John Wooden’s Winning Ways by The Editors of New Word City

Author:The Editors of New Word City [The Editors of New Word City]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Business/Leadership
ISBN: 9780983000167
Publisher: New Word City, Inc.
Published: 2014-04-13T16:00:00+00:00

“Saint John” With Warts

During the era of rebellion and individualism in the 1960s and early 1970s, John Wooden treated his players with a mixture of discipline and tolerance. “George Patton is not my idol,” he said. “I prefer Omar Bradley.” He began every season with a demonstration of how to put on basketball shoes, smoothing out the socks and lacing up tightly to avoid blisters and sprained ankles. One of his tactics in practices was to run a play over and over but not to shoot the basket, focusing not on the shot but on what produces it. When the temperamental redhead Bill Walton turned up with a haircut that Wooden didn’t like, the coach told him, “Bill, that’s not short enough. We’re sure going to miss you on this team. Get on out of here.” Walton went back to the barber, returning shorn before the practice ended. When Wooden’s players asked permission to stage a protest against the war in Vietnam, he told them he had his convictions, too, and if they missed practice, they would be kicked off the team. But when Walton was arrested for lying down in the street at an antiwar demonstration, Wooden let it pass. And when his players told him that they smoked pot, Wooden simply remarked mildly that it was against the law.

The sports writers began calling him Saint John, “so square he’s divisible by four.” And competing coaches said his reputation gave him an unfair edge in recruiting. “We thought we had a kid sewed up, but then Jesus Christ walked in,” one of them complained. “The kid’s parents about fell over. How can you recruit against Jesus Christ?”

After Wooden’s retirement, however, a less saintly side of him became known. For years, the Los Angeles Times said in an investigative series, a wealthy Los Angeles contractor and UCLA booster, Sam Gilbert, had been treating the Bruins to favors, costly gifts, and lavish parties, all in violation of NCAA rules. Wooden said he hadn’t known what was going on, and he was never charged with any violations - though in 1981, six years after his retirement, the NCAA put the Bruins on a two-year probation. “Among the things Coach Wooden was good at,” said a former player, Andy Hill, “was knowing what he didn’t want to know.”

In retirement, Wooden remained a constant presence on the UCLA campus. He attended all the home games at Pauley Pavilion, hobnobbing with fans and signing autographs well into his nineties. But he suffered a devastating blow in 1985 when his wife died. For several years after that, Wooden became something of a recluse; he made his house a shrine to Nellie. He wrote her a love letter every month and added it to the stack he kept on her pillow, tied with a yellow ribbon. He no longer went to the NCAA tournaments, saying it would be too painful without her. Only when the Bruins finally made it back to the top, winning the national championship in 1995, did his friends succeed in coaxing him back to the Final Four.

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