John Wooden, who coached basketball players like Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Gail Goodrich, and Bill Walton on NCAA championship teams, turns 99 today.
It took 15 years of coaching the UCLA Bruins for Wooden to win his first NCAA title; after that he never really stopped. An unprecedented 10 NCAA titles, seven of them in a row (from 1967 to 1973). Five undefeated teams. And he closed out his college coaching career in 1975 with his10th title.
To find a coach who even comes close to Wooden's record, you'd have to go to women's basketball, where University of Tennessee's Pat Summitt, coach of the Lady Vols, has eight and counting. In men's basketball, Adolph Rupp of the University of Kentucky, has four -- and I think they still needed to have some guy fish the ball out of the peach basket after each score then.
Wooden coached some real characters during a changeable era of our history -- the late 60s and early 70s. Abdul-Jabbar, then known as Lew Alcindor, was a 7-foot stringbean with some incredible game and a lot of anger in him. And Walton, during his early career with the Portland Trail Blazers, became something of a counterculture hero because of his ponytail, mountain-goat beard, vegetarian diet, and radical politics.
Los Angeles Lakers coach Phil Jackson earned his props for being able to coach Michael Jordan, Scottie Pippen, the uncoachable Dennis Rodman and a handful of role players into an NBA championship team. Wooden did the same thing with his Bruins decades earlier.
He still has gas in his tank, as Times reporter T.J. Simers wrote a few months ago:
This morning's breakfast will go on for three hours, Wooden unable to shake his visitor, the line a long one day after day for others also wanting some of his time ... New York Giants Coach Tom Coughlin was here a few weeks ago, a USC assistant football coach is the latest to call seeking a meeting ... as for Wooden, he would still like "to have dinner with both Joe Torre and Mike Scioscia," even making a concession, and saying they wouldn't have to eat turkey. He loves his baseball, all right, and his channel turner, stopping for Perry Mason, and every Saturday parking on the westerns, which got him an invite to meet Clint Eastwood on the set of " Changeling," Eastwood directing Angelina Jolie. "A very lovely woman," Wooden says with a smile. "Those lips are something." Like he said, he's not dead.
He's always been a class act. Equal parts motivational speaker, and basketball coach, one of the foundations of his teaching is the Pyramid of Success. He's also noted for his philosophical quotes about life and sportsmanship, such as: "Failure is not fatal but failure to change might be."
Some more Woodenisms:
"Young people need models, not critics."
"The main ingredient of stardom is the rest of the team."
"Learn as if you were to live forever; live as if you were to die tomorrow."
"Talent is God given; be humble. Fame is man given; be thankful. Conceit is self given; be careful."
"Ability is a poor man's wealth."
"Be more concerned with your character than your reputation, because your character is what you really are, while your reputation is merely what others think you are."
"Don't give up on your dreams, or your dreams will give up on you."
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