SAD NEWS: A multi-trophied NBA legend who was also a former Verbum Dei and UCLA star recently passed away.
When he was in middle school, David Greenwood loved basketball so much that he would play for three separate teams in three different parks on the same day, several times daily.
David would repeatedly exchange his sweaty outfit for a new one as his brother, Al, drove around with him in the car in between games.
Al claimed that because he was passionate about the game, he was unrelenting.
The father of the cement contractor, who was twice his size, would throw David around in driveway games at home, but he would always get back up for more contact. He practiced shooting while blindfolded to hone his form, and his brother had to warn him when he was about to cross the line so he could orient himself.
Greenwood, the determined Compton kid who went from a star high school player at Verbum Dei to one of the top scorers in UCLA history to an NBA champion with the Detroit Pistons, died Sunday night at a Riverside hospital from cancer. He was 68.
True to the nature of someone who played through debilitating foot injuries throughout his career, Greenwood did not inform family of his illness until the end of his life.
“Everything happened so quickly,” said Bronson Greenwood, David’s nephew. “It was kind of a shock.”
Among the last players signed by renowned UCLA coach John Wooden were Greenwood and teammate Roy Hamilton, two of Southern California’s greatest high school athletes. They were taken aback when Wooden departed soon after their final year of high school and Gene Bartow took his place.
However, they made the decision to honor their promises, partly due to the allure of a coach they would never play for in college.
Greenwood once told The Times of Wooden’s proposal, “He told me if I went to USC or UNLV or Notre Dame, I’d be an All-American.” However, I would be able to compete against twelve other high school All-Americans every day if I attended UCLA. The idea was to “come here and test your mettle.”
However, they made the decision to honor their promises, partly due to the allure of a coach they would never play for in college.
Greenwood’s work ethic continued to push him as a Bruin. His practices with the team were followed by an hour in another gym, his brother feeding him passes. Along the way, he never shortchanged himself or teammates.
“If he said he was going to shoot 100 free throws,” Al said, “it wasn’t 50, it wasn’t 65, it was 100 — and he didn’t stop until he got to 100.”
Having been dubbed “Batman and Robin” in high school, Greenwood and Hamilton remained close at UCLA, rooming together and biking to campus from where they lived in the Fairfax District. Hamilton remembered Greenwood as a remarkable rebounder who whipped outlet passes to him to get fast breaks started.
“We would always know how to motivate each other,” Hamilton said, “and connect with each other on the floor.”
Becoming a star by his sophomore season, Greenwood averaged a double-double in points and rebounds as a junior and a senior, finishing each season as an All-American. The 6-foot-9 forward’s go-to move was starting with his back about 10 to 12 feet from the basket before faking one way and unleashing a spin-around jumper.
One of his favorite memories as a Bruin, according to his brother, was a comeback against Washington State toward the end of his career in which the Bruins wiped out a late double-digit deficit, winning on Greenwood’s putback dunk only seconds before the buzzer.
UCLA never recaptured the Wooden glory during Greenwood’s four seasons, reaching the Final Four his freshman year and a regional final his senior year. But Greenwood remains No. 15 on the school’s all-time scoring list, having tallied 1,721 points.
After the Lakers selected Magic Johnson with the first pick of the 1979 NBA draft, the Chicago Bulls took Greenwood second as part of their massive rebuilding efforts. (Hamilton was also a lottery pick, going 10th to the Pistons.)
“He wasn’t exciting, he was steady,” Al Greenwood said of his brother. “You knew you were going to get a double-double every night out of him regardless of what the score was.”
Greenwood started every game in his first NBA season, averaging 16.3 points and 9.4 rebounds while making the all-rookie team. The Bulls went 30-52, their loss total more than triple the 17 losses that Greenwood’s teams had absorbed in four seasons as a Bruin.
But he persevered through the losing and a series of foot injuries caused by a running style in which his heels would hit the ground before his toes. Al remembered his brother coming back to Los Angeles to play the Lakers and taking his shoes off at home, saying it felt as if they were full of broken glass.
“That was how his feet felt a lot of the time, but he just played even when he shouldn’t have,” Al said. “I always called him The Thoroughbred.”
Greenwood never missed a full season despite having two Achilles surgeries on one foot and one on the other.
Before mobile phones were commonplace, in October 1985, Greenwood was listening to the radio when he heard that he had been dealt to San Antonio for future Hall of Famer George Gervin. He was a surprise playoff contributor for the Detroit Pistons when they won the 1990 NBA title in the latter part of his 12-year NBA career. Hamilton was a member of the CBS Sports production crew that televised the Finals that year.
Hamilton remarked, “It was a joy for me to have my best friend in the world on the team and win a title.”
Greenwood went on to own several Blockbuster video stores and coached at his alma mater, guiding Verbum Dei to state championships in 1998 and 1999. His nephew recalled a soft side, his uncle picking him up and giving him a good tickle. Greenwood is survived by his brother, Al; sister, Laverne; son, Jemil; and daughter, Tiffany, along with his former wife, Joyce. Services are pending
