LAHAINA “”mdash; My favorite of the handful of Hawaiian words that I picked up in Maui is “ha’ahea.”
It’s not just because the word looks like a text response to your buddy’s joke, when you’re a few Jack-and-Cokes into your evening.
Ha’ahea means “proud” or “to cherish with pride,” and it’s a word befitting of the Hawaiians, who are immensely proud ““ and rightfully so ““ of their home, their culture and their pineapple.
Here’s who the word gets lost on, though, and this is no laughing matter. The UCLA men’s basketball team should be overflowing with ha’ahea, given the prestige of the program and what the players are representing when they don the iconic jerseys.
But this team appears to lack any collective pride in playing basketball for UCLA. There’s no cohesion, poor chemistry and a lot of on-court gesticulating and eye-rolling directed at each other.
Not when the Bruins are playing well, of course, because then everything is fine and dandy. You’re not likely to hear anything particularly negative said publicly, either. Still, the body language of this team speaks for itself. There are certain cliques, and I get the sense that some players have zero desire to go into battle with other guys on the team. That’s not an environment that cultivates ha’ahea.
One of the reasons that this became so apparent in Maui was that the Bruins were in the same field as some of the other more prestigious programs in the country. How would players from Duke, Kansas and Georgetown carry themselves? Well, if those players represented the ethos of Maui, UCLA might as well have been in North Dakota.
Mental toughness. Teammates on the same page. Guys making plays for other guys. No giggling on the bench, especially when your team is losing. The Dukes, the Kansases and the Georgetowns were all very well represented. Duke had the most talented team and won the title, but I enjoyed watching the other two teams compete just as much.
Do people say that about this UCLA team? That even in defeat, they enjoy watching UCLA compete? Good luck finding someone to concede that one.
It’s a little ironic, and more than a little sad, because the four letters on the front of the jersey still carry so much weight in the college basketball community. After his team beat UCLA on Tuesday night, Kansas coach Bill Self opened his postgame remarks by saying:
“It’s always nice to beat a program of the caliber and prestige of UCLA.”
At this point, Self is reading history books. These Bruins are light-years away from Bruin teams of the past, and almost as far from the likes of Kansas and Duke and Georgetown.
The thing is, the UCLA team has talented pieces that could be able to win some big games. Sophomore center Joshua Smith could play 30 minutes and absolutely overwhelm a team single-handedly. Junior forward Reeves Nelson could have one of his “on” games and go for 28 and 15.
Yeah, and the governor of Hawai’i could call me tomorrow and tell me he wants me to reside at the Aulani Disney Resort for the rest of my life, free of charge.
Soon it might be time to evaluate whether or not coach Ben Howland is the right man for reigniting that ha’ahea. He’s got a potentially huge recruiting class coming in next year, so he at least gets a pass until after that. Still, that’s largely the work of newly-hired assistant coach Korey McCray (a shrewd hire by the program).
But in looking at Howland next to the likes of Self, Mike Krzyzewski and John Thompson III ““ the latter two the coaches of Duke and Georgetown, respectively ““ there appears to be a gap growing, something you probably wouldn’t dare to say five years ago.
Even in the worst years in terms of talent, Duke teams never look like they don’t care. Kansas teams always play hard. Those are teams that you never want to face, even in down years, because you know that the coaches and players maintain such a healthy pride in their program and refuse to let that be underrepresented.
I think it all starts with cohesion on the squad itself. First and foremost, this needs to be a team.
It took a trip to Hawai’i to realize the obvious: If you mapped out the current college basketball landscape, this Bruins team is Hawai’i. Not bonded together by much of anything, just an assortment of islands, scattered and isolated from each other and a good deal removed from all the rest.
If you think he should be forced to live in a pineapple under the sea, email Eshoff at reshoff@media.ucla.edu.