My Personal Best Read online

  My Personal Best

  Life Lessons from an

  All-American Journey

  John Wooden

  with

  Steve Jamison

  “There is a choice you have to make, in

  everything you d0. So keep in the mind that

  in the end, the choice you make, makes you.”

  —Anonymous

  Copyright © 2004 by John Wooden and Steve Jamison. All rights reserved. Manufactured in the United States of America. Except as permitted under the United States Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced or distributed in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

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  DOI: 10.1036/0071437924

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  For Inch and Miles

  From their friends, Coach Wooden and Steve.

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  “Coach Wooden really cared about us boys on the team. And he made me practice extra free throws.”

  —Howard “Monk” Fahrubel (1914–2004) Dayton High School

  Green Devils, class of 1934 and recipient of the

  Free Throw Shooting Award

  This page intentionally left blank

  For more information about this title, click here

  CONTENTS

  t

  PREFACE XI

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS XV

  1

  INDIANA FARM BOY Lessons from Long Ago 1

  2

  MY FIRST COACH Principal Earl Warriner 11

  3

  HIGH SCHOOL HERO Coach Glenn Curtis 21

  Bes

  4

  TRUE LOVE 31

  5

  INTEGRITY, TEAM SPIRIT, AND PIGGY LAMBERT 37

  6

  A NEW JOB FOR A TERRIBLE COACH 51

  7

  BACK HOME IN (SOUTH BEND) INDIANA 61

  8

  THE SYCAMORES, SPEED, AND SEGREGATION 71

  9

  THE PYRAMID Defining and Achieving Success 85

  10

  WELCOME TO CALIFORNIA A Rude Awakening 91

  11

  GLORIOUS WITHOUT GLORY The Education of a Coach 101

  12

  CHAMPIONSHIPS The Beginning of the Beginning 119

  13

  THE FIRST NATIONAL CHAMPIONSHIP Understanding People 127

  14

  J. D. MORGAN A Helping Hand 141

  15

  THE AGE OF ALCINDOR 147

  16

  THE TEAM WITHOUT? 161

  17

  THE WORLD OF WALTON Never Before or Since 169

  18

  A MEANINGFUL RECORD A Meaningless Streak 181

  19

  THE FINAL BUZZER AT UCLA 187

  20

  THE GREAT LOSS AND LOVE 197

  CREDITS 208

  My Personal

  “Failing to prepare is preparing to fail.”

  PREFACE

  Game of a Lifetime

  In the opening minutes of play on October 14, 1910—a Friday—John Robert Wooden entered the game. According to the official program, he weighed in at exactly 13 pounds and measured 191⁄2 inches. It has been underway for almost a century now, and John Wooden is having one of the greatest games anyone has ever played.

  When it started, a loaf of bread cost a nickel, the Dow Jones average was 81, and you could mail a letter for 2 cents. Milk was free if you owned a cow, and the Wooden family, tenant farmers on the Indiana prairie, did.

  As the Dow Jones rose along with the price of bread and everything else, John Wooden grew up and became a singular and towering figure in American sports. In fact, his impact today goes beyond sports to education, business, and life.

  Put simply, he’s an American icon hailed as “The Greatest Coach of The 20th Century” and awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom at the White House. Sports Illustrated’s Rick Reilly is blunt: “There has never been a finer coach in American sports than John Wooden. Nor a finer man.”

  Coach Wooden’s UCLA teams soared to heights that may never be reached again and set records that may stand forever: 10 national championships in twelve years (seven of them occurring in a row); an 88-game winning streak; 38 consecutive wins in NCAA March Madness xi

  Copyright © 2004 by John Wooden and Steve Jamison. Click here for terms of use.

  tournaments; 4 perfect seasons. Overall, a lifetime winning percentage of more than .800 with only one losing season—his very first year.

  Before that, Johnny Wooden starred as a three-time All-American at Purdue University (captain of the 1932 national championship team).

  This followed his selection—twice—as an All-State high school player and member of the Indiana state champion Martinsville bas
ketball team.

  And, as the years went on, the great love he shared together with Nell brought the arrival of Nan and Jim and then grandchildren and great-grandchildren. Of course, always there has been his teaching.

  This résumé and these accolades attached to one person would seem impossible except, as we know, they’re true. Like I said, he’s having one of the greatest games anyone has ever played.

  xii

  So, how did this happen—a “John Wooden”—whose accomplish-

  ments almost defy comprehension?

  ACE

  In his poem “The Layers,” Stanley Kunitz, twice America’s poet PREF

  laureate, describes a “principle of being” that resides in each of us—

  who we really are at heart (and in our hearts); our “indestructible essence.” In My Personal Best, John Wooden reveals his own “principle of being” in a manner so vivid and direct it’s almost three-dimensional.

  In the process, we find out how a “John Wooden” happened.

  In preparing the book with Coach, more than five thousand photographs were evaluated; many he had never seen before. The very best of them, those that evoked special insights and memories are presented here along with his reflections on the people who shaped his life and taught him the lessons he learned (and later shared) on this All-American journey.

  At core, Coach Wooden’s story

  is primarily about success—how

  to define, pursue, and achieve it.

  My Personal Best tells how he did,

  and does it, and how we can too.

  The message he brings is radi-

  cal because beating an opponent,

  achieving glory, or accumulating

  power and wealth have never

  been his ultimate goals. In fact, they are not goals, but by-products of success as he defines it.

  John Wooden is no wizard, uses no magic. In fact, the opposite is true: “It starts with hard work and enthusiasm,” he cautions us. “There xiii

  is no trick, no easy way to achieve competitive greatness and success in basketball or life.”

  ACE

  No easy way, perhaps, but there is a way—it is the way of Wooden.

  PREF

  —Steve Jamison

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  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Nan Wooden Muehlhausen, Jim Wooden, Mr. and Mrs. Bill Wooden, Dan and Maurice “Cat” Wooden, and Mike Curtis

  Mary Jean and Ev Edstrom; Pat, Kris, Kate, Kim Edstrom; and Mike Cronen

  Los Angeles

  Whitney Lee, The Fielding Agency

  Martinsville, Indiana

  Elmer Reynolds, Larry Maxwell, Randy Taylor, Don Alkire, Mrs.

  William E. (Bobbie) Poe, Barb Gray, Jean Lafery, David Ross, Bette Nunn, and Marta Johnson

  Mooresville, Indiana

  Jack and Fran Abbott (Mr. Earl Warriner’s daughter)

  Purdue University

  Elliot Bloom, Assistant Sports Information Director; Katherine Mar-kee, Special Collections Library, Dayton, Kentucky; Tom Madison, Principal, Dayton High School; and Charlie Tharp

  South Bend, Indiana

  Jim Powers, Ed Ehlers, and Mrs. Walt (Dort) Kindy

  Terre Haute, Indiana, Indiana State University

  Susan David, ISU Arches, Athletic Photograph Collection

  xv

  Copyright © 2004 by John Wooden and Steve Jamison. Click here for terms of use.

  UCLA

  Scott Quintard, photographer, ASUCLA; Todd Cheney, ASUCLA;

  Dan Guerrero, Director of Athletics; Marc Dellins, Director, Sports Information; Bill Bennett, Associate Sports Information Director; Freddie Sulit, Art Director, UCLA Hall of Fame; and Arvli Ward, Director, Student Media, UCLA

  New Castle, Indiana, Indiana Basketball Hall of Fame

  Roger Dickenson and Sharon Roberts

  Sports Illustrated

  Prem Kalliat

  xvi

  AP Worldwide Photo

  Bill Fitzgerald

  Los Angeles Times

  Bill Dwyre and Kate McCarthy

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Springfield, Massachusetts, Naismith Memorial

  Basketball Hall of Fame

  Matt Zeysing

  Oak View, California

  Jimi Giannatti

  Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame

  Robin Jonathan Deutsch

  1

  INDIANA FARM BOY

  LESSONS FROM LONG AGO

  I was raised on oatmeal. My brothers—Maurice, Daniel, and Billy—

  and I had oatmeal for breakfast nearly every morning on our farm back in Centerton, Indiana. I raised my own children on oatmeal. Some things don’t change; some lessons remain the same. Those my father taught many years ago may seem old-fashioned now, but like oatmeal, they still work.

  Joshua Hugh Wooden was a farmer—honest, hardworking, and fair.

  I never heard him speak an unkind word about another person, even on those occasions when he had every reason to. Dad came as close to living the Golden Rule as anyone I’ve ever known. He was strong enough to bend a thick iron bar with his bare hands, but he was also a very gentle man who read poetry to his four sons at night. He loved his family deeply.

  My father had a great appreciation for good books, knowledge, and education. Basketball? Enough to knock the bottom out of an old Van 1

  Copyright © 2004 by John Wooden and Steve Jamison. Click here for terms of use.

  Insert photo 1.1

  The greatest thing a father can do for his children is to love their mother; 2

  Dad did.

  Camp tomato basket and nail it to the hayloft in the barn. Baseball was his favorite sport, unless you count checkers as a sport—which he did.

  At a time when Indiana was completely basketball crazy, Dad built a MY PERSONAL BEST

  baseball diamond out behind the barn. Branch McCracken, a future Hall of Fame athlete and coach, and other local boys from around Centerton, Hazelwood, Martinsville, and Monrovia would come by on weekends to play ball and eat watermelon.

  But even baseball, in Dad’s opinion, was just for play, a diversion. In his house there was a time for chores, a time for study, and then a time for play. Play came only when the first two had been completed.

  A HARD GOOD LIFE

  Our farm was sixty-five Indiana acres of wheat, corn, alfalfa, timothy, and potatoes. A narrow dirt road cut through the fields and past our white farmhouse with its sparse living room and kitchen—a black potbelly stove in the former, a wood-burning stove for cooking in the latter. There were two small bedrooms for the six of us; my brothers and I slept two to a bed. Near our old barn was a smokehouse for curing meat, and next to that, a well where we pumped our water by hand.

  Over to the side, all by itself, was the outhouse—a three-holer.

  We had no electricity, plumbing, or conveniences, and for entertain-ment Dad read books to us in the evening by the light of a coal-oil lamp. Sometimes we’d hear Lord Alfred Tennyson’s Idylls of the King, Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven,” or even William Shakespeare. Before we were sent off to bed, he’d

  always include a verse or two

  from the Good Book.

  On those bitter cold nights

  when the winter winds whis-

  tled across our fields, Dad

  would heat bricks on the pot-

  belly stove and wrap them in

  towels. He’d place the bricks

  at the foot of our beds, under

  the thick wool quilts Mother

  had sewn, to keep us warm.

  A TRUE COMPASS

  Dad was the best man I ever knew, the one who set the course that guided me through life—what I believe, what I do, and how I do it. In so many ways he made everything happen. And he did it by teaching us in word and deed that the simplest virtues and values were the most important ones.

  Joshua Hugh Wooden died long before

  the
University of California–Los Angeles

  “Don’t try to be better than

  (UCLA) won a men’s college basketball

  somebody else, but never cease

  championship. Do I wish he’d lived to see

  trying to be the best you can be.”

  me coach a team to a national title? Yes,

  —JOSHUA WOODEN

  but it wouldn’t have mattered so much

  4

  to him.

  His priorities were different. Material things and public notice meant little. Education was important. Family was important. Outscoring someone in a basketball game, even for a national championship, had much less significance. Dad lived long enough to see me accomplish what was important to him. Nevertheless, he was responsible for the MY PERSONAL BEST

  good things that happened to me as a coach. Therefore, it surprises people that I received hardly any basketball instruction from Dad—no tips on jump shots, free throws, or anything else. He seldom attended games and was only slightly interested in results. His concern and guidance were deeper.

  In those early days, Dad’s message about basketball—and life—was this: “Johnny, don’t try to be better than somebody else, but never cease trying to be the best you can be. You have control over that. The other

  Joshua Hugh Wooden taught character mostly by his own example.

  5

  you don’t.” It was simple advice: work hard, very hard, at those things BOY

  I can control and don’t lose sleep over the rest of it. His advice was eas-ARMF

  ier said than done, but very good advice.

  Then he would usually add, as he talked to us at the kitchen table, INDIANA

  “Boys, always try to learn from others, because you’ll never know a thing that you didn’t learn from somebody else —even if it’s what not to do.” I believed him and took his advice to heart and later tried to teach the same message.

  At Dayton High School, South Bend Central High School, Indiana State Teachers College, and UCLA, those under my supervision knew I asked for an accountability above outscoring an opponent or getting a better grade than the person across the aisle. “Try your hardest. Make

  the effort. Do your best,” I’d tell them. “The score cannot make you a loser when you do that; it cannot make you a winner if you do less.” I still believe this.