Remembering Coach John Wooden
On Friday, June 4th at 6:45 pm PT, college basketball lost its greatest legend as Coach John Wooden passed away at the age of 99. His 100th birthday would have been Oct. 14.
In 2005, Basketball Times editor John Akers visited with Wooden for an interview that he remembers to this day. "My in-home visit with John Wooden was a lifelong memory that began with me almost missing the interview," recalls Akers. "I thought I was supposed to pick Coach Wooden up at his home, but he didn't answer his doorbell. Panicked, I found the small diner where I knew he had breakfast every morning. After a stern look from him for being late, he was a gentleman's gentleman the remainder of our 2-3 hours together."
The following story appeared in the April 2005 issue of Basketball Times ...
By JOHN AKERS
Basketball Times
ENCINO, Calif. – Sherman Oaks has blended into Encino, which becomes Tarzana and then Woodland Hills. One complex of condominiums runs into the next along a busy San Fernando Valley street, each one indistinguishable from the other. Except, in this particular complex, on this busy street, in this suburban city, resides arguably the greatest coaching legend that college basketball ever witnessed. And the only telltale sign of that is on the nameplate outside the complex gates, there between Witeby and Zayseta:
Wooden.
The modest, one-bedroom condo that has been home since the early 1970s to 94-year-old John Wooden, UCLA’s 10-time winner of national titles, is ordinary in that way that the Smithsonians would be just another collection of buildings without all that history. The surrounding condos no doubt house other successful retirees, as well as young professionals. How many of them, do you suppose, have a U.S. Medal of Freedom hanging in their hallway?
Wooden, wearing a pressed flannel shirt with an Athletes in Action logo, has just returned from his usual breakfast stop, an otherwise typical diner where the bacon is extra crisp and, despite his best efforts, his money is no good. It’s a morning gathering place where every septuagenarian, octogenarian and at least one very famous nonagenarian seems to know everybody else’s name.
“Cheers without beers,” Wooden says slyly.
Wooden moves with a cane now and raising his artificial hip from a chair is becoming increasingly more difficult. He is embarrassed to admit that when he does travel, it is now only by charter flight. He will not attend the St. Louis Final Four, in the city where Bill Walton had his famous 21-for-22 performance in the 1973 championship game, though this will mark the 30th anniversary of his 10th title. “Last year was the 29th,” he says with a dismissive shrug. Besides, there would be too many stairs to climb, too many risks to take. But don’t be fooled. The body might be frail, but Wooden’s mind is still to be envied, taking pleasure in the recitation of poetry, pulling long-forgotten details from thin air.
Wooden offers a quick tour of his home, past the shrine of books and video documentaries on Abraham Lincoln, his favorite American (he has a similar tribute to Mother Teresa, his favorite human), and into a hallway that long ago ran out of space for all the photos and plaques that have come to rest on its floor. There is a relatively sparse living room, where the prized possession is a quilt in which the photo of a young John and his beloved wife of 53 years, Nellie, who died 20 years ago, serves as the epicenter of the images of 12 great-grandchildren that she died too soon to meet. The arrival of the 13th will be marked on a pillow. Souvenir pyramids – tiny testaments to Wooden’s still-renowned Pyramid of Success – lie throughout the house.
And then Wooden leads his visitor into the main attraction – a den so filled with his life’s memorabilia, the hallway seems barren by comparison. One man might politely call it cluttered. Another might call it a Wooden treasure chest, a 10-foot-by-15 living museum display. At the far, narrow end of the room, next to a shelf filled with books and photos, is the desk where he spends many of his days reading, writing, or answering a phone that rings a few times each hour. His day planner is filled for weeks out; a list of recent phone calls fills one page of a legal pad. A couch sits along yet another wall covered in plaques, opposite a television set. In-between, there’s a footstool stacked two, maybe three feet with papers, books, videos.
Above the TV, there are the photos of his 10 championship teams – four on the bottom row, then three, two, one – hung perfectly in the shape of a pyramid.
“I never would have thought of that,” Wooden says. “Everything you’ll find on the walls are things Nell wanted to put up there. I have not taken anything down.”
*****
The idea of anyone repeating Wooden’s feat of 10 championships over 12 seasons, seven of them consecutively, is, of course, inconceivable. It won’t happen again in any of our lifetimes, surely, and not under the system as we know it. There’s too much parity. Winning six games in a 65-team NCAA Tournament including 34 at-large teams is too difficult. Too many talented young players are heading to the NBA too early, forcing coaches to constantly start over. There’s too great a sense of entitlement among today’s spoiled youngsters to forge that sense of selflessness, that sense of team necessary to repeat such a monumental run.
It would be impossible.
But it was impossible then, too, the point often lost in such a debate.
Some of today’s rules would have worked in his Bruins’ favor. If Lew Alcindor had been eligible as a freshman, for example, Wooden might have won 11 titles. The 35-second shot clock, too, would have favored his pressing teams.
Some, too, would have favored them. Though it was tougher to get into the tournament back when only conference champions qualified, the Bruins benefited from guidelines that annually placed them in the weaker West regional, which they won nine seasons in a row under Wooden.
“It’s unlikely, but I don’t like to say it could never happen again,” Wooden says. “I think it’s improbable, but it’s certainly possible.
“There are problems with every era. You’ve got to cope with the problems that are prevalent in your particular era. If you ever think there aren’t going to be problems, you’re fooling yourself. There are always going to be problems.”
Wooden won his titles during an anti-establishment era that brought its own set of unique challenges, and there was probably no greater big-city lightning rod for campus unrest than a UCLA that employed radical social activist Angela Davis on its faculty. And still, Wooden managed to get away with demanding that his players wear their hair short and their collars long, countering student chants of “Hell, no, we won’t go!” with homespun homilies such as, “Make each day your masterpiece.” Not that he wasn’t being constantly tested. Sidney Wicks and Steve Patterson showed up for a Photo Day wearing mutton-chop sideburns that were removed before the camera were focused. One player’s unsuccessfully attempted to cancel practice in observance of a national protest of the Vietnam War. Walton laid down in protest in front of rush-hour traffic on Wilshire Blvd. and had to be bailed out of jail for getting involved with a group that took over UCLA’s administration building. But somehow, even protesting Wooden’s policy on his players’ length of hair, the All-American rarely felt so empowered. “We’re going to miss you, Bill,” Wooden would say.
Today’s challenge would be to capture the attention of a group of players with one eye constantly on the NBA. Wooden acknowledges that but points out that Walton turned down an exorbitant amount of money to turn pro before his senior season in 1975. The coach also believes that today’s youth would accept teaching.
“Once college players find out that you’re concerned about them as individuals, I think they would respond just as well today,” Wooden said. “I think they would have 50 years ago, and I think they will 50 years from now.”
Even after winning the first of his titles in 1964, two years after losing to Cincinnati in the NCAA Tournament semifinals, there was little to suggest Wooden would become a coach who altered history. Wooden, at 53, was relatively old for a first-time champion. A debate that season on the nation’s top coaches might have favored any number of others. Kentucky’s Baron, Adolph Rupp, had been to what was then an all-time high five Final Fours and in that season had become the first coach to win 700 games. Fred Taylor, just 40, already had taken Ohio State to three Final Fours from 1960-62, winning one. Duke’s Vic Bubas, Michigan’s Dave Strack and Utah’s Jack Gardner each had been to multiple Final Fours. too. Dean Smith, then 33, would coach in his first Final Four in 1967. Ed Jucker abruptly quit after that 1964 season, but he had led Cincinnati after the Oscar Robertson years to back-to-back titles in 1961 and 1962 and nearly a third in ’63, losing to Loyola in overtime. Bob Boyd remembers arriving as USC’s coach in 1966, thinking Wooden was “just another face in the sun.”
But unbeknownst to many, a magical convergence of events already had been set a dynasty in motion: the ground had been broken on Pauley Pavilion to replace the old gym known as the “B.O. Barn”, and while the Bruins were defeating Duke for their first national title, a very tall and talented youngster from New York City’s now defunct Power Memorial Academy, Alcindor (now known as Kareem Abdul-Jabbar), turned to his coach, Jack Donahue, and said UCLA was one of the schools he wanted to visit.
“The coach called me right after the championship,” Wooden recalled. “I was coaching at a coaching clinic in Valley Forge, Pa., and he said he’d like to come to speak to me about his great player. And he did. He stated that UCLA was one of the five schools he wanted to visit the next year. I never contacted him or was in contact with him in any way. The next year, we repeated as national champions against the University of Michigan. We caught his interest when we defeated Duke. We solidified it the next year.
“I asked his coach if UCLA could be the last of his five schools he was going to visit. The coach, quite properly, said he couldn’t promise that. It did work out that way, but he couldn’t promise it. When (Alcindor) he came for the visit here, I showed him Pauley Pavilion: ‘You’re going to play in the nicest facility that a college has on the coast. You’re going to dedicate it. They’ll say the varsity will, but they won’t, because you’ll play in the preliminary (freshman) game. So you’ll play in the first game ever played in Pauley Pavilion.’
“We’d never have gotten him to come to the old gym. Climb up three flights. Two baskets, with gymnastics on the side, wrestling on the end. One big locker room. One shower room, no privacy in any way. You think he would have come under those conditions? No.”
Wooden rarely took recruiting trips, and the young Alcindor was no exception. Wooden claimed that while of course he had heard of the 7-foot-2 center, he had not so much as seen a photo of him before the on-campus visit. But after his future star had committed to play at UCLA, Wooden did accept his parent’s request to visit with them in New York.
“They were Catholics, and Jerry Norman, my assistant, was a Catholic,” Wooden said. “They were a lot tighter on budgets back then about what you could do, and I asked J.D. Morgan, who was our athletic director, if I could take Jerry with me, because something might come up. We had dinner at 1 o’clock in the morning, because (Alcindor’s) father (Ferdinand Alcindor, a police officer) was working the 4-to-midnight shift. And we caught the next plane. We didn’t stay all night in New York.”
Connections and reputations, rather than dogged recruiting, brought together the remaining players from those fabulous UCLA teams of 1967-69. Lucius Allen’s coach, who had assisted Wooden on an all-star team and had attended Fellowship of Christian Athletes meetings with him in Estes Park, Colo., wanted Allen to leave Kansas City. Mike Warren, a year ahead of Alcindor and Allen, had attended South Bend (Ind.) Central, where Wooden once taught, and had an interest in theater arts. And so on.
Talent would meet the Teacher, although, for the longest time, Talent overshadowed the Teacher. The freshman class of Alcindor, Allen, Lynn Shackleford and Kenny Heitz was so gifted, it was a 75-60 winner in a pre-season scrimmage against the No. 1-ranked, two-time defending national champion varsity (though, without All-American Gail Goodrich), this was hardly the same team as the previous two seasons). That freshman team of ’66 went 21-0 and beat other freshman teams by an average of 57 ppg.
Alcindor probably was the most dominant college basketball player of all-time, sacrificing the ability to break the scoring records that Pistol Pete Maravich was setting a year ahead of him in order to win titles instead.
And in Heitz, Wooden believes he had another player nearly as rare as Alcindor. Heitz started as a forward on the ’67 championship team, served as the sixth man on the ’68 title team and was a starting guard on the ’69 national champions.
“He played on three consecutive national championship teams. He played a different role each year,” Wooden said. “You think that will ever be duplicated? No. There’ll be 10 national championships in a row before that’s ever broken.”
But those ’67-69 titles belonged to Alcindor rather than Wooden or certainly Heitz. It would take the two seasons after that, when Curtis Wicks and Sidney Rowe were the stars, or Walton’s two after that, or most significantly, the 1975 title without an Alcindor, a Walton, a Wicks or a Rowe, for Wooden’s wizardry to be fully appreciated.
“A lot of coaches and writers said that now that the big guy’s gone, they’ll get their comeuppance,” Wooden said. “We got four in a row after he left, so that’s a pretty good comeuppance.”
Yes, the Teacher still had talent, but so did the Havlicek-Lucas teams of Ohio State that lost in two NCAA championship games. Wilt Chamberlain’s Kansas Jayhawks never won a title. Ralph Sampson’s Virginia Cavaliers never even played in a Final Four. Clearly, there was more than just talent going on at UCLA.
Explanation. Demonstration. Correction. Repetition. Failure to prepare is preparing to fail. Two-hour practice limits. The journey is better than the end. Save the running for drills, not laps or wind sprints. Be quick, but don’t hurry. Three-by-five note cards. Things turn out best for those who make the best of the way that things turn out. Scout by composite reports from other coaches. Build a shelter for a rainy day. Use a seven-man rotation, yet keep the bench involved. Don’t mistake activity for achievement. Expect your players to test you and don’t resent it or back down when they do. Make each day your masterpiece. Spend most nights at home with Nellie and your two kids. Explanation. Demonstration. Correction. Repetition.
“His strength was not as a game coach,” said Swen Nater, who never started at UCLA but was an ABA rookie of the year. “Strategy, he was average. He’ll tell you that. His strength was in analyzing details and knowing his players as people. He knew you better than you knew yourself.
“He was a very simple person. He didn’t over-book any schedule. He didn’t go speak everywhere. He wasn’t on the road all the time. He was at home at 5 o’clock or after practice, because he enjoyed being home more than anything else. He was married for umpteen years. He did it right. His priorities were right. He kept getting smarter and smarter and smarter. I think everyone wants to be like that.”
As his nemesis-turned-friend Pete Newell once said, Wooden was a better teacher at 64 than 53. In word and deed, Wooden seemed to spend a lifetime striving toward “Competitive Greatness,” the top of the 15 building blocks that comprised the Pyramid of Success prevalent in today’s corporate America.
The construction of this Pyramid began in 1934, when a 23-year-old Wooden, frustrated with the way that some parents judged his students’ success by their grades or athletic accomplishments, attempted to redefine success.
“With Mr. Webster, it’s defined as something like material possessions or positions of prestige, or something like that,” Wooden said. “While those are worthy accomplishments, I don’t think they necessarily indicate success. They very well might, but not necessarily. My dad had said while I was in grade school, ‘Never try to be better than somebody else. Always learn from others, because you’ll never know a thing that you don’t learn from someone else in one way or another. And, most of all, strive to be the best you can be in whatever you’re doing, because that’s under your control. The other things aren’t under your control.’”
Then Wooden came across a simple verse that helped further shape his definition of success:
“At God’s footstool to confess,
A poor soul now turned down his head.
I failed, he cried.
Thy master said, Thy didst they best.
That is success.”
From that, Wooden coined a new definition of success: “Peace of mind attained only from self-satisfaction, knowing you made the effort to do the best you’re capable of. And you’re the only one who knows that.”
Well-stated though it was, the eyes must have rolled back in his students’ heads as Wooden explained his definition to them. The definition wasn’t catching on as Wooden had hoped, so he kept analyzing it, working on the project that would have died in many a philosopher’s wastebasket, until he determined that what it needed was a visual. Fourteen years later, while on faculty at Indiana State in 1948, he arrived at the Pyramid of Success. By 1960, Wooden was sending out about 500 or 600 copies of the diagram that Alcindor once called “corny,” today, 30 years since his final team won a title, he still annually sends out about 1,500 copies of the Pyramid.
Many of Wooden’s former players also continue working toward that highest block of the Pyramid, their playing days long over. Walton, you know. Warren played Bobby Hill on “Hill Street Blues.” Denny Scott Miller, who left the Bruins during the 1958-59 season to pursue an acting career, was the first blond Tarzan and a 1961-65 member of the cast of “Wagon Train.”
Though Wooden told his players he did not care about their politics or religion, eight of the devout Protestant’s former players became ministers. Willie Naulls, Wooden’s first great player, has worked extensively for Concerned Parents of America. Seven-footer Ralph Drollinger, the only reserve to play in UCLA’s 1975 title game against Kentucky, has been holding Bible studies for lawmakers at the California state capitol since 1967. Doug McIntosh, a center on Wooden’s first two championship teams, was the co-founder in 1971 of what is now known as the Cornerstone Bible Church in northwest Atlanta. Jay Carty, one of Wooden’s former assistants, is a traveling preacher.
None made a more spectacular impact than Jack Arnold, who left Wooden’s team before his eligibility was completed in 1956 after becoming one of the earliest members of the Campus Crusade for Christ. On Jan. 9, Arnold had touched on the topic of the afterlife during a passionate sermon to his congregation at the Covenant Presbyterian Church in Orlando – “I’m out of here,” he had proclaimed – when he grabbed the pulpit and fell backwards, dead from cardiac arrest.
Walton, who as a player was one of Wooden’s greatest challenges, checks in with Wooden nearly every day, often leaving long-winded messages. Kenny Washington, a sixth man on the ’65 title team, often takes Wooden to church. Andy Hill, a reserve 1970-72 championship teams, was angry with Wooden for years, but his book “Be Quick But Don’t Hurry” is a testament to their repaired relationship.
“You can almost do anything you want to Coach and then come back and say you’re sorry, and then you’re like his favorite,” said Nater, who shares Wooden’s passion for poetry. “I just compare him to the Lord, man. When that one sheep goes astray, that one is very special when you go get him.”
One of the first of some 100 poems that Nater has written, most of them for Wooden, ends with the following four lines:
“I found love once,
It was not pretend.
He was my coach.
He is my friend.”
Yet, there’s a whole in Wooden’s heart that an abundance of family and friends cannot fill. Wooden has never completely gotten over the death of his child sweetheart, Nell, 20 years ago on March 21, still choking slightly at the mention of her passing. The love letters that he writes to her on the 21st of each month now total 240.
When Wooden recently addressed a group of employees at Costco, where Nater is the assistant buyer for sporting goods, he was asked if he fears death.
“That’s a rather odd question to ask a 93-year-old man,” Wooden answered. “No, I’m not afraid of death. I’m not going to intentionally hurry it along. But I’ve been blessed in so many ways. My family. My children, my grandchildren and my great-grandchildren all live a short distance away, so that I can see them. My extended family of players has mostly stayed in Southern California.
“And out yonder, I’ll be re-united with Nellie again. But, of course, not until after death.”
A few days later, Nater sent him another poem, entitled “Yonder.”
“Once I was afraid of dying,
Terrified of ever-lying,
Petrified of leaving family, home and friends.
Thoughts of absence from my dear ones,
Drew a melancholy tear once,
And a lonely, dreadful fear of when life ends.
But those days are long behind me;
Fear of leaving does not bind me,
And departure does not host a single care.
Peace does comfort as I ponder,
A reunion in the Yonder,
With my dearest who are waiting over there.”
*****
There seems little contradiction in the way that Wooden taught his players and the way that he lived his life. For the most part, they seem to be one and the same.
But there is one thing that doesn’t fit with the man and the example that he set for all.
And that’s Sam Gilbert.
Gilbert was a wealthy and powerful L.A. contractor who made little secret of lavishing gifts upon UCLA basketball and USC football players – even paying for their girlfriends’ abortions – at the height of those teams’ glory days. An NCAA investigation during Larry Brown’s watch put the Bruins on probation during the 1980-81 season, voided their second-place finish in 1980 and forced Gilbert to disassociate himself from the program.
Nothing was found on Wooden, though he still is often charged with turning a blind eye toward Gilbert, who died in 1987, four days before an unaware Florida grand jury, indicted him on a money-laundering scheme. The irreverent Jerry Tarkanian once called Gilbert the most important block in Wooden’s Pyramid of Success.
“My feeling on Sam Gilbert was that, probably at heart, he thought he was doing a good thing,” Wooden said. “But I thought he was doing things. I never knew for sure, but I was always suspicious. I always worried about him, I’ll tell you that.”
“I had asked him to let my players alone and to not bother them. And Mr. Morgan had, too. I would tell my players to stay away and not be involved, because they could get themselves in trouble and the school in trouble.”
Gilbert only began showing up around the program after the Bruins began winning championships, said Wooden, who maintains that he is confident that Gilbert never had anything to do with a player choosing to attend UCLA. Wooden said Gilbert’s widow still comes to talk to him before each UCLA home game.
“I tried my very best,” said Wooden, “but I sometimes found the leather jackets and boots that Rowe and Wicks were wearing, I don’t think they could afford them.
“I questioned: ‘Did Sam Gilbert get these for you?’
“(Rowe and Wicks): ‘No.’
“(Wooden): ‘Did he arrange for you to get them at a better price?’
“(Rowe and Wicks): ‘Don’t you shop around for better prices when you get things?’
“(Wooden): ‘Well, now you’re beating around it. You better be careful. I don’t like this at all.’”
And still doesn’t. For an instant, the kindly great-grandfather stiffened, folding his arms, and became the coach again, refusing to back down to yet another who had come to test him.
“I know I never used him,” Wooden said. “My conscience is clear. When some say the program is tainted, that doesn’t bother me a bit.”
*****
The bookcase just outside Wooden’s den is engraved with another of his father’s sayings: “Drink Deeply from Good Books … Especially the Bible.” There are pictures of Wooden there with Tiger Woods, Roger Clemons and Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf, and a bobble-head doll of Tony Hinkel, the legendary Butler coach. On the floor, there sits a large photo of Wooden and Frank Sinatra that the coach has no idea what to do with.
Wooden pointed to a plaque of the Crucifix.
“This one is from Jesus,” he said.
The Jesus from “The Passion of the Christ” – Jim Caviezel, whose father James’ career at UCLA under Wooden was cut short by injuries – had indeed given it to the coach.
To the right of bookcase, Charlie the Chimp swings among the trees in an enlargement from his children’s book, “Inch and Miles: The Journey to Success.” Sue Cornelison, the book’s illustrator, had offered Wooden the scene of his choice, and when he ultimately came upon Charlie, she quizzed him on the choice. When Wooden came up with something about Charlie’s qualities, she asked if that was his only reason.
“No,” Wooden said, “but if you knew that, why’d you have to ask?”
There, on a tree that would be hidden in the book’s bindings, Cornelison had carved “Nellie + J.W.”
On the opposite side of the hall, his U.S. Medal of Freedom hangs next to a photo of the ceremony with President and Laura Bush.
“When he put that on me, he sort of looked up and said, ‘I’ll bet Nellie’s looking down on this,’” Wooden said. “Which was nice. I didn’t know he knew anything about Nellie. It was surprising how much (Laura Bush) knew. She knew about the Inch and Miles book. I sent her a copy and got a lovely, hand-written letter on White House stationery thanking me, and then I got the same thing from him, thanking me for sending it to her.
“So they went up in my estimation. She was always high, but he went up in my estimation, too.”
The hallway led to the shrine to Lincoln facing his doorway, and then toward the condominium gates, onto another busy street, past another suburban town, far from the legendary coach in his living-history-museum home.
John Akers is the Managing Editor of Basketball Times.
The original version of this story appeared in the April 2005 issue of Basketball Times.
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Photo Credit: www.uclabruins.com
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