In Westwood, Harrick Runs to Catch Up : UCLA's New Basketball Coach Has Much Work to Do Before His First Game

By THOMAS BONK

May 10, 1988 12 AM PT

Times Staff Writer

There is a fresh coat of paint on the walls of Jim Harrick’s office at UCLA. The new basketball coach is there doing business, even though he has not fully moved in yet, and the cards and letters keep coming.

How many of them? Tens? Hundreds? Zillions?

“Two piles every day,” said Harrick.

They’re counting by volume, not numbers, these days at UCLA, where the stack of basketball coaches since John Wooden retired also has reached about one full pile. So that chair Harrick occupies is a pretty warm one.

Symbolically at least, that chair has been busy through the Walt Hazzard era, the Larry Farmer era, the Larry Brown era, the Gary Cunningham era, and the Gene Bartow era. Bartow, of course, got it from the man himself, Wooden, the only true wizard this side of the rainbow.

The Wizard offered some words of wisdom on the sixth man who has succeeded him to the throne he vacated 13 years ago.

“He’s paid his dues, in a sense,” Wooden said of Harrick. “He may be every bit as good a coach as (Jim) Valvano, (Mike) Krzyzewski and Larry Brown, but he hasn’t been in the spotlight.”

That is changing now. The spotlight is surely pointed this very moment right at his jet black hair. Harrick, 49, has only a few, stray gray hairs, but then he’s been on the job for less than a month. It only seems longer to Harrick.

“I have about 400 people who want five minutes,” he said. “I keep telling myself, it’s got to slow down. It can’t always be like this.”

Hazzard thought it would always be like that, right up to the last, when Chancellor Charles Young finally gave in and fired him with two years left on his contract, which had been extended less than a year before.

“He was stunned,” said football Coach Terry Donahue, who said Hazzard had told him of his dismissal the day before it was announced. “I think he was totally caught off guard. He had heard the rumors. We all had. But I think he thought he had survived them.”

There are still reminders of Hazzard in Harrick’s new office. The brown couch is still there, and so are the small refrigerator, the desk and the round table. None of them figure to be there very much longer.

Harrick is going to have the office redecorated. His wife, Sally, has already met with a decorator.

What is it going to look like?

“I don’t know what they’re going to do,” Harrick said. “Something like Terry Donahue’s. I shouldn’t say that.”

When Jim Harrick was coaching at Morningside High School in Inglewood in 1964, he also began teaching a drivers’ training class. For $100 more a month, Harrick taught the class for nine years. He said he emerged without a scratch.

“I never had a wreck, but by the ninth year, my chest itched,” he said. “I don’t know why.”

At UCLA, some people want Harrick to do so well that they’re about to break out in hives. Actor Mike Warren, a Bruin player for Wooden, is a member of the board of directors of the Bruin Boosters and thinks Harrick is going to do a good job. Warren recently completed shooting a pilot for NBC. It is called “Home Free,” something that Harrick is not.

“I kind of stayed away from it for a while,” Warren said. “I’m also a big Larry Brown fan. Once that fell out, I made sure I was able to get through and talk about Jim Harrick because I feel so strongly about him.

“He’s perfect for the job. He’s an excellent coach. There’s no doubt in my mind he’s one of the best coaches in the country. He’s extremely familiar with the California turf. If we had been able to keep kids in California for the last few years, UCLA wouldn’t be in the shape it is today.

“Saying all this, I was also extremely saddened by Walt’s firing,” Warren said. “But I feel Jim Harrick is the best man for the job. I heard all the other names, like everyone else. But anyone coming in is not going to turn it around immediately. The only one who could is John Wooden and we know he’s not coming back.”

Lynn Shackelford, another former Bruin, said he and some other UCLA alumni felt all along that Brown was not the right man for the job because he wouldn’t stay for long.

“We were right,” Shackelford said. “He stayed about 12 hours.”

Gail Goodrich joined the Bruin Boosters’ board when Warren did, in Hazzard’s first year as UCLA’s coach. Goodrich said that Harrick was clearly the right man, if only for one reason.

“At least he wanted the job,” Goodrich said.

And what of Hazzard?

“Walt always did things his way,” Goodrich said. “He called his own shots. He’s always been his own man. Walt and I are friends. I was very supportive of Walt. I guess if there was a criticism of Walt, it was over the philosophy and ability to recruit that was a question mark.

“Coach Wooden sort of followed this philosophy--you have to get the players in the Southern California area to stay here,” Goodrich said. “They’ve been leaving.”

Harrick said he expects to recruit the best local players. If he is unable to do that, he said, he will fail to reach another of his goals--getting at least to the round of 16 every year in the National Collegiate Athletic Assn. tournament.

“Now, I don’t know if we can do that, but that’s a goal,” Harrick said.

For the moment, though, recruiting is the main one. It is one of the first things Harrick talks about.

“I can pick up the phone any hour of the day and night and call high school coaches around Southern California,” he said.

Jim and Sally Harrick, who met and fell in love as teen-agers in Charleston, W. Va., left for Los Angeles the night they got married, 28 years ago. Harrick drove a brand new 1960 Chevrolet. He knew four people in Los Angeles, an aunt and three cousins. Since then, Harrick said he has made a lot of new friends.

“And, I hope, not any enemies.”

Hazzard and Harrick ran into one another last Thursday. Both were at a ceremony at which County Supervisor Kenneth Hahn honored Manual Arts High School of Los Angeles, the Division I state basketball champion. Neither had known that the other would be there and the meeting was kind of strained.

Harrick said he greeted Hazzard and wished him well.

“I think it was more uncomfortable for him than it was for me,” Harrick said.

Hazzard said there really wasn’t anything to talk about. “It don’t mean anything. I don’t know what it was to him, but to me, it was nothing.”

Harrick is reluctant to discuss Hazzard, or any of the five other post-Wooden coaches on the record.

“I have made a policy,” he said. “I don’t want to hurt anybody’s feelings.”

Wooden has the same policy. He said that he was sorry to see Hazzard fired, but also that he is happy for Harrick. He believes Harrick will do well because of his past experiences on campus at UCLA when Harrick served as an assistant on Cunningham’s staff.

“Was it Lincoln who said something about never meeting a person he didn’t learn something from, even if most of the time it was what not to do?” Wooden said.

“I’m not being critical of Walt’s firing, either,” Wooden said. “If they want to make a change, that is their prerogative. I will not be critical of Walt himself. I wouldn’t compare his work with anyone else’s.

“I will say this about Harrick,” Wooden said. “He’s going to make a concerted effort to try to keep the better local players around. I believe if you can make a concerted effort to keep two or three of the better ones every year in Southern California, you’ll have a team that attracts athletes. I didn’t believe in getting players out of the area.”

Wooden said he doesn’t believe that any of the coaches who succeeded him failed because they could not cope with the pressure he left in his wake after coaching UCLA to 10 NCAA titles.

“If you’re affected by pressure from the outside, that’s just a personality weakness and you’re always going to have trouble,” he said.

After Hazzard was fired, Wooden phoned him once. Wooden said he felt about the same way when Farmer left.

“You hate to see it happen,” he said.

Each of the five coaches since Wooden had a winning record, including Hazzard. But Harrick pointed out that records don’t necessarily solve everything.

“It’s not just winning,” he said. “It’s the total package area: Coaching, recruiting, media relations, faculty-staff relations, academics, community relations. To be successful today, you must be able to cover every area.

“If you can coach and can’t recruit, you’re not going to make it,” Harrick said. “If you can coach and recruit and are poor with the media, you’re going to get killed. Those things stand out like a big, sore thumb.”

Harrick said he will work hard, not only in the total package area, either.

“I’m a 5-to-9er, not a 9-to-5er,” he said.

Whatever he is, Harrick is not yet under contract. His agreement with UCLA has not yet been signed. Both Harrick and Athletic Director Peter Dalis consider it only a formality, however. Harrick wants to get it done by the end of the month.

Harrick also wants to complete his coaching staff by the end of the month. He has jobs for one full-time, one part time and probably one graduate assistant. He brought Tony Fuller with him from Pepperdine, but his choice as No. 1 assistant, Roger Reid of Brigham Young, turned him down last week. Harrick said Ernie Carr and Kris Jason, both from Hazzard’s staff, are on his list of 25 candidates.

It may be a critical selection process. Some Bruin boosters were critical of Hazzard’s coaching staff, which included Jack Hirsch, Andre McCarter and Sidney Wicks.

“It wasn’t as strong as it could have been, from the outside looking in,” Warren said.

Once Harrick finds his coaches, then all he has to do is find out which players they will coach. Darrick Martin and Brian Williams, area high school stars who have never bounced a ball for UCLA, have gotten more publicity recently than Pooh Richardson, who has been around Westwood for three years. Martin wants to be released from his letter of intent with the Bruins, and Williams, who has been at Maryland, may want to play in Westwood.

Whatever else happens, sooner or later Harrick will get to take his seat on the UCLA bench at Pauley Pavilion. Wooden will be sitting across the way in the second row. One of them will be holding a rolled-up program. It will be Harrick, who said he did not get the idea from Wooden.

Harrick uses the program as a reminder to concentrate and coach. When he was coaching at Morningside High, Harrick used a towel. He switched to a program in 1980, his second year at Pepperdine.

“It is my tool,” Harrick said. “It told me, ‘Shut up, Coach Harrick, and coach your team.’ I made a vow and that was my reminder. Every time I looked at it, it helped me. I did a better job.”

And how long will does he have before they start judging the results? The clock may already be ticking, about five months before Harrick coaches his first game. Goodrich said he thinks there is a difference of opinion among boosters about Harrick’s selection as UCLA coach.

“To be honest, I think the reaction is mixed,” Goodrich said. “I think Jim is well-liked, but on the other hand, I think a lot of them were hoping for Larry Brown. A lot of people are in the coach’s corner. A lot of them aren’t. And a whole lot of them want instant success.”

Warren said there is no pressure building for Harrick to make a big splash right away.

“It’s a great time to come into the program, really,” he said. “The fans aren’t expecting championships like they were when Coach Wooden left. The expectations were tremendously high. Now, I think they just want to see good basketball. He’s building a program, so there’s a couple of years of grace.

“After that, he has to perform.”

Right now, Harrick is trying to get that far. He is still trying to sort through the mail, answer his telephone messages, hire a staff, get some players, redecorate his office, sign a contract and if he has time, worry about driving to Westwood, which he does every day from his home in Newbury Park.

Through it all, Harrick said he is confident that he will do a good job.

Why?

“I know this job real well,” he said.

That’s what they all said, with the possible exception of Bartow, the unlucky coach who succeeded Wooden. When Bartow came to Westwood, Wooden told him that Los Angeles was not like other places he had coached, where college basketball was the main game.

“I don’t think he ever really understood Los Angeles,” Wooden said. “He was used to his basketball team being the big cheese. I told him that UCLA is just one of many cheeses.”

And they’ve been slicing it kind of thin for a while.