It takes a late bloomer to know a late bloomer.
Overweight as a senior in high school and not recruited by NCAA Division I schools, University of Arkansas guard Mason Jones is now contemplating the possibility of an NBA career.
The co-SEC player of the year has a compelling story about the motivation to lose weight in order to become a great college basketball player. He was in the 270-pound range as a high schooler. After much hard work and discipline, Jones is a svelte 6-foot-5, 200 pounds.
Gail Goodrich, a Hall of Fame basketball legend at UCLA and star guard for the Los Angeles Lakers, was himself a late bloomer.
Unlike the “too big” Jones, Goodrich was considered “too small” as a high schooler in Los Angeles in the 1960s. UCLA Coach John Wooden discovered him as a junior while scouting another player in the city championships.
Goodrich would become the centerpiece as Wooden won the first two of his 10 national championships in 1964 and 1965. It was 55 years ago this week when Goodrich scored 42 points in a 91-80 victory over Michigan, a title game record for individual points at the time.
The 6-1, 170-pound lefty guard scored 40, 30, 28 and 42 in the four 1965 NCAA Tournament games. In 1973, UCLA’s Bill Walton scored 44 points on 21-of 22-shooting from the field to eclipse Goodrich’s record in a title game.
Walton was never small. He starred at UCLA and in the NBA as a 6-11 center. The Goodrich story is amazing because he was 5-1, 99 pounds when he enrolled in high school. Few could imagine he would become one of the game’s greatest. UCLA and the Lakers retired his number.
Reached at his retirement home in Sun Valley, Idaho, Goodrich was interested in the Jones story. He loves college basketball and followed the successful Arkansas run by former coach Nolan Richardson. That the Hogs pressed full court was of great interest. That’s how Wooden’s UCLA teams played.
“We spread the floor and pushed the tempo,” Goodrich said. “And we pressed. Those teams in 1964 and 1965 were not big, but we were quick. We relied on speed. Now we did have talent.
“That’s the way Arkansas played under Nolan. He had fast, talented teams. We wanted to get the tempo up and so did Nolan. Nolan’s teams were always faster than everyone else. I watched them.”
Sadly, there will be no one to watch this weekend when the Final Four was supposed to be played. The coronavirus pandemic wiped out the NCAA Tournament.
“I got an email from a friend with a New York Post story that this is the 45-year anniversary of Coach Wooden’s last championship team,” he said. “It’s what we are left to talk about now.”
Wooden’s last championship came 10 years after Goodrich’s 42-point title game.
“What happened that night is that I went to the line a lot,” he said. “I always wanted to go to the hoop. I never figured anyone could stop me.”
Jones played the same way for the Razorbacks. He led the nation in free throws attempted this season (282).
“I liked contact,” Goodrich said. “If they knocked me down, I picked myself up and said, ‘Thank you, I’ll shoot my free throws.’ That was what happened that night.”
Goodrich’s 42-point night was recalled but only after insight provided by retired Rogers banker Ron Wey who volunteered Goodrich, a close friend, for an interview.
Almost immediately Goodrich was on the phone, not once but twice for more questions.
That Wey became close to Goodrich is ironic. Wey played basketball at crosstown-rival Southern Cal at the same time Goodrich was at UCLA. But he ended up living in the summer with UCLA star Keith Erickson and hung out with the Bruins.
The best part of the interview featured his growth spurts that took him from a tiny gym rat to a potential UCLA recruit.
Goodrich and Wey are close. Goodrich brought Wey to his induction into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in Springfield, Mass. Their friendship dates to Wey’s tight bond with Erickson, a Goodrich teammate.
“Ron was always around,” Goodrich said. “We became good friends. Yes, he went to the other school, but everyone [at UCLA] liked him. We played a lot in summers. If there was a pick-up game, we were in.”
It was like that from an early age. Goodrich’s father was team captain at USC. That makes his stardom at UCLA highly ironic. Wooden was early in the Goodrich recruitment. The Trojans said he was too small. He starred at UCLA as a 6-1 shooting guard.
Indeed, Goodrich had talent and amazing quickness. He was impossible to guard. He was a fierce competitor, never shying away from contact at the rim whether that was in the tough LA city leagues, the Final Four or as he helped the Lakers to championships. Goodrich was a five-time NBA All-Star.
“I grew up with a ball in my hands,” he said. “My dad started me playing when I was 5 or 6. I was so small that I played with a volleyball. My hands were too small for a basketball.”
Lack of size provided motivation.
“It made me tough mentally,” he said. “I was always confident, bordering on cockiness.
“I do remember mentioning to my parents that I wished I was bigger. My mom would say, ‘You will grow and God gave you ability.’ I was given certain skills. I played with great passion.”
At some point, his father began to buy him leather basketballs.
“I had a leather ball when I was in the ninth grade,” Goodrich said. “No one else did.”
He took it to high school pickup games.
“Our school at that time had highly structured ways of picking teams,” he said. “It was based on height and weight, along with ability. We had a varsity team, junior varsity, then A, B, C and D teams.
“The summer games had all levels, but the older players picked the sides. Normally I would have been too small to be picked.”
Except the leather basketball was his ticket. All of the other balls were rubber.
“The older boys knew if they didn’t pick me, I’d go to the other end with my ball,” Goodrich said. “So I got chosen every time.
“The varsity coach saw something in me. When he set the teams in the fall, I had hoped I might make the B team as a sophomore, but he picked me for JV.”
Goodrich earned the starting point guard spot as a 5-4, 99-pounder. He made all city JV as a sophomore. He moved up to varsity as a 5-8, 120-pound junior.
“I scored 20-something in the first round of the city tournament,” he said.
It was in that game that he got a break. Wooden attended.
“He sat about four rows up in the stands with his assistant coach,” Goodrich said. “They were there to watch someone else, but he told his assistant, ‘I like the little left-hander. He’s smart. If he grows, he might help us.’”
His parents were nearby.
“My mom was so proud,” Goodrich said. “She asked, ‘Do you mean that?’ He said yes. That was our introduction to UCLA.”
The next game was against a potent full-court press and a one-on-one matchup with Joe Caldwell.
“Caldwell was 6-5, city player of the year,” Goodrich said. “We lost, but I was not going to let him take the ball away. We began to get letters from UCLA.
“I got another growth spurt before my senior year, to 5-11, 135. UCLA said they were going to take a closer look.”
It all fell in place in late February when Goodrich scored 29 points to win MVP in the city title game.
“I played with a chipped bone in my ankle,” he said. “Coach Wooden came to see me after the game.”
The discussion was short and sweet.
“He said they would offer a scholarship,” Goodrich said. “We had mid-term graduation. It was a Wednesday night. Graduation ceremonies were Friday. He said, ‘You can enroll Monday.’ I was a UCLA Bruin that quickly.”
Obviously, Goodrich was close to Wooden, too, and loves to tell stories from the UCLA days.
“He was never big on talks in pregame,” Goodrich said. “He said a lot, ‘Do your best. Your best is good enough.’ He never talked about winning.
“We were the underdog in ’64 against Duke. In the pregame talk, he said, ‘You got here playing a certain way and that’s all you need. Press and rebound.’ Then, he asked us if anyone remembered who finished second in ’63. His point was no one remembers the second-place team. He said, ‘Now go play.’
“In ’65 and he had a short speech again, ‘Play the way you are capable and you will be happy with the results.’ I know he watched film of the other teams, but we didn’t.”
His UCLA teams were shorter early in his run of titles, but not later.
“He never sacrif iced quickness for size,” Goodrich said. “Coach Wooden always told me that quickness was the most important aspect in any sport.
“We had a discussion on that one time and I said, ‘What about golf?’ He thought a minute and said, ‘It’s in golf, too. The quickness of the club head at impact is the most important part of golf.’ ”