Larry Farmer on playing at UCLA for John Wooden and coaching UCLA

In The Front Row with Mike Vaccaro

Larry Farmer grew up in Denver but didn't play basketball until his teenage years. Self-described as "coachable", Farmer learned the game and started to excel at it. First-Team All-State his senior season in high school, he was recruited by many schools before a meeting with UCLA's John Wooden started his path to UCLA. In his three years playing for Wooden (NCAA rules prohibited freshmen from playing varsity sports at that time), Farmer helped lead the Bruins to 3-straight National Championships and finished his career 89-1. Despite being drafted by both NBA and ABA teams, Farmer decided to work for Wooden as a graduate assistant coach and would return to UCLA after a brief stint playing professionally in Germany to become a full-time assistant coach at his alma mater. In 1981, he was elevated to head coach and became the first black head coach of any sport at UCLA at just 30 years old. After 3 years at the helm, Farmer resigned from that position and followed it with head coaching stops at Weber State and Loyola Chicago in addition to several assistant coaching positions through the years. Now retired but coaching girls basketball in Chicago, Farmer recently wrote his memoir, "Role of a Lifetime: Larry Farmer and the UCLA Bruins". Farmer shares stories from the book including the first time he met Wooden and the last time he spoke with his former coach. He also tells us about UCLA teammate Bill Walton and what makes him better than former UCLA great Lew Alcindor (now Kareem Abdul-Jabbar). Farmer shares his favorite Wooden-isms, lessons the coach taught him and how Wooden ran his practices. Plus, he gives his thoughts on Sister Jean, the Loyola Chicago team chaplain who started her time with the team while Farmer was head coach.