While playing for the SuperSonics in their inaugural 1967–68 season, Hazzard scored a career high 24.0 points per game, averaged 6.2 assists per game, and was selected to play in the 1968 NBA All-Star Game.[2] Seattle traded him to the Hawks during the off-season for Lenny Wilkens.[3] Hazzard's career-high average in assists came during the 1969–70 season, when he averaged 6.8 assists per game while playing for the Hawks.
Coaching career
In 1980, Hazzard took a part-time position paying $1,500 annually to be the head coach at Compton Community College.[4][5] He compiled a 53–9 record in his two seasons, but 21 wins from the first season were later forfeited because he used an ineligible player. According to Hazzard, poor records from the season before his arrival failed to note that the ineligible player had played that season.[5] He went on to Division II school Chapman College, where he coach two seasons with a 44–14 record.[4]
In 1984, he returned to UCLA as its men's basketball coach, twenty years after winning the national championship as a player. That same year, he was inducted into the UCLA Athletics Hall of Fame.[6] He coached for four seasons, winning 77 out of 125 games. The 1984–85 UCLA Bruins basketball team won the NIT championship. The 1986–87 Bruins won both the Pac-10 regular season championship as well as the inaugural Pac-10 tournament. However, after the 1987–88 Bruins finished only two games above .500—the closest they had come to a losing record in 40 years—Hazzard was fired.
He later spent a number of years working for the Los Angeles Lakers, first as an advance scout on the west coast and later as a special consultant.
National champion
Postseason invitational champion
Conference regular season champion
Conference regular season and conference tournament champion
Division regular season champion
Division regular season and conference tournament champion
Conference tournament champion
Personal life and death
In the summer of 1972, Hazzard embraced Islam, and started going by the name "Mahdi Abdul-Rahman" in 1972–73,[7] his eighth season in the NBA.[5] In 1976–77, he returned to study at UCLA, completing his degree in kinesiology at age 35.[8] By 1980 when he joined Compton, he changed his name to Abdul-Rahman Hazzard. One of the reasons he cited was the recognition of the name Hazzard.[9][10] He felt that the name change was poorly received in basketball circles, believing that it cost him opportunities, both during and after his playing career. Although he remained a Muslim, he chose to return to using his original name professionally.[5] In 1984, UCLA introduced him as Walt Hazzard when they hired him as their coach.[11]
Hazzard and his wife Jaleesa had four children: Yakub, Jalal, Rasheed, and Khalil, the latter being a record producer, well known in hip hop circles by the stage name DJ Khalil. Hazzard's grandsons, Jacob and Max Hazzard, also play basketball. Jacob is a former walk-on basketball player at Arizona, and Max played basketball for UC Irvine and Arizona.
On March 22, 1996, Hazzard was hospitalized following a stroke.[12] Although he made a substantial recovery over the ensuing years, his health never returned in full and subsequent to his illness he was much less active in the public sphere. Shortly after the stroke, Lakers owner Jerry Buss promised Hazzard's family that he would remain on the team's payroll as long as Buss owned the team; Hazzard remained a Lakers employee for the rest of his life.[13] By the middle of 2011, his health had deteriorated significantly and he was hospitalized in intensive care.[14] On November 18 of that year, Hazzard died at the UCLA Ronald Reagan Medical Center due to complications following heart surgery.[15] He was 69. Walt Hazzard is interred in the Muslim section at Rose Hills Memorial Park in Los Angeles.[citation needed]
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