John Wooden, the Wizard of Westwood, the legendary UCLA coach that built the Bruins into a dynasty in the '70's, passed away Friday night of natural causes.
He was 99.
I'm too young to remember the Wooden era. By the time I was born, John Wooden was already a legend, retired to his perch as the overseer of the UCLA program. I never met him, but there are countless others that have.
He had a profound effect on seemingly everyone.
Wooden, after winning his tenth title. It was the last game he would coach.(photo credit: FOXSports)
Jeff Eisenberg, The Dagger: There are no direct quotes to pull from this post, but Jeff put together a fantastic collection of quotes from people that knew Wooden. Must read. (The AP put one out as well.)
Bill Sweek, Sporting News: A former Wooden player retells a fantastic story from his playing days at UCLA.
Dan Wetzel, Yahoo! Sports: John Wooden coached his final game on March 31, 1975. It was a victory of course, UCLA 92-85 over Kentucky to give the Bruins their 10th NCAA championship in a dozen years.
Wooden’s coaching accomplishments are unfathomable by any reasonable standard, an impossible to duplicate championship run paced by four perfect seasons.
Yet his most profound impact came in the ensuing 35 years, when the man became a greater legend in retirement than as a coach. In his time away from the game, outside the daily spotlight he became an even more profound and respected role model.
Steve Henson, Yahoo! Sports: Wooden alone possessed the standing to state something as straightforward as, "Focus on effort, not winning," and have the words hurtle beyond bromide and past cliche to resonate as an unadulterated secret to success. His words had depth. They were words to the wise. They were pathways to fulfillment for several generations of not only American sportsmen, but of anyone who wished to reach his or her potential, to put forth effort and increase the chances that you, too, might in your chosen profession capture the equivalent of 10 national championships in 12 years.
Alex Wolff, SI: If death had granted him a moment's reprieve to convey the sentiment, John Wooden would have declared his passing on June 4, 2010, at age 99, as a joyous transit. After the loss of his wife of 53 years, Nell, in March of 1985, the old UCLA coach came to regard life as essentially time to bide until he might be with her again. He had encamped with Nell at the Final Four, first as a conquering coach and then as a conventioneering one; but without her he couldn't bring himself even to go. For his first years as a widower Wooden slept atop the covers of their bed so as not to have to slip beneath them alone.
Seth Davis, SI: I can't be sure that John Wooden was reciting poetry at the moment he drew his last breath on June 4, 2010 at the age of 99, but I have good reason to believe he was. In September 2006, when I visited Wooden at his modest apartment in Encino, Calif., he told me that he liked to recite poetry to help him fall asleep. He had a rotation of maybe a half-dozen ditties, including a couple that he had written himself. With an easy smile and a dulcet voice, Wooden recited for me one of the self-written poems he used to hypnotize himself.
I asked him if he actually spoke out loud while completing his nightly routine. "Sometimes out loud, and sometimes I'll just recite them in my head," he replied. "But I'll never know. I may go to sleep in the second or third, or maybe the fourth. When I wake, I think, 'I wonder which one I fell asleep to?' "
John Gasaway, Basketball Prospectus: I was doing what I do a lot of in the offseason, trying to learn more about basketball. The pursuit had brought me to the office of Butler coach Brad Stevens, who had graciously agreed to give me an hour. As intent as I was on getting as much information as I could out of 60 minutes, I couldn’t help noticing the familiar blue and yellow spine of Wooden’s autobiography, They Call Me Coach, on Stevens’ bookshelf. So I asked Stevens if he’d ever met or spoken on the phone with John Wooden.
No, Stevens said, he didn’t suppose that someone of Wooden’s eminence needed another pesky coach tugging at his sleeve, or words to that effect. I nodded in agreement, but I couldn’t help thinking: Are you kidding? Wooden would love to hear from you, the pride of Zionsville, the wunderkind who’s coaching in the very same building where Wooden played in the 1928 Indiana high school state championship game. Not to mention Stevens, coming off an appearance in the national championship game, is hardly just another coach.
Then Stevens said something that should have occurred to me before but that frankly I hadn’t realized: "This is how much of a role model John Wooden is for me. He retired before I was born, and I still try to learn everything I can from him."
Mike DeCourcy, The Sporting News: Wooden wasn't wild about the fuss. It didn't suit him. Honestly, if he'd wanted to be celebrated properly he could have asked that we hold the ceremony at the Staples Center — and we could have filled the place with a small fraction of his admirers.
Instead, at his request, we arranged it at the Valley Inn in Sherman Oaks, Calif., a quaint restaurant where Wooden became a regular over the years. And he did enjoy the afternoon. Because though he did not feel the need to be the center of attention he certainly enjoyed the reunion it produced.
Jeff Goodman, FOXSports: With all due respect to Bob Knight, Mike Krzyzewski and even Bear Bryant and Vince Lombardi, John Wooden was in a class by himself.
Wooden will go down as the most accomplished coach anywhere. Ever.
The Wizard of Westwood won 10 national titles in a 12-year span, including a remarkable seven consecutive from 1967 through ’73.
There were four seasons of 30-0 perfection, a record 88-game winning streak and also 38 consecutive NCAA Tournament victories. Wooden’s success is almost unfathomable.
Mike Miller, Beyond the Arc: How could there be another Wooden?
Who could possibly match his success?
Say John Calipari continues to stockpile talent at Kentucky, much like Wooden did at UCLA. All he has to do is win the NCAA tournament 10 times in 12 years, then extend his coaching philosophy into all facets of life and spend his retirement preaching excellence, and how to reach that excellence. It sounds like some kind of Hollywood script.
Adam Zagoria, ZagsBlog: Wooden was a groundbreaking trendsetter who demanded his players be in great condition so they could play an up-tempo style not well-known on the West Coast at the time.
But his legacy extended well beyond that.
He was the master of the simple one- or two-sentence homily, instructive little messages best presented in his famous "Pyramid of Success," which remains must-read material, not only for fellow coaches but for anyone in a leadership position in American business.
He taught the team game and had only three hard-and-fast rules – no profanity, tardiness or criticizing fellow teammates. Layered beneath that seeming simplicity, though, were a slew of life lessons – primers on everything from how to put on your socks correctly to how to maintain poise: "Not being thrown off stride in how you behave or what you believe because of outside events."
"What you are as a person is far more important that what you are as a basketball player," was one of Wooden's key messages.
Robyn Norwood, LA Times: Even well into his 90s, Wooden used to mail out some 1,500 copies of his pyramid a year, many of them to high school coaches who wanted to distribute them to their teams.
Though others urged him to copyright the pyramid, Wooden said in recent years he never had, prompting a friend to tell him he didn't have a marketing bone in his body.
"I hope not," Wooden said.
Marques Johnson, FOXSports: Video of the the Pac-10's color commentator on Wooden. ESPN's Andy Katz put a video together as well.
March To Madness: A great coach but a better person. Our loss is heaven's gain. I would pay to see his eyes when he meets up with (his wife) Nell again. (Ed. Note: Yeah, this one made me tear up a little bit.)
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