January 20, 1998
"The Game of the Century," it was called.
An audacious claim, considering there were still 32 years of basketball to play.
The UCLA-Houston clash in the Houston
Astrodome on Jan. 20, 1968–30 years ago tonight–wasn’t the best game
ever played, but it was one that changed college basketball.
It was spectacular–No. 1 UCLA against No.
2 Houston, Lew Alcindor against Elvin Hayes, a battle of two unbeaten
teams with UCLA’s 47-game winning streak on the line.
But it was also, to use John Wooden’s word,
"a spectacle"–a game staged in front of a then-record crowd of 52,693
on a court smack-dab in the middle of the vast dirt floor of the
Astrodome, itself a marvel of its time, and shown live on national TV
under glaring temporary lights.
"It was a terrible place to play, in
reality," Wooden said. "The court was out in the middle, the seats were
way back–and of course the dressing rooms seemed a quarter-mile away."
The lights were so bright, Sports
Illustrated wrote that the Astrodome "very nearly became the first
place in the world where a player lost a rebound in the lights."
"I didn’t feel as though the players could
shoot well," Wooden said. "But of course, Hayes shot very, very well.
He had a tremendous game."
Hayes scored 39 points–29 in the first
half–as he led Houston to a 71-69 upset in what Wooden still calls
"one of the great individual performances in a game I ever saw."
As for Alcindor, now Kareem Abdul-Jabbar,
it was uncertain until the day before the game if he would even play
because of an eye injury that had hospitalized him the previous week.
But the anticipation was so intense that when he arrived in Houston,
the inch-thick patch newly removed from his eye, Alcindor found a
specially made 10-foot bed in his hotel room, with "Big Lew" printed at
the foot.
The next day, he endured the worst game of his UCLA career, making only four of 18 shots and finishing with 15 points.
"The game wasn’t really well-played, other than by Elvin," Abdul-Jabbar recalled on its 20th anniversary.
Dick Enberg, then a UCLA broadcaster whose
network career was launched partly by that game, still remembers the
frenzy of the Houston fans storming the court from their seats more
than 100 feet away, clamoring past the press and officials positioned
in 18-inch deep trenches dug at its edges.
"When Houston won, it was like the return
to the Alamo," Enberg said. "People were leaping over us in the
foxholes. It was just this thundering herd."
With that, the future of college basketball was transformed, in ways previously unimaginable.
The crowd of 52,000-plus–fans paid $2 to
sit in the highest reaches of the Astrodome and only $5 for "front-row
seats," still 100 feet from the action–was then the largest to witness
a basketball game in the United States. (About 75,000 had seen the
Globetrotters play in an outdoor stadium in Brazil.)
The game also was the first regular-season
college basketball game to be televised nationally–syndicated by Eddie
Einhorn on TVS for 120 stations in 49 states–and it drew tremendous
ratings, proving that there was an appetite for college basketball, and
setting the stage for today’s made-for-TV games.
"There were so many firsts involved, people
cannot put it out of their minds," said Don Chaney, the former Clipper
coach who is now an assistant with the Knicks and was a senior guard on
that Houston team. "People that I know were too young to be there are
always telling me, ‘I was at that game.’ "
Could Judge Roy Hofheinz–the major domo of
the dome, as Sports Illustrated called him–have imagined that 30 years
later basketball in a dome would not only no longer seem absurd, but
that the Final Four would be destined in rapid succession for the
Alamodome, the ThunderDome, the RCA Dome, the Metrodome and the Georgia
Dome?
Or that CBS would be in the middle of an eight-year, $1.725-billion contract to televise the NCAA tournament?
"You
could credit some of the national success of college basketball to the
game being on TV," Enberg said. "Now, you can check the TV Guide and
see 20 games a week."
That part of the legacy isn’t something Wooden always embraces.
"The television people won’t like hearing
me say it, but I said it before so I’ll say it again: I think
television is one of the worst things that ever happened to
intercollegiate basketball," he said. "It’s made showmen out of the
players and that hurts team play. And it means that there are games
played every day of the week at any time of day.
"There’s always the other side, though, and
that’s that it provides income that has been the savior of many women’s
sports and the non-income producing sports."
Money was the issue in 1968 as well, when
the UCLA athletic director at the time, J.D. Morgan, approached Wooden
about playing Houston in the Astrodome. Wooden thought the hullabaloo
about the Alcindor-Hayes matchup would detract from team play and was
reluctant. But when Morgan told him the schools stood to make more than
$80,000 for the game, Wooden knew it had to be played.
"{Morgan} was reassuring," Wooden said. "He
said in addition to the money, that he thought it would be very good
for basketball and would give basketball exposure throughout the
country. He was right."
UCLA and Houston had met the previous year
in the NCAA semifinals, with UCLA winning, 73-58, on the way to the
third of UCLA’s 10 national championships under Wooden.
But even in defeat, Hayes was confident.
"He was pretty outspoken when we beat him
in the semifinals in ’67," said Lynn Shackelford, the former UCLA
forward. "He said, ‘We’ll definitely beat them next year.’ He said
Kareem was overrated–even after losing, he said that."
Three games before the rematch, Alcindor
suffered a scratched cornea in a game against Cal and had to miss the
next two games, confined to a dark room at the Jules Stein Eye Clinic
at UCLA most of the week.
"The doctors said there was no way he could play well," Wooden said. "He had vertical double-vision, the doctors said.
"I talked with him about that, and told him
he didn’t have to play because he wouldn’t do well, and there was such
tremendous attention. I think Lewis made a statement later that he
probably shouldn’t have played. I did give him the option.
"It sounds like I’m making excuses. I don’t
want to do that. They were a fine team. Without Alcindor, we weren’t
the same. He wasn’t himself at all."
It was not just Alcindor’s vision, but his conditioning, after hardly practicing for a week.
"The second half, I could tell he was real
tired," Shackelford said. "We kind of had to wait on him a few times to
set up the offense–kind of like his last three years in the NBA. We
weren’t used to that when he was 20."
Alcindor was hampered, and Hayes was at his best.
"He was on fire," said Chaney, still a good
friend of Hayes, who until this season ranked as the NBA’s
fourth-leading scorer of all time–he since has been passed by Michael
Jordan–and now owns and operates automobile dealerships in the Houston
area.
"They could have put three or four guys on
him, and he was not going to miss many," Chaney said. "Every shot was
either in, or in and out."
As close as the final score was, UCLA never had a good shot to win in the final seconds.
Hayes, a 6-foot-9 forward, was not directly
matched against the 7-2 Alcindor, as Wooden points out, but he blocked
three of Alcindor’s shots, and the crowd roared his nickname, "Big E."
UCLA tied the score, 69-69, on two free
throws by Lucius Allen, but Hayes–only a 60% free-throw shooter–went
to the line with 28 seconds left and made both. A couple of UCLA
turnovers later, Houston inbounded the ball with 12 seconds left and
ran out the clock.
"The city of Houston had itself a week’s
celebration," Chaney said. "They ran the game on TV again and again. It
must have been shown five times a day for a solid week.
"From the California side, they were upset
and disappointed. Kareem had a bad eye. He wasn’t 100%, I’ll give him
that. But had he been 100%, he would not have stopped Elvin that night."
Only a couple of days later, the Bruins
suffered another blow when Edgar Lacey, a starter, quit the team.
Benched during the game because he wasn’t playing the denial defense
Wooden wanted against Hayes, Lacey was upset by Wooden’s postgame
comments that he didn’t look as if he wanted to go back in.
"That was one of the most disappointing
things, what happened with Edgar," Wooden said. "I told the press he
gave me the impression he didn’t want to play. I’m sorry I said that.
It hurt him, and that’s why he quit. I was very disappointed. Edgar was
a fine boy."
Both teams knew they would never win the
NCAA title that season without meeting again. It happened in the
semifinals at the L.A. Sports Arena, and this time, Wooden used a
diamond-and-one defense with Shackelford on Hayes.
This time, the roles were reversed. Hayes,
unable to get the ball, made three of 10 shots and finished with 10
points. Alcindor made seven of 14 and had 19 points and 18 rebounds.
The Bruins roared to a 22-point halftime lead and won, 101-69, then went on to beat North Carolina in the championship game.
"That {semifinal game} was the best game we
played in my four years," Shackelford said. "That was the closest we
came to our potential."
An overlooked fact, in Chaney’s eyes, was
that Houston was without starting guard George Reynolds, a transfer
ruled ineligible before the final game of the season because of his
junior college academic record.
"Someone had done some research–I think it might have been the California side," Chaney said.
Besides that, the Cougars had gone
Hollywood. Hayes and Theodis Lee appeared on "The Joey Bishop Show"
days before the game, and center Ken Spain went on "The Dating Game" as
the players soaked up the California scene.
"That really hurt us," Chaney said. "We
were a team that was very pleased with the year we had. We got carried
away and lost our focus. We learned a big lesson. I did, and I know
Elvin did. We got full of ourselves."
That game, though, is not the one people
remember. It certainly wasn’t the semifinal of the century. The
memories are in the Astrodome.
"It’s interesting, after all these years in
broadcasting, people say, ‘What’s your most memorable event?’ " Enberg
said. "Incredibly, that’s still the most memorable game I’ve covered in
any sport–certainly college basketball."
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