Encino, Calif. – He stands on his little balcony, his tiny body belying the powerful aura engulfing his two visitors below. One of them, a huge college basketball fan, immediately develops this eerie vision of the pope, looking down upon the pilgrims, the masses who worship him.
The only difference is John Wooden doesn’t look down on anyone.
He still lives here in the same suburban apartment he moved into with his beloved wife, Nell, in 1973. The name “WOODEN” remains on the apartment directory.
His home is as ostentatious as a vinyl welcome mat. Right off Highway 101 as it snakes into San Fernando Valley, the four-room apartment is in a simple, beige, two-story apartment complex, the kind you see in a thousand middle-class suburbs. It’s far from a Malibu castle befitting a man who won a record 10 NCAA titles for UCLA, built a record 88-game winning streak, revolutionized the game with his zone press and remains – possibly forever – the greatest coach the college game has known.
He has just returned from VIP’s, the 1960s-style diner in nearby Tarzana where he still goes four to five mornings a week at 8:30 sharp. He moves slowly around his cozy apartment – the end result of an artificial hip and no cartilage left in his knees.
Then again, John Wooden is 96. What his legs have succumbed to, his mind has not.
He points to the NCAA President’s Gerald R. Ford Award and the U.S. Medal of Freedom, the highest honor given to an American citizen, from President George W. Bush. He holds up his most prized possession, a bronze medal for academic and athletic achievement from his senior year at Purdue in 1932.
He then points to a painting of his most beloved memory. No, it’s not one of his 10 national champions, pictures of which form a pyramid on a den wall. It’s a painting of himself and Nell. He was 16; she was 15.
“She was the only girl I ever went with,” he says proudly.
Nell, whom he met at a carnival when he was 14 growing up in Martinsville, Ind., died March 21, 1985. To this day, on the 21st of every month, he writes a note to her and places it under her pillow. He didn’t attend a Final Four for 10 years after her death.
“It doesn’t get any easier, does it?” he is asked.
Wooden shakes his head. During a 45-minute interview, it’s the only question he doesn’t answer with words.
However, he stays too active to dwell on the past, both good and bad. He speaks 30 times a year at the Arco Building in downtown Los Angeles for American Funds. He speaks at fundraisers for schools and churches, and attends nearly every UCLA home game, sitting in the same seat behind the bench where he patiently signs autographs before tipoff.
Basketball remains his passion and he remains as sharp – if not as agile – as the slender little man with the rolled-up program who made Hall of Famers from Lew Alcindor to Bill Walton jump at his calm commands.
Low-key excellence
Wearing a blue cardigan sweater over a blue denim shirt and gray slacks, John Wooden sits back and discusses the game and life he still loves. He says he attributes his longevity to only two meals a day – one at VIP’s, of course – and a lifetime of abstaining from alcohol. He smoked only briefly in the Navy.
He also attributes an attitude he thinks more people, young and old, should have.
“I’ve always tried to teach and practice, ‘Don’t be affected by either the highs or lows,”‘ he says. “‘Don’t let either one bother you.’ I’ve said the two most important words – and they’re in my bookcases – one is love and the other is balance. They are the two most important words in our language. Just keep things in perspective.”
Maybe that was as big a key as Alcindor’s hook, Walton’s passing or that withering UCLA press. If any reader is old enough to remember Wooden’s national titles in the 1960s and 1970s, do you recall Gail Goodrich or Sidney Wicks or Marques Johnson jumping up on a scorer’s table with the net around his neck?
Didn’t think so.
“I never wanted excessive celebrations at all for myself or my players,” Wooden says. “On each of my 10 national championship teams, we had the game won before the last few seconds. I had a timeout. I’d tell my players, ‘Now, I know you want to get the nets but let’s don’t make fools out of ourselves. Let the student body and alumni make fools of themselves.”‘
Wooden always did, and always will, refer to himself more as a teacher than a coach. In an era when youth rebelled against authority, Wooden and the Bruins were in their prime. They won national championships with a backdrop of students raging against the Vietnam War.
Instead of sheltering his players from the real world, Wooden pushed them toward it. Walton marched against the war. Alcindor, later Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, spoke up for minority rights. The best college players in the land were also among the most engaging, free-spirited interviews.
“I wanted them that way,” Wooden says. “I’ve said to young people, ‘If you want to be heard you have to listen.’… It reminds me of a little verse I heard when I was in grade school in the 1920s. It said, ‘A wise old owl sat in an oak. The more he heard, the less he spoke. The less he spoke, the more he heard. Now wasn’t he a wise old bird?”‘
Old-school philosophy
While Wooden let players be themselves off the court, they were all his on it. Talk about old school – Wooden is as traditional as a pair of 1965 Chuck Taylor high-top sneakers. He is asked which developments he dislikes about the current game.
If there was a spittoon nearby, his answer would’ve landed in it.
“I hate the dunk,” he says. “I think it’s showmanship and it hurts team play….Magic Johnson was more of a showman. I’ll take a John Stockton or an Oscar Robertson or a Jerry West.”
Wooden’s memory flashes back to 1967. The NCAA outlawed the dunk, and it devastated Alcindor. He thought the NCAA did it because of him. Wooden served on the NCAA rules committee and told Alcindor they did it because the Houston Cougars, with a Phi Slama Jama style without the moniker of their 1983 younger brothers, kept bending the rims during warm-ups.
“That was Lewis’ sophomore year, but he didn’t dunk that much,” Wooden says. “I told him, ‘Lewis, I’m glad it happened. It’s going to make you a better player. You will work harder on your hook and your fadeaways. Lewis, you’re not going to have any trouble dunking when you get in the pros.”‘
He softens, however, when he discusses the shot clock and 3-point basket. He remembers 1967 when Oregon held the ball most of the game before losing to his team, 34-25, and how USC played keepaway and won, 46-44, in 1969. He also can’t help wondering how many points Keith Wilkes or Goodrich would’ve scored with a 3-point line.
“The clock would’ve helped us in many ways,” he says. “I always liked that. As for the 3-point goal, some years it would’ve helped us. Other years it wouldn’t have, but I wouldn’t have changed my game at all defensively because I never wanted to give up those shots.
“But I would’ve done more to set up my 3-point shooters.”
Molder of great teams
If Wilkes and Goodrich would be worth more in today’s game, good Lord, how much would Wooden be worth? It’s believed Kentucky’s Tubby Smith is the nation’s highest-paid college basketball coach at $1.9 million. He has won one national title. Wooden not only won 10, he won seven straight from 1967-73.
And he adapted his game to his players. He won his first championship in 1964 with a 6-foot-5 center, Fred Slaughter. He won with superstar centers such as Alcindor and Walton, and he won his last title in 1975 with one returning starter, versatile forward David Meyers.
In other words, Wooden listened.
Yet the highest salary Wooden reached was $38,000. He has no regrets. He loves this home in Encino.
“I don’t think any coach in college should make more than the chancellor or president of a university,” he says. “I think it’s ridiculous. I’m not sure they should make more than a head of a department.”
He is told coaches are under more pressure than a university president.
“I don’t buy that in any way,” he snaps. “Is there any more pressure on them than the butcher? Or the baker? Or the candlestick maker? Whatever you do, you should put pressure on yourself to do a good job. If you’re affected by outside pressure in any way as a coach with the alumni … what the hell’s the alumni? It’s keeping things in perspective.”
He believes money should be spread out. As an old Indiana high school star, Wooden would use that state’s system and expand the NCAA Tournament to every school in the country. Each school would get at least one share of the TV pie. However, he doesn’t think that wealth should spread to players who have been squawking about being poor pawns in a billion-dollar chess game.
“Absolutely not,” he says. “They are getting paid. They’re getting a free college education. … Furthermore, let’s say you do pay them. Are you going to pay your football players more than you pay the women’s soccer players? You’d better not.”
No secret to his success
Wooden still has an inner fire that rarely surfaced on the sideline. If you want to see it, suggest UCLA hasn’t been the same without him, that it dipped to embarrassing depths such as Walt Hazzard’s 16-14 season in 1988 or Steve Lavin’s 10-19 pratfall in 2003.
“How far down did they go?” he says. “Two years after I left, the coaches won about 85 percent of their games. The fifth year after I retired, the team went to the championship game where they lost. I think if you look at the percentage of winning – knocking out one or two years – it’s about as high as any team in the country, even though they’ve changed many coaches.”
He does not meddle with the program. He speaks to a team or player only when asked. He won’t prowl practices as coach Ben Howland prepares his second-ranked Bruins (26-4) for another title-game run. Wooden can’t wait for March Madness and, as the visitor leaves, the old coach hands him a cardboard placard that helps explain why his Bruins did so well in March.
It’s his “Pyramid of Success.” He worked on it from 1934-48 while he taught and coached at Indiana State. Along the bottom lists industriousness, friendship, loyalty, cooperation, enthusiasm. At the point is competitive greatness.
It reads, “Be at your best when your best is needed. Enjoyment of a difficult challenge.”
At 96, John Wooden is still the best. He is the best because the college basketball world can still enjoy him.
Staff writer John Henderson can be reached at 303-954-1299 or jhenderson@denverpost.com.
