John Wooden (1910-2010)

I never met John Wooden; I never spoke to him on the phone and most likely never spoke to anyone who has spoken to him and likely never will. Such is the measure of just how far-reaching his influence was when I am hardly the only person in the country today who grieves the loss of the Wizard who meets the above criteria.

He coached with a philosophy that was a generation out of touch with the 18-22 years olds of the 60’s and 70’s but he did what every coach these days dreams of; he got them to listen. The two stories that I remember the best about Coach Wooden were centered around the principle that nobody was bigger than the team and nobody was exempt from the rules.

From what I’ve heard, he used to spend half an hour at the first practice of the season teaching the players how to put socks on properly. He would say that if you didn’t learn, you could get a blister and not be able to play at your full ability (or at all) and therefore you’d be hurting the team.

He had a policy of no facial hair and no long hair and one could easily argue that this was a holdover from his generational beliefs. However, I heard a different reason for the policy; if you had long hair or facial hair and didn’t dry it properly after a shower, you could catch a cold because your head was wet and you would hurt the team. To the best of my knowledge it caused some friction only once. Bill Walton, who was a three time All-American (you must remember that freshmen didn’t play varsity basketball back then) and helped lead the Bruins to the 8th and 9th national championships of Wooden’s career, came to the team picture one year sporting a full beard. Coach Wooden pulled him aside and reminded him of the policy surrounding facial hair. Walton replied by saying that it was his right and he could grow a beard if he wanted to. Wooden replied by saying that he was glad that Walton was willing to stand up for his convictions and “we’re going to miss you’”. Walton was clean shaven in time for the picture.

How much of that would work today in men’s college basketball? I can only think of three coaches off the top of my head from the past twenty years that could have imposed policies and had players follow them without question and I guarantee you’ll recognize the names; Bob Knight, Dean Smith, and Mike Krzyzewski.

We live in a different era of professional sports where players have more power than coaches and sometimes more power than front office executives. This has led to a trickledown effect where college players believe they have more power than their coach because they can always leave and go to the NBA. Throughout the history of college basketball a coach’s biggest weapon was always the playing time of the star player, which he (the coach controlled). Unfortunately the trend has come full circle and in many cases the star players can to a certain extent dictate their terms to the coach because the coach is desperate for the star’s playing time.

Whether Coach Wooden likes it or not, for many people he was and always will be defined by what he did at UCLA and given how remarkable it really was, I’ll throw out a few numbers to appease the masses.

His career winning percentage was .804 (664-162) and that ranks fifth all-time behind Roy Williams (the only active coach ahead of him), Joe Hutton, Clair Bee, and Adolf Rupp.

His 664 career coaching victories rank “only” 16th all-time but you have to take that with a grain of salt because of the 15 coaches ahead of him, roughly half are either still coaching or have retired in the past decade or so. Why does that matter? Wooden coached more than 30 games in a season three times and in all three of those years, the Bruins played 31 games. The last time that Coach Krzyzewski coached as few as 31 games was in the 1995-1996 season. Since then, he’s coached 459 games over 13 years for an average of 35.3 games per year. More games equals more wins for the elite coaches of today’s game.

Through the first 15 seasons of his career, Coach Wooden was 285-125 for a winning percentage of .695, a mark that would be good enough for 75th all-time. In the final 12 years of his coaching career, his record was 335-22 for a winning percentage of .938 and I’m definitely willing to bet that no coach at the collegiate level has ever had a sustained run of success like that. By comparison, all-time wins leader Bob Knight’s best 12 year run was from the 1972-1973 season through the 1983-1984 season and his teams went 279-85, a winning percentage of .766. In all likelihood, the only other coach that won as many as 90% of his games over a 12 year period was none other than Adolf Rupp, who posted a .903 winning percentage from the 1943-1944 season through the 1955-1956 season.

To give you one last bit of perspective on the greatness that was John Wooden on the sideline, you have to look at the national championship picture. Bob Knight, Dean Smith, Adolf Rupp, and Mike Krzyzewski rank 1 through 4 on the all-time win list. Rupp, Knight, and Krzyzewski are three of the four coaches to have won three or more national championships (Coach Smith is one of the eight coaches to have won two national titles). Those four coaches combined to coach 154 seasons, win 3,525 games, and take home 13 national championships. Coach Wooden won 10 national titles (6 more than second place) and did it in a span of 12 years.

For all of his accomplishments on the court, those who knew him best can’t stop talking about his life off the court and his philosophies about life. They are what made him the coach he was and the person he was.

This seems an unfitting tribute to a man that I knew relatively little about but whose name will reverberate through history like few others in the realm of sports. I have always loved short quotations from various people so I’m going to end with a few from Coach Wooden himself.

- Big things are accomplished only through the perfection of minor details.

- If I am through learning, I am through.

- It is what you learn after you know it all that counts.

- You discipline those under your supervision to correct, to help, to improve – not to punish.

- What is right is more important than who is right.

- Much can be accomplished by teamwork when no one is concerned about who gets credit.

- Don’t permit fear of failure to prevent effort. We are all imperfect and will fail on occasions, but fear of failure is the greatest failure of all.


John Wooden
October 14th, 1910 – June 4th, 2010

Rest In Peace