David Greenwood adored basketball so much in middle school that he would play for three different teams in three different parks on the same day, multiple times a week.
His brother, Al, would be in the car driving around with him between games while David traded in his sweaty uniform for a fresh one, repeating the process over and over.
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“He was relentless,” Al said, “because he loved the game.”
At home, David would get tossed around in driveway games by the cement contractor father who was twice his size, only to keep getting back up for more contact. In practices, he shot blindfolded to perfect his form, his brother having to let him know when he was close to going out of bounds so that he could get his bearings.
UCLA’s David Greenwood (34) shoots a basketball during a game against San Francisco at the Marriott Center in Provo, Utah, on March 15, 1979 (Peter Read Miller / Sports Illustrated via Getty Images)
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.
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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.”
One of the all-time great high school players in Southern California, Greenwood and teammate Roy Hamilton were among the final players recruited by legendary UCLA coach John Wooden. They were shocked when Wooden retired shortly after their senior season of high school and was replaced by Gene Bartow.
But they decided to stick with their commitments, lured in part by the pitch of a coach they would never play for in college.
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“He told me if I went to USC or UNLV or Notre Dame, I’d be an All-American,” Greenwood once told The Times of Wooden’s proposal. “But if I went to UCLA, I’d be able to test myself against 12 other high school…
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