By Lee Strawther
The Sporting Tribune
The John R. Wooden Award will celebrate it’s 50th anniversary this season. Leading up to the award ceremony on April 10, 2026, The Sporting Tribune in partnership with the Wooden Award and the Los Angeles Athletic Club will highlight past winners of the Wooden Award and the Legends of Coaching Award.
Ed O’Bannon became a household name thanks to his exploits on the basketball court, but his biggest feat may have come later in life off of it.
Edward Charles O’Bannon Jr. was born on August 14, 1972 in Los Angeles, California and went on to attend one-time powerhouse Verbum Dei High School before transferring and graduating from Artesia High School in 1990. He posted a 24.6 point, 9.7 rebound stat line his senior year and led the Pioneers to a 29–2 record and the California Interscholastic Federation (CIF) Division II State Championship title.
A two-time Parade All-American, he was honored by Basketball Times as its National High School Player of the Year, named to the McDonald’s High School All-American team, and was the most valuable player at the once-heralded Dapper Dan Classic All-Star game after his senior season.
O’Bannon had intended on attending the University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV) to play for head coach Jerry Tarkanian, but when the program was placed on probation by the NCAA for alleged recruiting violations before his arrival, he was forced to switch gears and instead decided to attend UCLA.
Unfortunately, just a week before team practices were set to begin, he tore his left ACL during a pickup game and missed his entire freshman season. But 18 months later he made his way back to the court and played in 23 games, though in a limited role.
By the end of his second season (1992-93) however, O’Bannon had returned to form and was named to the All Pac-10 Conference First Team, and as a junior he was named the team’s MVP and nabbed a second straight conference First Team honor.
In his final season O’Bannon, along with his older brother Charles, was the key to UCLA’s 1995 NCAA Basketball Championship team, tallying 30 points and 17 rebounds while being named the NCAA Tournament Most Outstanding Player. For the season, he averaged 20.4 points, shooting 53 percent from the field and 43 percent from the three point line, to go along with 8.3 rebounds per game.
He was a consensus First Team All-American, Pac-10 Co-Player of the Year, First Team All-Pac 10 for a third straight season, and UCLA’s Co-MVP.
Even more impressive is the fact he walked away with the John R. Wooden, USBWA College Player of the Year (now Oscar Robertson Trophy), and the CBS/Chevrolet Player of the Year awards.
In 1996 his number 31 was retired by UCLA and he was inducted into UCLA Athletics Hall of Fame in 2005, and the Pac-12 Basketball Hall of Honor in 2012.
O’Bannon would go on to be drafted ninth overall by the New Jersey Nets just months after being named MVP of the ’95 Final Four, but his NBA career wouldn’t go quite as planned.
He spent three seasons playing for the then-New Jersey Nets and Dallas Mavericks before heading overseas for seven years playing in Italy, Spain, Greece, Argentina and Poland. He retired in 2004 at age 32.
It was after his retirement, however, that his impact on the game was felt not only at the collegiate level, but on the world of sports as a whole.
After seeing his likeness used on a video game (unbeknownst to him) O’Bannon became the lead plaintiff in O’Bannon v. NCAA, an antitrust class action lawsuit filed against college athletics’ governing body on behalf of its Division I football and men’s basketball players over the organization’s use of its former student-athletes’ images and likenesses for commercial use.
The suit argued that upon graduation, a former student-athlete should be entitled to financial compensation for future commercial uses of his or her image by the NCAA. In January 2011 Hall-of-Famer Oscar Robertson joined O’Bannon in the lawsuit, and on August 8, 2014, it was ruled that the NCAA’s long-held practice of barring payments to athletes violated anti-trust laws.
In 2018, O’Bannon published a book about his battle with the NCAA, Court Justice: The Inside Story of My Battle Against the NCAA, and he would go on to support the Fair Pay to Play Act, a California law that allows college athletes to receive endorsement deals.
After the Supreme Court ruled that the NCAA restricted trade in violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act, the NCAA would eventually go on to allow student-athletes to be compensated for their name, image and likeness.
In the midst of it all, O’Bannon attended UNLV to continue working towards his degree, and in the summer of 2011 he returned to UCLA, graduating that fall with a degree in history.
To say the least, student-athletes around the country, past, present and future, owe a deep debt of gratitude to Ed O’Bannon.
“As for me personally, I woke up this morning and my bank account is the same,” he stated during a press conference after winning the suit in 2014. “I did not make a dime off this lawsuit. We did this strictly and solely for the betterment of the college athlete.”
Mission accomplished.