Sports bettors mourn the death of the Wizard of Westwood and super book Bodog looks at the life of the UCLA legen.
John Wooden, possibly the best coach in the history of U.S. sports, has died at age 99. How good was Wooden? He lead the UCLA basketball team to 10 national titles, including seven in a row. The next three coaches who have won the most national titles – Adolph Rupp, Mike Krzyzewski and Bobby Knight – have a combined 11 national titles.
Wooden passed away Friday at Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center, where he had been hospitalized since May 26. Several of his former players had visited him in recent days. His teams at UCLA won 10 national championships in a 12-season stretch from 1964 to 1975. From 1971 to 1974, UCLA won 88 consecutive games, still the NCAA record. His 1971-72 team set a record with an average margin of victory of 30.3 points. Four of Wooden's teams finished with 30-0 records, including his first championship team, which featured no starters taller than 6-foot-5 (can you imagine that today?). Wooden retired after UCLA's 1975 championship victory over Kentucky.
Wooden was a three-time All-American guard at Purdue. He is one of only three individuals to be enshrined in the Basketball Hall of Fame as both player and coach and was the first to be enshrined as both. (The others are Lenny Wilkens and Bill Sharman)
The John R. Wooden Award, honoring college basketball's player of the year, has been given since 1977. In a weird coincidence, Richard "Duke" Llewellyn, the chairman and co-founder of the John R. Wooden Award, passed away Friday morning at the age of 93. Llewellyn and Wooden were friends for more than 60 years.
Wooden's Pyramid of Success will be a huge part of his legacy. He spent years tinkering with 15 building blocks such as "Industriousness" "Enthusiasm," "Skill," and "Poise," before finishing the diagram in 1948, shortly before he left Indiana State for UCLA. Even well into his 90s, Wooden used to mail out 1,500 copies of his pyramid a year, many of them to high school coaches. He never copyrighted it because he didn't see the point.
I think the best story I ever heard about Wooden was that when UCLA wanted to name its basketball court after him, Wooden insisted his wife's name come first. Thus it's the Nell & John Wooden Court at Pauley Pavilion.
Courtesy of ESPN.com and the L.A. Times, here are 10 quotes from Wooden that signify who the man was and what a teacher he was.
1. "Nothing will work unless you do."
2. "The athlete who says that something cannot be done should never interrupt the one who is doing it."
3. "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."
4. "I'd rather have a lot of talent and little experience than a lot of experience and little talent."
5. "Failure is not fatal, but failure to change might be."
6. "Do not let what you cannot do interfere with what you can do."
7. "Success comes from knowing that you did your best to become the best that you are capable of being."
8. "Ability is a poor man's wealth."
9. "The main ingredient of stardom is the rest of the team."
10. "You can't live a perfect day with doing something for someone who will never be able to repay you."
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