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John Wooden

John Wooden, legendary basketball coach died Friday, June 4th, 2010 at the age of 99. Here are some reactions to his passing.

For what he was able to accomplish, for some of the people he coached — who he not only turned into great basketball players, but into greater people — says enough about John Wooden’s legacy.
–2002 Wooden Award honoree Jason Williams

When you talk about the definition of the word “class,” you could go to Webster’s Dictionary and there should be a picture of Coach Wooden right there.
–ESPN Broadcaster Dick Vitale

You need not be a sports fan to mourn the passing of John Wooden. Coach Wooden took the self-sacrifice and teamwork required to be successful in basketball and modeled them into a paradigm for life. Through basketball, he taught generations of players and fans the values of love, friendship, responsibility and humility. `Make friendship a true art’ and `Give thanks for your blessings and ask for guidance every day’ were among his favorite maxims. I give thanks to God for the life and wisdom of John Wooden. May his soul, and all the souls of the faithful departed, rest in peace.
–Cardinal Roger Mahony

So saddened about Coach Wooden’s passing, but so thankful for the impact he had on me & countless others. Thank you, Coach.
–Former USC and current NFL coach Pete Carroll
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John Wooden, the greatest coach of all time, passed away Friday, June 4, 2010, at the age of 99 in Los Angeles. The Wall Street Journal covers the story:

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.”

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.”

The LA TV station KCAL has this to add:

Shortly after graduating from Purdue in 1932, Wooden married Nell Riley, whom he had met at a carnival when he was 15.

His UCLA obitituary says the couple remained together until her death in 1985. He considered his wife his “lucky Nell” — he never began a game without finding her in the stands and getting a wink and an OK signal from her.

Wooden often said that when his wife passed, he stopped fearing death.

He told UCLA Magazine in 2007, “I look forward to seeing her again.”

A week ago webcomic creator Wes Molebash posted a simple question on his blog:

If you could have dinner with any person (living or dead), who would it be and why?
- Wes

My response was just as straightforward and simple:

Jean Val Jean
May 26, 2010 at 11:00 am | Permalink

Easy: I’d give a year’s salary to have dinner with John “They call me Coach” Wooden.

I wish I’d known back then what I know now. I would have gone into debt to have met John Wooden.
In March 2000, ESPN and Sports Illustrated columnist Rick Reilly called Wooden “the best man I know”:

On Tuesday the best man I know will do what he always does on the 21st of the month. He’ll sit down and pen a love letter to his best girl. He’ll say how much he misses her and loves her and can’t wait to see her again. Then he’ll fold it once, slide it in a little envelope and walk into his bedroom. He’ll go to the stack of love letters sitting there on her pillow, untie the yellow ribbon, place the new one on top and tie the ribbon again.

The stack will be 180 letters high then, because Tuesday is 15 years to the day since Nellie, his beloved wife of 53 years, died. In her memory, he sleeps only on his half of the bed, only on his pillow, only on top of the sheets, never between, with just the old bedspread they shared to keep him warm.

There’s never been a finer man in American sports than John Wooden, or a finer coach.

According to earlier news reports, he asked one of his sons to shave him while he was in the hospital. He had previously said that he wanted to be clear-cut when he met back with his Nellie.

I wish I could write more about John Wooden… but it weighs heavily on me right now. I can’t find the words. Godspeed John Wooden. Enjoy seeing Nellie again.