KINGDOM ON FIRE

A tale of basketball heroics against the backdrop of a tumultuous era.

John Wooden, the legendary head coach of UCLA Bruins basketball, wasn’t quite prepared for the arrival of the late 1960s. Writes veteran sports journalist Howard-Cooper, “His life had been built on structure, discipline, and humility…where the Good Book mattered a few trillion times more than the playbook.” Wooden excoriated his early 1970s squad as “victims of a permissive society,” but by that time he was starting to loosen up. Some of that was due to a young player named Lew Alcindor, who came to UCLA with a large chip on his shoulder and a profound hatred of white oppression—understandably, given his life circumstances. Alcindor, later Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, may have had his troubles, but he loved UCLA, and he arrived as an already seasoned player “needing only to gain strength and stamina to keep up with adults logging about three times as many games a season.” Bill Walton came to the court with a hippie ethos that didn’t necessarily equate to being laid-back, and Wooden badgered him to cut his hair and submit to “a foundation of structure and discipline.” Difficulties ensued, but, as Howard-Cooper writes, the three men learned from each other, sharing notable victories and stinging losses. At the end of his career, Wooden was more relaxed and beloved as a kind of grandfather to the world; Abdul-Jabbar became more forgiving while still working ceaselessly for civil rights; and Walton, still a hippie, became inclined to kindness and tempered observations. Each of them illustrates Wooden’s axiom: “Things work out best for the people who make the best of the way things work out.”

A fluent, fast-moving narrative to delight Bruins fans—and hoops buffs in general.