-recruit players because of the transfer portal, that never would’ve happened. It’s the same thing with John Wooden with the pros.
And he knew this, thankfully. The Lakers and some other teams tried to get him. He realized that would’ve been a bad move. He just was not good with the way the players were changing, personality-wise and playing-wise.
Knowing how Kareem Abdul Jabbar and Bill Walton were among the best college players ever, what do you imagine how much money they could have made in the NIL era?
Scott Howard-Cooper:
Oh my gosh (laughs). I think if I could have five percent of what it could’ve been, I could’ve retired years ago (laughs). They would have broken the bank.
They would have lapped Caleb Williams a few dozen times.
That’s maybe an exaggeration, but not by much. These were guys that changed the game. They were 1 and 1A in any order for best player in college basketball history.
What is your Mt. Rushmore of UCLA players?
Scott Howard-Cooper:
Everybody ducks the first issue of who you make your center. They say Kareem is the center and Bill Walton is the power forward. If I’m able to do that, you take that.
You have to have Sidney Wicks on the team. He is the third greatest player in UCLA history and easily could be the best player in program history at most other colleges.
He was that good and that impactful. Then Walt Hazzard to Gail Goodrich? But I’m already at five and must find a way to have Jamaal Wilkes. Jamaal has to be in there. I know I’m butchering this answer terribly. Mt. Rushmore is supposed to be four players. I’ve already gone past four and a normal starting lineup. And I haven’t gotten to Don MacLean, Reggie Miller, Willie Naulls, and all of these other great players.
In your defense, this seems to be an impossible question.
Scott Howard-Cooper:
The real impossible question is picking a true center. You can fudge it and make one of the guys the power forward. But there have to be the two centers and then Sidney Wicks, Jamaal Wilkes, Goodrich, and Hazzard. Curtis Rowe was a fantastic player. Greg Lee was not a superstar by any means, but what a key player. His connection to Bill Walton was one of the things that made that team go. I’m probably leaving out people who made All-American or All-Conference. That may be the greatest respect of all in UCLA basketball history that it is that hard to pick a starting five.
We know, for sure, who we pick as Coach. At least we have that.
You outlined some of these examples already. But you wrote in the intro that the “Bruins often won in spite of themselves” and ‘turbulent’ is part of the book title. Given that context, how do UCLA’s 10 national championships compare to any other major accomplishment in all of sports?
Scott Howard-Cooper:
There have been dynasties in other sports as well. But at the very least, it is in the conversation for one of the most impressive things in college sports history. You can make the case for No. 1, including the seven [championships] in a row. John Wooden won with guards leading the way in the first two championships. He won with centers leading the way during the Alcindor years and the Walton gang. In between, he won where his best players were forwards with Sidney Wicks and Curtis Rowe. Then he won one more where he had no superstar, but a lot of really good players. He had amazing depth at forward with Marques Johnson, David Meyers, and Richard Washington.
There’s no conversation about the ‘greatest anything in college sports history’ without UCLA basketball coming out of somebody’s mouth very, very early in the conversation.
I know we covered a lot of ground. But are there any other stories you want to share from the book?
Scott Howard-Cooper:
Do you know about the time that John Wooden’s son wanted to punch out Bill Walton? (laughs). There were so many fun things I found out about Jerry West and Bill Walton hanging out at a diner in Westwood and what Lakers’ superstar Jerry West really thought of college freshman Bill Walton.
On Notre Dame's Digger Phelps and the fake memento lying in the Hall of Fame
When Notre Dame beat UCLA in South Bend to break the 88-game winning streak, [Notre Dame coach] Digger Phelps kept the game ball. When the Hall-of-Fame asked for the game ball, Digger told his student manager to give them another one.
The ball that is now in the Hall-of-Fame as a memento for ending the winning streak is a fake.
There are so many of those fun stories in the book.
On John Wooden's son Jim Wooden's reaction to Bill Walton's arrest and the family's support for the book
One of those fun stories is John Wooden’s son, a retired Marine in the 1970s. Jim Wooden is back in Los Angeles after serving around the world in different posts and is at Pauley [Pavilion] rooting on his dad and the Bruin program. When he finds out that Bill Walton gets arrested for the [Vietnam War] protest, he is furious. Not only because he saw it as a stand against America. Not only because the same reason of his dad being upset that he was breaking the law and there was some destruction of property. But Jim Wooden saw it as an affront to his dad by bringing a great deal of unnecessary negativity to the program.
Jim is mad at the player with the biggest name in the whole program for not supporting the military in Southeast Asia. Jim’s saying something to his dad and is getting amped up. John Wooden saw what was happening and put a halt to it. He said, “I got this. Please don’t say anything. Don’t get involved.’
The Wooden family was fantastic with me with the process of researching this book and doing interviews. That was one of the fun and interesting things that Jim Wooden told me. His dad had to tell him to stand down. It wasn’t like he was going to knock him on his butt. But John Wooden could see that his son was going zero to sixty pretty fast. So he said, “Don’t say anything; I got this.’”
On how closely connected UCLA basketball was to the Vietnam war
One of the players from an earlier championship, Freddie Goss, ended up serving in Vietnam and facing fire. He came back and coached at UC Riverside and did some other college coaching. He rooted on the Bruins. He went to New York City in the 1968-69 season for Lew Alcindor’s senior year. Freddie was stationed in Washington D.C. So Freddie went up for the game as one of John Wooden’s former players in his [military] uniform.
That really gave perspective on how connected UCLA was to the Vietnam War. One player talked me through how he had to take his physical in downtown Los Angeles because he got a draft notice and he’s standing in boxers and a T-shirt and shivering, partly because of the cold and partly because he was scared to death.
That was a huge thing on college campuses at the time. Your classmates are getting plucked off campus after getting draft notices. Then they’re fighting in Vietnam.
Don Saffer told me he was scared to death. Thankfully for him, he flunked the physical. He obviously didn’t have to go. He was so guilty. He was thankful. But he also thought, ‘If I’m supposed to serve, how can I get out of it when other people can’t? How is that right?’
He would go by a memorial near his hometown and see several of his high school classmates listed among the dead on that memorial. He felt incredibly guilty that by the grace of God, he did not go when others did.
"These are the ways I tried to put UCLA basketball in the context of the times. It’s not a political book. It’s not a history book. But when you talk about the dynasty program of John Wooden, it has to be in that backdrop with what was going on at the time."
Mark Medina is an NBA insider for Sportskeeda. Follow him on X, Instagram, Facebook, and Threads.
