WOODEN’S
WINNING WAYS

Topics: Example; Integrity; Leadership; Priorities; Success; Teaching; Values; Winning and Losing

Reference: Hebrews 13:7

John Wooden’s UCLA teams won ten NCAA championships in twelve years. Still, the 1960s were a turbulent time when Bill Walton played for UCLA under Wooden, and young people were asking hard questions of anyone in authority.

Wooden’s answers to such questions never varied. “We thought he was nuts, but in all his preachings and teachings, everything he told us turned out to be true,” Walton said. “His interest and goal was to make you the best basketball player but first to make you the best person. He would never talk wins and losses but what we needed to succeed in life. Once you were a good human being, you had a chance to be a good player. He never deviated from that.

“He never tried to be your friend. He was your teacher, your coach. He handled us with extreme patience.”

Today Walton and Wooden, ninety, talk frequently. “He has thousands of maxims,” Walton says. “He is more John Wooden today than ever. He is a man who truly has principles and ideas.”

“When you’re touched by someone that special, it changes your life,” Walton adds. “You spend your life chasing it down, trying to recreate it.”

—Hal Bock, Associated Press, “A Coach for All Seasons,” Spokane Review (December 4, 2000)