Hazzard attended Overbrook High School in Philadelphia, where his teams went 89–3 and he was named the city's player of the year when he was a senior.

UCLA's first undefeated season in 1963–64 was in no small part due to Hazzard, his backcourt partner Gail Goodrich, and coach John Wooden.

Hazzard was chosen as an All-American and also selected as College Player of the Year by the United States Basketball Writers Association (USBWA).

Hazzard and Bill Bradley earned a spot on the 1964 Olympic basketball team for the U.S., which unsurprisingly won the gold medal.

[1] Hazzard later played in the NBA, first with the Los Angeles Lakers from 1964 to 1967, then the Seattle SuperSonics, the Atlanta Hawks, the Buffalo Braves, and briefly for the Golden State Warriors.

[4] In 1984, he returned to UCLA as its men's basketball coach, twenty years after winning the national championship as a player.

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.

Conference tournament champion 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.

[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.

[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.

[14] On November 18 of that year, Hazzard died at the UCLA Ronald Reagan Medical Center due to complications following heart surgery.