It's not about NBA but about NCAA, and a simple regular season match. However, all of America has its eyes fixed on the Astrodome where a field has been placed in the middle of the baseball stadium.
On the floor, the great UCLA of Lew Alcindor (who would become Kareem Abdul-Jabbar) and coach John Wooden, facing the Houston of Elvin Hayes, coached by Guy Lewis. Unscheduled on the calendar, it was at the request of the Cougars that the meeting took place, and the Bruins arrived in Texas with a series of 47 consecutive victories and three titles in four years.
They're simply the best college team in history, and this Houston team has faced them before. It was 1967, in the semifinals of the NCAA tournament, and UCLA won 73-58 with 19 points and 20 rebounds from Lew Alcindor. Since then, the Cougars have been undefeated (16 wins – 0 losses), and this meeting therefore pits the No. 1 and No. 2 seeds in the NCAA.
The first regular season game broadcast on television
Proof of the exceptional nature of the meeting, it was televised on the national network and it was a first for a regular season university basketball meeting. In the stands, we broke an attendance record with more than 52,000 spectators. It's the first time we've come to the stadium with twins, and the flooring was specially brought from Los Angeles! A journalist will speak of “synchronized swimming” to describe the movements of the players seen from the top of the stands, while Coach Wooden will point out lighting that is much too bright.
Moreover, the greatest coach in the history of university basketball did not want to play this meeting, nor for it to be televised. He knew the pressure was on UCLA, and everyone wanted to see the Bruins fall. But now, the televisions arrived with a very big check, and its managers pushed it…
“The TV people aren't going to like what I'm going to say, but I've said it before: TV is one of the worst things to ever happen to college basketball.” John Wooden explained a few years later. “It turns players into “showmen” and it’s bad for the team. And that means you can play every day, at any time of day. But there are also good sides, and the money generated helps save women's sport and sports that do not earn money. The managers also told me that it would be good for basketball, and that it would provide exposure across the country. They were right. »
Injured in the eye, Lew Alcindor should not have played…
But regardless of the setting and the conditions, everyone's eyes are focused on the two best teams of the season, and on the duel between the two best university centers of their generation, Lew Alcindor and Elvin Hayes. The first dominates the NCAA like no other to the point that university authorities banned the dunk the previous year!
The second is a force of nature, averaging nearly 38 points. We will have to wait for the duel between Olajuwon and Ewing to find traces of such a “big men” clash.
Except that Lew Alcindor should not have played this match… Injured his eye 15 days before, he has not trained for a week. He did not play the previous two matches and before arriving in Houston, doctors placed him in a hospital room where he remains lying in the dark to treat his torn cornea.
“The doctors said it was impossible for him to play well. He saw double John Wooden will tell. “Before the match, I told him that he didn't have to play because he couldn't be good and that there was too much attention on this match. I don't want to make excuses because it was a good team. But without Alcindor, we weren't the same, and he wasn't himself at all. »
It is especially in the second half that the UCLA pivot will break down. Short of form, he will be dominated in intensity by Elvin Hayes, and several times, he will take long seconds to arrive in attack or return to defense. He wasn't the usual Lew Alcindor but for the show, he had to be there, and he's going to deliver one of the worst copies of his career.
Certainly, the future Jabbar finished with a double double (15 pts, 15 rebounds) but he missed 14 of his 18 shots! Facing him, Hayes is on cloud nine with 39 points, including 29 in the first half, and several counterattacks on Alcindor to whom he nevertheless gives a good ten centimeters. Hayes is quite simply the hero of the “Game Of The Century”, and as a symbol, it is he who scores the two shots of victory with 28 seconds to go. However, he had a 60% success rate that season.
“I couldn’t miss them. I had the match in my hands” he will explain after the match.
In Houston, the game is played five times a day
Then after two balls stupidly lost by the Bruins, it is again he who will multiply the dribbles to run the clock and snatch the victory (71-69). It is only a regular season match but the floor is invaded and Elvin Hayes is carried as a hero. The best college team in history has fallen. In Houston, we will celebrate this victory like a title!
“There was a week of celebration, and they were broadcasting the game all the time. For a week, they showed it five times a day” remembers Don Chaney, former Houston player. “On the California side, they were angry and disappointed. Kareem had an eye problem. He wasn't 100%, and I recognize that. But even at 100%, he couldn’t have stopped Elvin that night.”
The rematch will take place a few weeks later, in the semifinals of the NCAA tournament. And what revenge! Thanks to an unprecedented defense, diamond to isolate Elvin Hayes, the Bruins won 101-69.
Lew Alcindor will finish the game with 19 points and 18 rebounds, while Elvin Hayes will be limited to 10 points and 3/10 shooting. UCLA will be NCAA champion that year, and again in 1969. The Bruins will chain 7 titles in a row, with a new series of 88 victories in a row. Between 1964 and 1975, with Lew Alcindor in its ranks, then Bill Walton, UCLA won 10 titles and finished four seasons undefeated. But for history, this evening in 1968, it was Houston who won the match of the century.
Photo credit: CBS, Chronicle
Article originally published in 2018
