At 97, Coach John Wooden Was Still Teaching
Phil Olsen
One of the most insightful, inspirational days of my life was the day I spent with legendary college basketball coach John Wooden. He was kind and gracious to fit me in to his busy schedule; after all, he had done 75 speaking engagements during the year before we met. We had breakfast together in his favorite booth at VIPs Cafe with pictures of his 10 National Championship teams as a backdrop and then spent time together in the den of his condominium in the San Fernando Valley.
In our six hours together, he talked about a wide variety of things including basketball and life, the writing projects he was working on, his video projects and two new books on for children. Throughout our conversation, he accurately referenced sections from the fourteen books he had written, as well as reciting poetry, quoting Scripture and sharing quotes from famous figures in history. He had a perfect command of sports facts from his distinguished career and even corrected me gently if I misattributed something he had written or said in the past.
Oh, and on that memorable day back in 2008, John Wooden was 97 years old.
Even at 97, the long-time UCLA coach and winner of ten NCAA National Basketball Championships was still teaching everyone he came into contact with. Well into his tenth decade, he still displayed remarkable mental acuity, insight and kindness. I am so grateful that he took an interest in me and my work at Know Your Strengths and that, in a meeting facilitated by our mutual friend former LSU basketball Dale Brown, he was willing to give me a full day from his valuable schedule to learn more about my work at KYS as well as to be a personal inspiration and encouragement to me.
During our time together, I asked him a lot of questions—about his leadership philosophy, his heroes, the impact he had had on the young men who had played for him, the values that drove every part of his rich and accomplished life. I learned that when he struggled in his early years in Westwood—he was there for fifteen years before he won his first national title—he still had the support of the UCLA administration because he had outlined and embodied his leadership principles early, and those who hired him believed in what he was building.
As an athlete and a person, I am the product of some outstanding coaches—I played basketball on legendary Coach Dale Brown’s first college team at Utah State University back in 1967-68, which was before he went on to a remarkable 25-year career at LSU. Like Coach Wooden, Coach Brown represents the epitome of what it means to be a coach. He could see a player not as they currently were, but as they could become. He had the ability to reach inside a player and bring out their very best. I also played for long-time NFL Coach Chuck Knox both with the LA Rams and again with the Buffalo Bills during my nine-year career as a defensive lineman in the NFL. Like Coach Wooden and Coach Brown, Coach Knox had the ability to reach deep inside a player to help them harness the power of who they were to achieve personal greatness.
Coach Wooden emphasized throughout the time we spent sitting and talking knee-to-knee in the small study of his condominium, that coaching is about much more than sports. Every time I would ask him questions that were basketball-related, he would smile and remind me that it's not about basketball. Instead, he said, it's about people developing character so that they can be the person that God created them to be. It's about people becoming better members of the human race by being better husbands, better mothers, better sons, better sisters and better fathers.
Another nugget from Wooden, one that was of particular interest to me since my business centers on understanding and optimizing the differences in people, was the insight he gave me about the way he chose his UCLA Bruin lineups. Talent is certainly one consideration for a coach, but Wooden said that he didn’t remember ever playing his five best players at the same time. The reason? The five most talented athletes weren’t the five who played the best together. Talent matters, but attitude, servant leadership and self-sacrifice get top billing.
He said that some players carried a grudge against him for years, convinced that their lack of playing time at UCLA ruined their chances for a professional career in the NBA. But, he was steadfast in his refusal to highlight young men who demonstrated a “what’s in it for me?” attitude. On the first day of practice every season when he addressed the team, he would tell all his players, “If you’re willing to give all you have to help this team be successful, you’ll be on the court playing. If that’s difficult for you to do, you’ll be on the bench watching the game with me.”
As we chatted, Coach Wooden showed me a few books and other items from his nearby rolltop desk. But, I was amazed when he showed me a tiny cross that he kept safe in the top desk drawer. He told me that he held that cross in his hand as he coached every basketball game from high school through his time at UCLA. In photographs, he said, you usually see his right hand holding a rolled-up game program and his left hand would be balled up, hiding the cross he held inside. The reason he made a point to carry that cross with him during every game, and the reason he showed it to me that day, was because he believed that the cross of Jesus Christ is what led him every day of his life and gave him the strength he needed each day throughout his historic coaching career.
Coach John Wooden lived fully and inspirationally until he was 99 years old. The ripples of his life are impossible to fully measure as so many people have been touched through his writings, his speeches or through the stories from his players. I count it among one of my greatest privileges that I got to learn some of his lessons firsthand.