Reporter recalls lunch with coaching greats John Wooden, Marv Harshman, Pete Newell

The passing of John Wooden, five months short of a full century of life, hit me a little different from most. Yes, it recalled that period in college basketball when there was UCLA and then there was everybody else. But it stirred in me memories of March 14, 2003, when the basketball gods cast a wary eye my way, harrumphed and said, "OK. But just this once."

I had the idea early that year, in doing a piece on Marv Harshman, the great former coach at Pacific Lutheran, Washington State and Washington. He said he was going to be at the Pac-10 basketball tournament for his induction into the league's hall of honor.

I began thinking: How cool would it be to get Harshman together with two other West Coast giants of college basketball, John Wooden and Pete Newell, to have lunch and talk about the game?

Turned out, it was only slightly harder than breaking Wooden's 2-2-1 zone press with a one-armed point guard.

Harshman said he could do it. We'd shoot for the Friday of the league tournament.

I began working on Wooden. Back in the years immediately after his retirement in 1975, he used to pick up the phone himself. But he didn't do that anymore, and we couldn't connect.

I did what I should have done at first: Rely on Harshman. He dialed up Wooden at his condo in Thousand Oaks north of Los Angeles, and soon, two-thirds of the group was in. I tracked down Newell at his home in San Diego, and three weeks before the luncheon, we were set. Conveniently, Newell was going to be attending the tournament.

A week before I was supposed to fly to L.A., my paper balked. The budget was lean, and this story was a luxury.

I guess the names weren't big enough.

I lobbied and cajoled and got a grudging approval to go ahead with it.

It would be a logistical challenge: I would pick Harshman up at his downtown L.A. hotel at 10 a.m. and we'd drive 20 miles south to Rancho Palos Verdes, where Newell was staying with friends. We'd meet him at 11 at a designated spot in a shopping center, then head up the freeway 35 miles to Wooden's favorite restaurant, the Valley Inn in Sherman Oaks, to gather at noon.

Harshman was on time, looking sharp in a green sports jacket. He was upbeat, a perfect companion. We arrived in Rancho Palos Verdes at about 10:40 and waited for Newell.

Eleven o'clock passed and 11:10. And 11:20. My collar was feeling tight.

Now it was 11:30, and clearly, something had gone horribly wrong. I was stricken. Not only did I not have Newell, I had, in a complete dunce move, failed to get a contact number for him at his friend's.

The whole thing was falling apart. Rescheduling was out of the question. My lunch was going to be humble pie, the grande portion.

What happened next became a blur. I remembered Newell had done some work with the Golden State Warriors, so I called, frantically, and talked to a public-relations man there. No, he said, Newell had moved on awhile back to the Lakers.

I phoned a PR aide for the Lakers. He referred me to Bob Steiner, former PR guy for the team, who knew Newell well.

Steiner picked up the phone at home. The gods were reluctantly hearing the case.

"I just saw him last night," Steiner told me. "What was that friend's name? Taige? Tighe?"

I dashed into a store, a beauty shop, I think, and riffled through an out-of-date phone book for Rancho Palos Verdes. I couldn't match Steiner's recollection with any name. Going next door, I found a current phone book and indeed, there was a name not in that first book.

I dialed the number. It was now about 11:50.

Bingo. Pete was there, taking a nap. He hadn't been feeling that well, and had gotten signals crossed on our meeting. But he assured me he'd be at the shopping center in 10 minutes.

Salvaging the thing now depended on whether we could stall off Wooden. All I was doing was inconveniencing the greatest coach who ever lived.

I called his restaurant and they said indeed, Wooden was there. They summoned him to the phone, I offered my lame explanation and said we would be there but maybe an hour late.

Predictably, the San Diego Freeway was glutted. But we pulled up at the Valley Inn at 1:30. John Wooden got out of a brown sedan parked at the curb. I won't forget that.

A freelance photographer took pictures, and soon, three Naismith Hall of Fame coaches were sitting in a circular leather booth, enjoying jaunty conversation: Marv Harshman, 85, who won 654 games; Pete Newell, 87, who won a national title at California in 1959, an Olympic championship in 1960 and was perhaps the most acclaimed teacher and clinician in the game's history until his death in 2008; and John Wooden, 92, who won 10 NCAA titles in every form imaginable.

Wooden had half a club sandwich and, oddly, a half-and-half cup of clam chowder, Boston and Manhattan. Newell went for the pot roast, Harshman penne pasta.

There were no cosmic revelations, just three vibrant gentlemen trading hearty recollections.

Wooden said the most money he ever earned in a year was $32,500. He wasn't big on TV's impact on the game, calling it "the worst thing for basketball. I think it makes actors out of coaches, players and officials."

The Wizard of Westwood said he was still in favor of letting everybody into the NCAA tournament, just as he had been three decades earlier. He scoffed at the game's overwrought position designations: "two-guards" and "small forwards."

He said he thought it was best that all freshmen be ineligible, as they were before 1972. Not surprisingly, the player he liked best then, for his steadiness and stoicism, maybe even the shorts, was John Stockton.

Wooden was reserved but warm, not the least bit self-absorbed.

He had to be back by 3, so we broke up at 2:45. Through thickening traffic on the 405 freeway, we crawled south to drop Newell off. Then back downtown to return Harshman to his hotel. My 7:25 plane was just rolling away from the gate as I approached the waiting area.

Best flight I ever missed.

Bud Withers: 206-464-8281 or bwithers@seattletimes.com