UCLA Video Vault: A story of Lew Alcindor at UCLA

Here at GJB, we understand that — now UCLA basketball recruiting season is long gone, and UCLA football’s Spring Game has been over for a good few days — you’re itching for some UCLA news. Something. Anything. DEAR GOD, WHERE THE F**K IS MY UCLA NEWS?!?

Well, we don’t have any. Yet. But since we’re about to hit the lull that is the summer, we thought we’d start keeping things fresh ’round these parts by having a video vault of some neat, themeless, vintage videos from UCLA’s past, be it UCLA football, UCLA basketball, or the university at large. We encourage that you watch them and learn some things about the greatest university in the United States.

For our inaugural video vault post, we’ve went with a short discussion of Lew Alcindor (later known as Kareem Abdul-Jabbar) and his time at UCLA. John Wooden and baby-faced Lew make an appearance:

Lew talks about his reasons for picking Wooden’s program, mainly because Lew was sick of New York and wanted to be independent and away from home (something all 17-year olds can relate to, we suppose).

Wooden also discussed how Lew was so dominant, UCLA could easily build their offense around him … but didn’t.

There’s also a specific small rivalry between UCLA and Houston, in which Alcindor had a terrible game due to his injury (Wooden said that was no excuse, and outlined numerous reasons why), leading to a rare UCLA loss.

Of course, the teams met again and UCLA completely stomped them, something Wooden was confident that they’d do.

Have a neat, vintage video you’d like featured on “UCLA Video Vault”? Hit us up on the not-so-vintage social media platform, Twitter: @GoJoeBruinUCLA