John Wooden 1910-2010

I have been teaching the power of visualization for most of my life.

By introducing this power to others, I have created thousand of new teachers who have developed their own teaching skills and have changed their own lives by sharing their new knowledge with others.

It is an extraordinary way to live.

The world recently lost an extraordinary teacher.

His name was John Wooden.

Although I had contact with this icon, one of the men who really knew him well, is my old friend, Max Shapiro.

Max introduced me to Mickey Mantle and Whitey Ford 25 years ago and I regaled my childhood heroes with stories of Ty Cobb and Visualization and the material that was built into my writings like GIFT TO MY DAD.

I hope you enjoy this incomparable memory of John Wooden, as Max writes about him in his own inimitable style.



A Tribute to John Wooden (by Max Shapiro)

By now, most of you have probably heard about the passing of John Wooden, the famed former UCLA Basketball Coach. He died just four months shy of his 100th birthday. Coach Wooden was not only a legendary basketball coach but a very special human being.

I was lucky enough to know Coach Wooden for almost 40 years and partnered with him in the 70’s and 80’s running youth and adult basketball camps. I wanted to share a few thoughts and experiences about this truly great man.

Coach (no one called him John) was born in Martinsville, Indiana during the Great Depression. He was an accomplished high school, college and professional basketball player. In fact, he was the first and only one of three people inducted into the Basketball hall of Fame as both a player and a coach.

In 1948, he became coach of the UCLA Bruins. His teams won seven consecutive NCAA Championships, as well as 10 out of 12 NCAA Championships. This remains an unparalleled record of outstanding success on the court.

More impressive than his coaching feats was the impact he had on tens of thousands of lives through his many books and with his Pyramid of Success, a visual chart of philosophical building blocks for winning at the game of basketball and life. Well into his 90’S he travelled throughout the country teaching and inspiring young people and adults.

I met Coach in 1971, when I was conducting basketball camps in southern California, and I thought there would be a lot of interest in a Wooden youth basketball camp. At the time, he was earning $25,000 a year as coach at ucla and another couple of thousand dollars running a small day camp in pacific palisades. I approached him with my idea to do a resident camp on the campus of California lutheran university in thousand oaks. I told Coach I thought he could attract 900 campers during a four week period and he would earn $36,000.

Coach said he wasn’t interested because he didn’t like to drive (a 45 minute to one hour drive from his then home in Santa Monica to thousand oaks) and he needed to be at UCLA every day during the summer (very few coaches worked year ‘round then). And, the financial gain was not a motivator, as money was never important to him.

My solution was to send a counselor every morning to pick him up and return him to UCLA in the afternoon, where his beloved wife, Nelly, could take him home. He agreed to try it. Not only did 900 happy campers sign up the first year, enrollment grew to 2,100 by the third year. The money he made during the five years we worked together allowed him to pay for college for his seven grandchildren. Spending those summers with Coach was an amazing experience.

Coach was one of the kindest and most considerate people I’ve ever known. When strangers would strike up a conversation, he would never cut them off or be abrupt. Often, I had to be the one to tell the visitor that coach needed to be in the gym. He was as kind and generous to the cooks in the kitchen and to the janitors as he was to the coaching staff, the kids and their parents.

At the end of our first camp, the campers rose as one and gave him a standing ovation. I had never seen anything like this at a camp. Those young players knew he was a great teacher and coach and they were privileged to learn from him.

Several years ago my wife, daughter and I visited him in his home in encino. After lunch at his favorite deli where he greeted everyone like family, he spent an hour sharing wonderful inspirational stories, his favorite poetry and writings from his former UCLA players. It was an unforgettable day.

During that visit he told us the following story: coach and his family frequented a neighborhood Chinese restaurant. One day the restaurant owner asked coach if he could use some of coach’s favorite sayings in his fortune cookies, like “be quick, but don’t hurry”, “consider the rights of others before your own feelings, and the feelings of others before your own rights”, “don't let what you cannot do interfere with what you can do” etc. Coach agreed, but no, he didn’t want to get paid. Months later, coach’s young great grandson, who had just eaten at the restaurant, said to his great grandfather, “Paw Paw, now I know where you got those sayings!”

Coach Wooden was a very special man and it was a privilege to know and work with him. I admire and respect him more than anyone I’ve ever known... and I will miss him dearly