John Wooden in a Box

Many years ago, Bill James wrote a wonderful book about baseball managers.  My favorite part of the book was when he would insert a detailed analysis of a particular manager such as Whitey Herzog.  I'm not going to try the exact same format, but I do have a lot to say about college basketball coaches, so I'm going to try something similar with John Wooden and see how it goes.

JOHN WOODEN IN A BOX:

Where did he coach?  Indiana St., 1946-47 to 1947-48; U.C.L.A., 1948-49 to 1974-75

What was his record?  44-15 at Indiana St.; 620-147 at U.C.L.A.; total of 664-162 (.804)

What was his greatest accomplishment?  Between 1964 and 1975, John Wooden won the NCAA Basketball Tournament 10 times in 12 seasons.  It's the single greatest accomplishment in the history of men's college basketball, and one of the greatest coaching jobs in the history of American sports.

How was he as a recruiter?  During U.C.L.A.'s glory years, Wooden enjoyed a flood of talent unlike anything any other college basketball coach has ever seen.  He had Lew Alcindor and Bill Walton for three seasons each, and they are easily two of the greatest American basketball players of all time.  He also had a constant supply of other highly talented players.  In every game that he coached during those last twelve seasons, he had more talent than the team he was coaching against.

Of course, Wooden's methods are now controversial because it is widely believed that his players were obtaining illegal benefits from a local businessman named Sam Gilbert.  But I think two points should be made here.  First, at no point during Wooden's career was he seriously in trouble with the NCAA, nor was he ever regarded by the cynical reporters of his era as a "bad guy."  Second, it is extraordinarily difficult to run a dirty program and also get your players to play with discipline and heart -- and Wooden's teams consistently played harder than anyone else in college basketball.  It's not fair to hold Wooden now to standards that did not exist at the time.

One other point should be made here:  Wooden undoubtedly benefited, probably more than any other coach who ever lived, from the evils of segregation.  There was an enormous flood of African-American talent in college basketball during the Wooden era, but until the early 1970's, schools like UNC, Duke, and Kentucky were in no position to take advantage of that fact.  What if UK had supplemented its 1970 team with some of the talent that took Western to the Final Four in 1971?  What if Duke's 1964 team had access to African-American players?  What if UNC's great teams of the late 1960's and early 1970's had included players like Bob Lanier or Artis Gilmore?  By 1974, when U.C.L.A. lost to N. Carolina St., it was clear that the demographics of college basketball were changing.  But there were dozens of other coaches on the West Coast and in the Midwest who had similar opportunities to build a powerhouse in the 1960's and early 1970's, and none of them came close to Wooden's level of success.

How did he treat the referees?  Terrible.  Wooden is seen as a great gentleman, and in many ways he was, but he practiced that sort of Midwestern Christianity that encourages competition and winning -- and he was pretty much willing to do whatever it took to win within the rules.  He didn't have to bait the officials all that much -- usually his team was up by double digits.  But he wouldn't hesitate if he thought it would help.

Did players get better under his coaching?  Not only did they get better; most of them remained extremely loyal to Wooden for decades after they left U.C.L.A.  Bill Walton never stopped pushing the notion that the type of basketball he was taught by Wooden was the way basketball should be played.  Wooden's various books on how to coach basketball were bestsellers for decades -- there is no telling how many coaches used his drills and coaching plans.

Was he a system guy, or did he coach you up for a specific game?  Wooden was very much a system guy.  Every season, he would begin practice by teaching the players how to put on their socks.  His coaching books display a love of organization and order.  And he generally took the same approach to practice and preparation year after year.  He famously described himself as a teacher, and the games as exams, and said that his preference was to do as little as possible during the game, so that the players would be tested on what they could do on their own.

Still, his approach showed some fascinating differences from what we think of as the typical system approach.  In one of his books, for example, he specifically states that one of the reasons he prefers a fast-break style is because he thinks it is more popular with fans -- it's hard to imagine Bobby Knight caring what the fans thought of his offense.  Wooden was also extraordinarily good at developing and implementing a scheme that was designed to take advantage of the specific players he had on the roster.  In 1964 and 1965, he won back-to-back titles with one of the most usual great college basketball teams ever -- they were basically teams of guards who played at an extremely fast pace and used full court pressure to break down the other team.  Then he implemented a big-man system to take advantage of Lew Alcindor's unique talents.  Then he went back to pressing and defense once Alcindor graduated.  In 1970, when Artis Gilmore was a dominant player for Jacksonville, Wooden used the 6' 8" Sidney Wicks to guard Gilmore.  Wicks's jumping threw off Gilmore's game, Gilmore went 9-29 (!) from the field, and U.C.L.A. cruised to an 80-69 victory.  Wooden could do pretty much anything a coach is supposed to do.

Would he be successful today?  Absolutely.  I don't think anyone can dominate college basketball the way Wooden did -- talent is too disbursed.  And, of course, you couldn't keep players like Alcindor and Walton for three years in a row.  But Wooden was a genius, and he also had an obstinacy and determination to succeed that would come in handy now.  Imagine someone like Mark Few, but with NBA-quality talent and better talent in making in-game adjustments.

One of the most interesting things about Wooden is that he went from 1949 to 1963 without ever winning a title.  He was still very good -- his teams went to the NCAA's five times during that period, and made the Final Four in 1962.  But the lessons he learned during those 15 seasons undoubtedly made him a stronger coach in the dynasty years, and coaches don't always get that type of opportunity today.  On the other hand, guys like Matt Painter and Rick Barnes have very long and successful careers without winning it all, so I believe Wooden would get his chance now.  And the notion that he'd be unhappy with transfers and the like doesn't strike me as credible -- he was always very good at working within whatever restraints existed.  For a long time, U.C.L.A. didn't have a dedicated home gym.  At one point, the N.C.A.A. banned dunks an in effort to stop Alcindor.  Walton was politically outspoken.  Wooden did what he had to do and kept winning.  He'd do the same now.  He really loved to win, and he really hated to lose.

What would he have done without basketball?  He'd have found some other way to succeed.  Wooden was part of that great 20th century wave of Midwesterners who turned California into a showplace, and who made the United States the richest and most powerful country in the world.  They were a formidable group who knew almost everything there is to know about winning.  Wooden was also a first-class athlete -- he's in the Hall of Fame as a player -- and his Pyramid of Success (which he developed before he ever led U.C.L.A. to a single national title) is brilliant.  If there had been no basketball, I think he would have been the greatest football coach or baseball manager of all time.  If there had been no sports, he would have been one of those successful businesspeople who also write books about salesmanship and Jesus Christ.