Wizard of Westwood passed tonight

[Fonzie]

John Wooden gone at age 99

Basketball lost a class act, ambassador & treasure

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704764404575287443338281132.html

By STEPHEN MILLER and DARREN EVERSON

Long before he was the "Wizard of Westwood," perhaps the greatest coach in collegiate basketball history, John Wooden was the "India Rubber Man," so named for bouncing back from his aggressive tumbles on the court.

Mr. Wooden, who died Friday night of natural causes at age 99, built one of sports' greatest dynasties at UCLA in the 1960s and 1970s, when his Bruins won 10 national titles in 12 seasons. His teams, some featuring Lew Alcindor (now Kareem Abdul-Jabbar) and later Bill Walton, racked up four 30-0 seasons and won a record 88 consecutive games from 1971 to 1974.

Mr. Wooden's trademarks as a coach were conditioning, drilling, and the "Pyramid of Success," a formula for clean living that admitted of no facial hair or profanity. While rival coaches spoke behind his back of "Saint John," Mr. Wooden lectured his players on the virtues of self-control and industriousness. He spouted pithy slogans like "Be quick, but don't hurry."

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Associated Press Wooden's Glory Days

His players loved him. "When I left UCLA in 1974 and became the highest-paid player in the history of team sports at that time, the quality of my life went down," wrote Bill Walton in 2000 in UCLA Magazine. "That's how special it was to have played for John Wooden and UCLA."

Mr. Wooden built his teams around the fast -break offense and he innovated with the full-court zone press defense, nicknamed "The Glue Factory" when he unveiled it in the 1963-64 season. That Bruins team went undefeated and won the NCAA championship, Mr. Wooden's first.

"We are easy to scout but tough to play against," Mr. Wooden told Time in 1974.

Raised on a farm that lacked electricity and running water outside Martinsville, Ind., John Robert Wooden grew up poor in a strict family. Mr. Wooden remembered years later that his first basketball hoop was a tomato basket and that he practiced shooting with a ball of rags stuffed in one of his mother's stockings.

The family later lost the farm and moved to Martinsville, a small Indiana city so basketball-crazy that according to Mr. Wooden's memoir the population was 5,200 and the high school's gym seated 5,520. The Martinsville Artisans made it to the state finals three times during Mr. Wooden's high school career, winning once.

As a student at Purdue University, Mr. Wooden led his team to the 1932 national title, was named All-America guard three times, and became known as "India Rubber Man."

"Wooden's forte is dribbling," went a United Press dispatch of 1932. "The very speed of his dribbling causes him to have many tumbles on the floor…. He bounces back to his feet immediately and is away once more."

After graduation, Mr. Wooden began coaching basketball at Dayton, Ky., High School, where in his first season of 1933-34 he had his only losing record as a coach. He went on teach physical education in the Navy during World War II, and after the war coached at Indiana State Teachers College. In 1948, UCLA lured him to the West Coast, where his fast-break offense caught opposing teams flat-footed. UCLA's record improved to 22-7 from 12-13 the year before. His attention to detail was so acute that he famously made a point of instructing his players how to properly put on their socks and shoes so as to avoid blisters and not have their shoelaces come untied.

His "Wizard of Westwood" moniker came from the neighborhood that hosted UCLA's gym, a small and hot space that was known as the "B.O. Barn."

"I wanted a better place to play," Mr. Wooden told Sports Illustrated in 1969. "But it didn't displease me that the other teams dreaded to come there."

Although the Bruins quickly improved under his tutelage, the championships didn't come for years. But after Mr. Wooden won his first in 1964, UCLA dominated the sport like no team before or since, winning seven straight titles at one point from 1967 through 1973. His overall record at UCLA was 620-147.

Legendary Bruins basketball coach John Wooden was hospitalized Thursday night. The 99-year-old coached at UCLA from 1948 to 1975 where he won 10 national championships. Video Courtesy of Fox News.

Despite the statesmanlike image that Mr. Wooden cultivated in later years, he was known in his heyday for high-volume verbal encouragement directed at referees and opposing players alike. But he was never profane. His demeanor resembled the in-your-face defensive strategies he designed for his players.

He retired in 1975 after winning one last NCAA championship, this one without a big man to lead the team.

In an interview with The Wall Street Journal in March, during the men's and women's college-basketball tournaments, Mr. Wooden spoke about how he still followed the game closely, but that he had lost some enjoyment for it.

"I don't like to watch it as much as I used to," he said. "I think there's too much showmanship. There's too much individual play. The players are better now--individually, they're better players--but we used to have better teamwork."

Write to Stephen Miller at stephen.miller@wsj.com and Darren Everson at darren.everson@wsj.com

Edited June 5, 2010 by Fonzie

[Bad324]

RIP greatest BBALL coach of all time

[redrocket04]

Rip.

[jagr]

Looks like he had a heluva good life. RIP.