Year graduated
1964
Major accomplishments
Held an Elkhart regional-record 43 points as a senior; Graduated from Central as Bears’ career, season, and single-game scoring leader South Bend Hall of Famer; Indiana Basketball Hall of Famer
As Mike Warren sat in church not long ago, the sermon themed “Do We Really Deserve God’s Love?” made a big impression on the former South Bend Central High School standout guard who went on to help Hoosier legend John Wooden land his third and fourth NCAA Division I national championships.
Those words in the sermon got Warren, who now lives in Woodland Hills, California, to thinking “about what we want and what we’re given. I came up with, I don’t have all that I want, but I have more than I deserve.’” Warren doesn’t have a state high school tournament championship because Muncie Central beat his South Bend Central team, 65-61, in the 1963 title game. And he didn’t get the spot on the 1964 Indiana All-Star team that he unequivocally believes he earned. However, he did earn a starting spot for three years at UCLA, an All-American status with the Bruins, and was called “the smartest player he ever coached” by Wooden. In addition, he received an Emmy nomination for his performances in the television series Hill Street Blues in 1983, and the NAACP’s Image Award as best actor the same year.
“Coach Wooden said having me on the floor was like having a coach out on the floor” said Warren, “and I had the rare privilege of being captain two years in a row. A large part of that was that there were no seniors when I was a junior.”
That was the 1966-67 season when Lew Alcindor (now Kareem Abdul-Jabbar), Lucius Allen, Lynn Shackelford, and Kenny Heitz, all sophomores, joined Warren in the starting lineup. The young lineup helped UCLA defeat Houston, 73-58, and Dayton, 79-64, to win the NCAA Division I championship in Louisville, Kentucky. The Bruins finished 30-0.
When Warren was a senior, UCLA met Houston on January 20, 1968, before a record crowd for a college basketball game—52,693—in the Houston Astrodome. UCLA was ranked No. 1, Houston No. 2. Houston won, 71-69. The Bruins avenged the loss by beating Houston, 101-69, in the semifinals of the NCAA Final Four at the Los Angeles Sports Arena. They then went on to defeat North Carolina, 78-55, for the national title.
It was almost predestined that Warren would wind up at UCLA. His father, a janitor at the South Bend Tribune, moved his family from a predominantly black area on the south side of the city to a predominantly white area on the north side when Warren was young.
“My father envisioned a better life for [my brother and sister and myself] in terms of education,” Warren said.
The elementary and junior high schools in the Warrens’ new neighborhood fed into South Bend Central, where Wooden coached from 1934 to 1943. This is where Warren was influenced by three coaches who made a lasting impression—Paul Sloan, Don Koz, and Jim Powers.
“Paul Sloan was a wonderful gentleman who I think probably saw promise in me as a basketball player, maybe even before my parents did,” said Warren. Sloan started the third grader on the sixth grade team.
Koz, who coached Warren in junior high school, had played for Wooden in high school. Warren says that he was much like his UCLA mentor. “[Koz] taught English and quoted poetry. He was a disciplinarian and a fundamentalist in regard to basketball. Sloan and Koz not only talked to me about basketball, but about education; and whenever you play you play your hardest, you’re not just playing for yourself or for your school, you represent your family.”
Warren says South Bend Central, which was phased out in 1970, was “one of the elite schools in the state of Indiana, at least in terms of combining academics with athletics. Some of the guys I looked up to as a youngster played on championship teams at Central, and when I transferred there I played for a guy who’s still one of my dear friends.” That “dear friend” is Jim Powers.
Warren continued, “Not unlike Don Koz, he had been a high school and a college player for John Wooden [at Indiana State]. I don’t think it was any mistake that I had become pretty proficient in the fundamentals of basketball. The foundation was laid early by Paul Sloan, and it was built upon by Don Koz, and even more so by Jim Powers.”
In the 1962-63 regular season, Powers’ Bears dealt Muncie Central its only loss, winning 71-66, at Muncie’s home. “The fans were very rabid, but they loved their Bearcats,” said Warren. “It was probably one of the loudest places we ever played in.
“We played them again in the state finals. I played on two national championship teams at UCLA, and to this day if someone were to ask, ‘Would you give back one of those championships for an Indiana state high school championship?’ I would not hesitate, I would say, ‘absolutely.’” Warren, who scored 22 points in the title game, remembers being on the runner-up stand and crying his eyes out.
After losing to Elkhart in the regional as a senior, Warren, who was only the second player ever to make Central’s varsity as a freshman, was not chosen for the Indiana All-Star team.
“Myself and Vernon Payne, who played at Michigan City [and at Indiana University]—I think we were without question two of the best guards in the state,” said Warren. “It was ironic. We both made all-state, but neither one of us was picked for the All-Star team. I was devastated. I had played against some of those guys who made the team, and I had outplayed them. I could not understand how I could be overlooked. There was some talk about it being racial [because all 10 of the All-Stars selected were white], and some talk about it being a regional thing.
“To make that team was always a dream. I can’t say it was ever a goal. But I was naive and thought that if you played well, and had the respect of people you played against, that the whole idea of selecting players would be a fair process. That taught me that it was not a fair process. Probably the most disappointing thing about the whole matter was that for the first time I saw where politics played a very important part in the game of basketball.”
Warren approached his basketball future with an open mind. He visited Kansas and had a trip to Michigan scheduled. But a friend of Wooden s, Walt Kindy, asked Warren if he would be interested in visiting UCLA. He had an aunt and uncle living in California that he adored, so he jumped at the opportunity to see them and Wooden.
There was snow on the ground in South Bend, and it was bitterly cold when Warren flew west. As he walked from the plane to the terminal in Los Angeles, Warren was exhilarated by the warm air that hit him in the face. He then rode with UCLA assistant coach Jerry Norman on a freeway—”there are no freeways in South Bend,” Warren remembers thinking—to the UCLA campus.
“I was mesmerized by the beauty of it all,” said Warren. “I remember seeing an orange tree. My experience was that oranges came in crates.” His first impression upon meeting Wooden was that he was “like a soft shoe sales person, not one of those guys when you come in the store says, ‘Can I show you some shoes right away, a great pair?’ He didn’t do any of that stuff. Coaches on some of my other visits said I was going to start as a sophomore—you couldn’t start as a freshman then—and that I would have this and that. It was not disappointing, it was just different. He took out a set of plans for a new arena and said as a sophomore ‘this is where you would play’ He didn’t say I would start.”
Wooden obviously had been told by Powers and Kindy that Warren could play for UCLA, “but no one knows how well you’re going to do in college until you get there. I was 5’10” and barely weighed 155 pounds. Wooden was really warm and cordial, and I liked him. But I must say it was probably more the weather, and the fact my aunt and uncle lived in California than anything.”
Warren told Powers upon his return to South Bend that the visit went well, but he added, “? can’t say whether [Wooden] really wanted me or I couldn’t get in. I’ll go to USC Cal-State. I jut want to go to California.’ Powers said, ‘If you don’t play for Johnny Wooden in California, you’re not going to go to California.’”
In Warren’s mind, he thought going so far away from home would allow him to be his own man. “Little did I know that running into John Wooden was like running into my father’s brother,” he said. “They had the same kind of principles and morals, and trying to get out from under that, I ran smack-dab into it.”
What was it like playing for Wooden? “Have you ever ridden in a Bentley or a Rolls Royce?” said Warren. “I never have, but I played for John Wooden, and I would imagine that’s what it would be like. As an 18-, 19-, 20-, 21-year-old, you don’t really get that close to the head coach, at least we didn’t. There seemed to be a kind of—not a barrier—but we were closer to the assistant coaches. I wouldn’t say Jerry Norman was any more accessible, but Wooden was like a god. He was an authority figure.
“But for about the last 15 years I have forged a relationship with him that is truly unique and special to me. I see him as a man, and I know the man a lot better now than I did as an 18-year-old. I now respect his wisdom and intelligence, where as an 18-year-old I couldn’t possibly know.”
After graduating from UCLA, Warren was drafted by Seattle of the NBA. He received a contract offer that he thought seemed like junk mail addressed to occupant. “It was never a dream growing up to play professional sports because there was always a bias against the little guy,” he said. Warren would have had to try out, and in his estimation, the contract was so bad that he decided to go in a different direction.
Warren, a television major at UCLA, says his experience with the Bruins prepared him to be on a show like Hill Street, and that playing with Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, who in Warren’s opinion is still the greatest college basketball player ever, taught him that the spotlight is pretty broad.
“Though you may not be the focal point, all the time in that spotlight—even if you’re in the fringes—that’s pretty cool, too,” said Warren. “So on Hill Street, I again was working in an environment where it was a team, I thought. The writers gave us all wonderful things to do, not all the time, but some of the time. I was young in my career and I was working with really qualified, talented people that I learned from. It was as special as the UCLA experience.”
Warren is still acting and producing. “But my focus is on my family,” he said. He and second wife Jenny have two young children. He also has two adult children by his first wife, and two grand- children.
Of his relationship with Wooden, Warren says, “For me to come into his life, and for him to come into mine—I’m more fortunate than he, to say the least. I’m a huge fan of his and will love him forever.”