I'm going to show you how great I am. This was our fighting power. I just want to say from the bottom of my heart, I'd like to take this chance to apologize to absolutely nobody. Hello, and welcome to How to Take Over the World. This is Ben Wilson. Today we are talking about the American basketball coach, John Wooden. John Wooden is one of the greatest coaches of all time in any sport.
In fact, if you go look up a list of greatest coaches or greatest American coaches of all time, John Wooden is usually number one, and if not, he's almost always in the top two or three. In his career, he won 10 national championships. He had four perfect seasons, 30-0, zero losses, and he established the longest winning streak of all time at 88 games. So just any way you slice it, he was one of the greatest and most winning coaches ever.
And yet for all of that, he always saw himself not primarily as a coach, but as a teacher. He's known for his teaching methods, his aphorisms, the principles that he used to lead his teams. He spawned a minor industry of John Wooden books, seminars, and such. In fact, the first leadership book I ever read.
was a John Wooden book back in middle school. And because he made such a science out of his teaching and getting the most out of his players, he's a great person to read about. He's sort of the Benjamin Franklin of sports coaching. His principles are laid out very clearly and are easy to observe and emulate.
But as John Wooden says, people usually know what they should do to get what they want. They just won't do it. They won't pay the price. Understand there is a price to be paid for achieving anything of significance. You must be willing to pay the price. And that's one of the reasons I'm glad that I read Wooden's biography for this episode. I almost just did his leadership books, but the biography helps show the price that he had to pay in order to win as much as he did.
the biography also makes him more human you know john wooden suffers a little bit from that Benjamin Franklin syndrome, which is that both of them laid out the principles so clearly that they can seem like self-improvement robots. They come across as dry and humorless and maybe a little bit unrealistic.
But I think in both cases, that sells them short. And I think reading about their principles in the context of their life story helps you see why. So for example, one of John Wooden's principles is that success...
is making the most of the talents that you've been given. And you should react the same way, whether you win or lose as long as you've tried your hardest. Okay. That's a great principle, I think, but it's not exactly realistic, nor does it seem like fun, right? You want to enjoy winning. I could never be that way. And I don't know if I would want to be that way. To not feel any pleasure from winning.
just seems totally terrible, joyless. And when you read his biography, you realize that that's not who John Wooden was. He wasn't some robot who felt the same way whether he won or lost. He was a fierce competitor who loved winning.
In fact, he was famous for riding the rest during the games, for even talking smack to opposing players. On at least one occasion, he threw up before a game because he was so nervous. Like, this is not someone who didn't care about winning or losing. He's best understood as a man
of enormous passions, of a love of winning, an incredibly ambitious man who was trying to curb some of those passions in a productive way. So anyway, I hope all of this comes across in this episode. My sources are Wooden, A Coach's Life by Seth Davis. and Wooden, A Lifetime of Observations and Reflections on and Off the Court by John Wooden and Steve Jameson, and Coach Wooden's Pyramid of Success by John Wooden and Jay Cardy. With all that said, let's get into it. This is John Wooden.
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John Robert Wooden was born on October 14th, 1910 in Hall, Indiana. He was the third of four sons. He grew up in small town, Indiana. His father was an interesting fellow. He was at first a farmer. but he bought a vaccine for his pigs, which turned out to be tainted and killed all of his pigs. So this bankrupted him, and he had to sell the farm and take a number of small jobs, including mail carrier. The woodens weren't impoverished, but they were poor.
They lived in a two-bedroom house, which meant that the boys had to sleep two to a bed. Despite their lack of wealth, John Wooden's dad was a cultured man who loved reading to his boys and reciting poetry to them. And John grew up with a great love of reading, of literature, and of history.
He grew up in Indiana, as I said, which is a state in the Midwest of the United States. It was very rural at the time. Everyone lived in these small little towns dotted all over the state. And for that reason, Indiana became ground zero for basketball mania.
Most towns in Indiana were too small to field a football team, which was the most popular sport throughout the nation. Football has 11 players to a side, plus special teams. So a football roster is generally 30 to 60 players. Whereas basketball...
You only have five players on the floor at a time, so it's much easier to feel the team in these small little towns. And for that reason, Indiana just goes crazy for basketball. Every high school has a team. There's a statewide tournament that is a really big deal in the state. People love basketball.
in Indiana, it's sometimes referred to as the basketball state. So John Wooden's dad has this major influence on him. He was a self-improver who was always handing down these maxims and principles to his sons. One of the most famous is his two sets of three.
never lie, never cheat, never steal, and don't whine, don't complain, and don't make excuses. And those very simple principles had a major influence on John Wooden's life. And on the one hand, it's difficult to see how those ideas could matter that much.
Like it's very basic stuff, right? Never lie. Never cheat. Never steal. Don't whine. Don't complain. Don't make excuses. Wow. Like very revelatory stuff, Ben. But I think one of the most important lessons that I took from the life of John Wooden is the power. of taking very simple principles very seriously. Don't complain is a pretty simple principle, right? But what would it mean for your life if you never complained? What kind of agency would I give you? Similarly, never lie.
is a pretty simple moral principle that i think we can all believe in and yet never lying can be a huge differentiator if that is something that you actually hold to for your entire life right i i reflect on my own life and how many times Do I text someone? Ooh, I'll be there at three 10, but actually my maps app says that I'll be there at three 13 or Hey, leaving now. And, uh, actually I'm like still putting my shoes on, but if you never lie.
That really sets you apart. And so I think taking these principles very seriously, which is what John Wooden did, can really have a big impact on your life, even though they might sound simple. So anyway, John is getting this moral education from his father and from working hard and reading the books that his parents make available to him.
He's also quite athletic. His father builds a makeshift basketball hoop in the backyard by cutting out the bottom of a tomato basket and nailing it up in the barn. And his mother stitches together a homemade basketball. And playing with his brothers, John soon realizes that he is a very good athlete.
And just like Michael Jordan, he's actually very good at both basketball and baseball, but it's basketball that he really gravitates toward. His primary advantage is not size. He was just under six feet tall, but speed. He was very fast and he played with speed and passion. So to give you an idea of what these towns and these games are like, John plays for his junior high team and they don't have uniforms.
They just have little bibs that they wear over their overalls because most of these kids are farmers and they wear overalls. So forget athletic shoes. You know, many of these kids don't have shoes, period. So imagine 10 little farming kids. playing basketball shoeless in overalls with a homemade ball. That is what basketball was like in Indiana at the time. Remember, the game was invented in 1891. Basketball is a new sport. So it's like only 30 years old at this time.
So it's new, but it's exciting. And it's especially exciting in Indiana. When John Wooden gets to high school, he makes the high school basketball team. To give you an idea of how Indiana felt about basketball, here's a quote from Wooden, a coach's life, quote, officially. The gym held 5,382 people, which was more than the entire population of the town. Okay, so imagine that. More than the entire population of the town. And yet the games would sell out every single time because...
All the stores would close, everyone would go to these high school basketball games, and people from surrounding towns would come as well. When he goes out for the high school team, at first he doesn't like his coach, Glenn Curtis, who was nicknamed the Old Fox.
And I want to tell the story to give you an idea of what John Wooden was like, because most people who know him know him as the old wizard of Westwood, this wise, gentle, kindly old man. But listen to what he was like as a 15 year old. Quote.
Johnny did not hold the old Fox in high esteem at first. His older brother, Cat, had been a member of Curtis's 1924 championship team, but Cat barely got into the games. Curtis appeared to confirm Johnny's fears early on while breaking up a fight between Wooden and one of his teammates.
In Wooden's eyes, Curtis had unfairly backed up the other fellow. You're not going to do to me what you did to my brother, Johnny shouted. He flung off his jersey, his shorts, his shoes, and his socks, and he stormed off the floor in half-naked protest. He decided then and there to quit the team.
Curtis could have regarded Wooden as an intemperate fool and bade him good riddance, but he didn't. Instead, he spent the next two weeks trying to coax Wooden back onto the squad. Wooden resisted at first, but eventually he relented. He also never forgot his coach's graciousness in letting him back on the team, a lesson that Wooden would apply to his own players after he started coaching. Okay, so John Wooden is a fiery, ultra-competitive son of a gun, and he's kind of a rabble rouser.
He likes pulling pranks. He's really good at pool. at the local pool hall where he hustles people for money. He also hustles people for money at basketball. He and his friends will pass around the ball awkwardly and pretend like they don't know what they're doing and then challenge someone to a free throw contest for money and then make all their shots and take their competitor's money.
As a freshman, his high school team does well. As a sophomore, so that's 10th grade for you non-Americans, John Wooden helps lead his team to a state championship, which is, again, a huge, huge deal in Indiana. There's a parade through town and then a celebration at the town square where all the players make speeches and are given silver watches. That is an extravagance for a small farming town without much money to go around.
Wooden was selected to the All-State team, meaning he was considered one of the five best basketball players in the state. And again, this is only in the 10th grade. He would actually be awarded All-State honors three years in a row. He becomes something of a sensation in high school basketball circles, and that is mostly because of the style he plays with. He's fast. He's sixth overall in the state in the 100-yard dash, and he's reckless.
So he just goes screaming down the court and lays the ball in at full speed and then goes flying into the stands. Here's a quote from Wooden, a coach's life quote, a writer in Indianapolis dubbed him the tumbling artist from Martinsville. adding that Wooden, quote, is fast. He can dribble like a streak. He can guard. He can shoot long. He can twist them in as he flies under the basket. Well, he's highly regarded as a player, and he decides to attend the University of Purdue.
which is a private university in Indiana. It wasn't the best basketball program in the state, but it had a civil engineering program, which is what he wanted to study. Now, it turned out that civil engineering program didn't match up with his basketball schedule. So he ended up dropping engineering and majoring in English since he always had a love of reading with the intention of eventually becoming a teacher. And just like in high school at the University of Purdue.
He is a phenomenon. Reading again, quote, Wooden's performances weren't just effective, they were enthralling. This was a critical part of his basketball education. Most of the language in the journal and Courier's coverage was straightforward, but references to Wooden were frequently embellished by colorful expressions. He was labeled the Martinsville Flash, Purdue's electric dribbler, and the fastest and cleverest little fellow we have ever seen on a court.
His ability to beat the defense down the floor for uncontested layups was described as his prize act. His brilliant dribbling thrilled the crowd in one game. In another, the little Martinsville speedster got quite a hand from the overflow crowd for his spirited dashes.
He becomes known as the India Rubberman because of the way he bounced right back up after being knocked down or diving on the floor for the ball. In fact, He's so crazy with all this diving and running at full speed that Purdue's head coach instructs the football team to sit underneath the basket so that when Wooden crashes into the stands after making a running layup, they can catch him and throw him back into the game.
So as I said, he is a very fiery competitor. And yet at the same time, he's got this other aspect of his nature, which is sort of in conflict with it, which is interesting. He has this sort of stoic detachment at times. Here's what it says. Quote, Moreover, his teammates, just like the guys he played with in Martinsville, were struck by a serene demeanor that belied Wooden's tenacity between the lines.
Quote, when I was a freshman and played against John in practice, I held him, pushed him and shoved him, but I could never take the ball away from him, said Bob Hobbs, a Purdue teammate who was a year younger than Wooden. After workout, he'd come up and say, nice practice, Bob. He never held a grudge and you simply couldn't rattle the guy. Okay, so it's his speed, his determination, his calm demeanor.
that distinguishes him. And also his conditioning stood out as much as anything else. Quote, even as the Boilermakers lost four out of nine games beginning in January, Wooden developed a reputation as one of the finest guards in all of college basketball. His methods were as effective as they were uncomplicated.
He simply worked harder than everyone else. He was always moving, said Wooden's future assistant coach, Ed Powell, who grew up in South Bend and attended several of his Purdue games. He would be passing, cutting, dribbling, moving. Whoever guarded him would stay with him, maybe for a quarter or two or three.
But then towards the end, John would get one or two steps away, just enough to score the winning basket. He didn't do anything differently towards the end than he did during the game, except that conditioning paid off. Okay, so his constant running, his conditioning, it always pays off in these games. He's the most fit athlete on the floor all the time. Now, these teams at Purdue are good, very good. And this is back at a time when there was no national tournament.
to determine the national champion. Again, remember, basketball is a new sport. But when a committee went back and tried to determine who the champion would have been from each year before the national tournaments, Wooden's Purdue team of his senior year, 1932, was retroactively recognized as the national champion. They had gone 17-1 and Wooden had stood out as the best player in the country. And similarly, there was no award for the best college basketball player in the nation.
But if there was, he would have won it. So there was an all-American team. Okay. So they determined the five. best players. And the chair of the committee, his name was Walter Meanwell, in his write-up of why they selected the All-American team that they did, wrote this. If the most brilliant amateur basketball player in the country was to be selected, the name of John Wooden outshines all others.
So he's basically the national player of the year and a national champion in his senior and final year at Purdue university. And beyond that, John Wooden is a sensation for the exciting way in which he plays. And again, I found this very interesting because John Wooden is extremely famous in the United States as a coach, but I was not familiar with his great playing career.
but he's one of only three men to be inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame as both a player and a coach. He is genuinely one of the greatest and most significant basketball players of all time. And for young, up-and-coming basketball players,
He was like a hero. Here's another quote from the book. Wooden to the kids of my era was what Bill Russell, Wilt Chamberlain, or Kareem Abdul-Jabbar is today. Tom Harmon, a former prominent high school player in Indiana, whose brother played with Wooden at Purdue said in 1968. Johnny Wooden was king, the idol of every kid who had a basketball. In Indiana, that was every kid. Okay, so yeah, John Wooden is like the LeBron James, Michael Jordan of his era.
So he's offered a job to play professional basketball when he graduates from college, and it pays really well. The National Basketball Association doesn't exist yet, but there are a few touring teams that put on exhibition matches, and John Wooden is the biggest basketball phenomenon in the nation.
And so one of these touring teams offers him $5,000 for just one year. That was a lot of money for anybody during the Great Depression, much less someone who grew up as poor as Wooden did. However, he asks his coach if he should do it. And his coach says, you know, why did you come here to Purdue? And he says to get an education. And he says, okay, does this sound like this will be using your education? And he's like, well, no. And so Wooden turns down, it's the Celtics.
At the time, it was the New York Celtics, actually. But it's the same organization that would become the Boston Celtics. And so he turns down his opportunity to play full-time professional basketball. So instead, he takes a job as a high school English teacher and high school basketball coach.
He does play some professional basketball on nights and weekends, but he doesn't sign any contracts that would force him to quit his job as a teacher. Okay, so that's his life now, and this is the first time that we see John Wooden as a coach. So what's he like?
Here's a good quote. He conducted his practices with a firm hand. Sometimes he even carried a paddle in that hand. We had some real loafers on our team, said Bill Smith, who was a captain of that first basketball team in Dayton. He wanted us to go full blast up and down that court.
He'd stand there with a paddle and speed him up. Charles Carmichael, a six foot two forward on that team, added, if you missed an easy layup, he'd be right there to crack you. While he was doing it, the other guys would be standing there laughing at the guy getting paddled.
Okay. I find that amazing. What a different time for basketball. Can you imagine a basketball coach there with a paddle to whack guys on the behind if they weren't working hard enough? But that was his style. He also does some other admirable things, I think. He never uses profanity with his players and he never invoked his own history as one of the greatest basketball players in the world. He wanted his coaching to stand on its own. The principles that he was teaching.
He thought these were good principles and should stand on their own merit. So he's not saying, well, you should listen to me because I'm John Wooden. He's just coaching the guys in a straightforward way. So he spends 10 years as a high school basketball coach and teacher.
He coaches two of those years in Kentucky and the rest in Indiana, and his teams are unsurprisingly very good. You know, one of the reasons that these teams are so good all the time is that he had this eye for the smallest detail. Okay, so here's one quote.
He refused to move on to the next fundamental until the players had mastered the one they were working on. It was all part of a grand design that extended well beyond a single practice. Once again, Wooden viewed a basketball season through the eyes of the engineer he nearly became.
First, he had to set the foundation, a row of pipes here, a couple of gears there, and then he laid everything in place piece by piece. If a gear got stuck, he had to go back and apply a little more oil. Every drill, every practice built towards something, and Wooden was the only one.
who could see the full blueprint. And I say details and fundamentals, and he took this to an extreme. So one of the things he was most famous for is on the first day of practice, what do you teach people? Okay, what's the most basic thing in basketball? So you're thinking, hmm. shooting, dribbling, passing. What could it be? No, for wooden, it was putting on your shoes. So he would go through and teach his players exactly how to put on their shoes.
how to put on their socks first, how to check your socks to see if there's any wrinkles. He wanted to make sure that none of his players would get blisters from wearing shoes that were too big or too small. In fact, when he became a college coach, he would have his players' feet measured.
to make sure that they were wearing the right size of shoe. So that's the kind of detail that he was interested in. And then the other thing he was focused on was speed and conditioning. So these practices took place at breakneck speed.
And they were really hard and went really fast so that his players had incredible conditioning. Here's a good quote. The season began with a focus on conditioning, footwork and movement. Quote, everybody was in motion all the time. Everything was done at full pace. Powers said.
That's one of his players. When Wooden taught the players how to shoot, they had to learn the proper form first. The ball came later. Same thing with learning how to run an offense. You just never had the ball in your hands. said Ed Powers, Jim's older brother. You were always playing three on two, two on one, one on one, but you never shot the ball. It was just ball handling. After you did that for two weeks, then you finally got to play basketball.
Okay, another good quote about his style. He was, in short, a hard-to-please, detail-obsessed, hyper-organized taskmaster and control freak, which made it all the more jarring when he adopted a hands-off approach during games.
It was his job to prepare his team to play. Once the game began, it was their job to show what they had learned. Don't look over at the bench when the game starts, he told them. Just do what you've been taught to do. Practice was Mr. Wooden's domain. The game was the player's domain.
Dunbar, again, one of his players said, he expected you to perform when you practiced all week. He made some adjustments, but you never saw him running up and down the sideline. Okay, so I think this is a really interesting approach. Control freak in practice, but allow radical freedom.
in the game situation. And you know, that's something I always wonder about with, with my kids, with employees, like how do you combine giving them freedom with instructing them in the proper way? And I think that this is a very good approach in practice. you're a control freak. You show them how to do it perfectly and you insist on perfection. But when it comes time to actually perform out in front of the world, you give your kids and your employees radical freedom. I love that approach.
Okay, so he's a high school basketball coach for 10 years, and then World War II breaks out in the 1940s. He's recruited to go train troops on physical fitness at various bases. He's actually playing a basketball game on an aircraft carrier when he is hip-checked into a steel post.
and he ruptures a disc in his lower back. This would cause him major pains throughout his life, and it put an end to his days of scrimmaging with his players and competing with them in small ways at practice, which is something that he would do previously. You know, if his players... couldn't figure out how to do something right. I mean, he was arguably still the greatest basketball player in the world. So he would just show them exactly how to do it. Now, after he ruptures a disc in his back.
He can't do that anymore. And so he has to be a hands-off coach in that way. After the war, he's offered the head coaching job at Indiana Teachers College, the school that would later be named Indiana State University. And Indiana State is not a big college.
And it isn't notable for too much, except that two of basketball's greatest legends, John Wooden and Larry Bird, pass through there. So he goes to Indiana State. He quickly turns around the program, makes them a basketball powerhouse. They are invited to the national tournament, which now exists.
but Wooden turns down the invitation. At the time, the reason given was that the students had been playing too much basketball and needed to study, okay? Again, he still views himself as a teacher first. Okay, national tournaments. were not as big of a deal back then as they are now, clearly. Can you imagine that? The University of Kentucky or Kansas coach saying, yeah, my players need to study a little bit more. We'll skip the NCAA tournament. Obviously, that would never happen now.
But back then, that's what he said. Now, later he said that part of the reason that his team didn't go, that he didn't discuss publicly, was that they had one black player. And the tournament was segregated. It didn't allow black players. And so again, he didn't say anything about that at the time. So some people have criticized him for that. You know, they say, well, look, if you're going to stand up for civil rights, you should have spoken out.
But that was never wooden style. He didn't like to be an activist. He didn't like to be political. He didn't like to make statements. But he was silently a force for desegregation by just always treating his black and white players the same and insisting.
The others do the same. He would refuse to eat at restaurants that wouldn't seat all of his players. Same with hotels, things like that. So again, even though he is sometimes criticized for refusing to speak out, I think, you know, I guess your mileage may vary. but professional activism usually annoys me more than anything. I like the John Wooden style of letting your actions do the talking. Regardless, the point is, John Wooden makes Indiana State into a very good basketball school.
The next year, the national tournament is no longer segregated. I guess they also worked out the study time issues and Wooden takes his team to the national tournament where they make it all the way to the championship game before losing to the University of Louisville.
And that makes him highly recruited as a coach. I mean, look, if this guy can do this with Indiana State University, imagine what he could do with a bigger program. So he's actually recruited to coach at Purdue, his alma mater, and he would like to go there.
He loves Purdue. He loves Indiana, but they want him to come to be an assistant coach until the head coach's contract runs out and then take over as head coach. But he thinks that sounds sort of shady, right? And like a difficult circumstance to be in.
right? Like this head coach knows that you're there to take his job. It's only a matter of time. So he doesn't want to be in that situation and he declines the offer. He's also recruited by two other schools, the University of California, Los Angeles, UCLA.
and the University of Minnesota. He really wants to go to Minnesota, both because it was closer to home and because at the time, the Midwest is still considered the cradle of basketball. And it's thought that that's where the best basketball programs are.
But basically there are some snags with Wooden being able to bring his own assistants to coach with him at Minnesota. Minnesota wants him to retain the old head coach as one of his assistants. And once again, he's like, that is a weird situation that I don't want to be a part of.
But he doesn't turn down the job offer from Minnesota. He just says, hey, guys, I would really like to come coach here. Can you please not make me retain the old head coach as one of my assistants? And they say, well, let us get back to you. You know, we'll think about it and we'll make a decision. And they tell him, we will call you Sunday at 6 p.m. to give you an answer. And so UCLA, in the meantime, is waiting for an answer from him. So he says, OK, Minnesota is going to call me at six.
So I'll call you guys at 7 to give you an answer. So Sunday rolls around and 6 p.m. comes and goes and Minnesota never calls. So Wooden assumes that they're not interested. They're not willing to make that accommodation. And so he calls UCLA at 7pm and tells them that he accepts their job offer. He will be the head coach at UCLA. Some officials from the University of Minnesota call frantically just a little bit later.
And tell him that a freak storm had come up and knocked down some telephone lines. And so they hadn't been able to call him on time. But they say, you know, we can accommodate your requests. You know, you don't have to retain the old head coach. We would love to have you as the coach of the University of Minnesota.
But John Wooden was an old American boy who believed in his virtues. And he believed that his word was his bond. So he turned down the University of Minnesota. He said, sorry, boys, I already committed to UCLA. The odd circumstances didn't matter to him. He had given his word. So off he went to Los Angeles to coach the UCLA basketball team. So I just think that's so interesting that one of the greatest partnerships in all of basketball was born from a fluke. And maybe it was God or fate.
trying to get him to the right place where he could succeed. So UCLA is a culture shock for a down-home Midwestern boy like John Wooden. He doesn't drink, he doesn't like to socialize, and he isn't very popular. But he is immediately successful. Remember, basketball is a relatively new sport, and it was only very popular in the Midwest. In the West, you know, the West Coast, California, Oregon, Washington, it just wasn't a big deal at this point in time. And UCLA, even in that milieu,
was pretty bad. They had a losing program. They had only had winning seasons in two of the previous 17 seasons. And at one point, they had lost 39 consecutive games to their crosstown rival, the University of Southern California, USC. The previous season...
They had finished dead last in their conference, okay? So this is a sorry excuse for their program. And it's not like they were investing in their program. Other than hiring Wooden, they basically hadn't done anything to turn the program around. They were playing in this rinky-dink little gym that had no private showers, only two baskets to practice on, and was shared with multiple other teams. This included the gymnastics team.
And the gym did not have an adequate janitorial staff, so Wooden had to mop up the gymnast's chalk before every practice. And the stands in this little gym only accommodated 2,500 spectators. Even his tiny high school gym in a rural Indiana town held twice as many people. So like the basketball program is horrible. It wasn't even technically overseen by the university. It was run by the student association. So John Wooden had his checks signed by the student body president.
An undergraduate, like a 20-year-old kid. Wooden later said he wouldn't have taken the job if he had realized how bad the situation was. But regardless, when he shows up, he promises, quote, I've never played for nor coached a losing team in my life. I don't plan on starting now. And that's a bold promise for someone coming to one of the worst programs in the nation. He immediately gets started with his usual program, emphasizing detailed fundamental basketball and a fast up and down pace.
A big part of this was conditioning, but John Wooden was not a big believer in running as a way to increase conditioning. Instead, he ran a very intense, fast-paced practice and used basketball drills and scrimmaging to build up endurance.
His practices were carried out at such a frenetic pace that some of his players said that the actual games felt like they were moving in slow motion in comparison. Okay, think about that. Think about what would you have to do for your team in order to make them feel like... Showtime, whatever it is in your field, is the big performance. He's moving in slow motion compared to how they had practiced. I think that's a great benchmark. So he's got high expectations for this first team.
No one else does. Shortly before the first game, the Daily Bruin, that's the school newspaper, predicted that, quote, Underwooden's hard-running, modified, firehouse type of basketball, the Bruins ought to pull an occasional surprise. Although nobody expects them to nail down the PCC bunting at this stage of the proceedings. Okay. The PCC is their conference. Even there's this thing called a media guide, which is like basically a pamphlet handed out before the game.
This is produced by UCLA. And here's what it says about Wooden, quote, his prospects here are such that might not instill the greatest of optimism in a man with a new job on his hands. Which is a wild thing to put in your media guide. So even UCLA's media guide says, hey, this guy might have a pretty tough task on his hands. However...
The Bruins surprised everyone by sprinting out of the gate. They opened with six consecutive wins, equaling the school's longest streak in 15 years. That's amazing. In 15 years, this is as good as they've done, winning six games in a row. But he'd done this by unleashing a completely different way of playing. And other coaches just didn't know what to do with it. They couldn't keep up, right? That was his style, up and down, fast, fast, fast. And so the players...
basically have this attitude that all we have to do in the first half is keep up with the other team. And if we can keep up with them, if we can keep the score pretty close in the second half, they're not going to be able to run with us and we're going to run away with it.
And that's what happens time after time after time. It's close in the first half. And then in the second half, the other team is winded and UCLA just goes up and down and is able to score pretty easily. And they run away with the game. One of the things that's interesting to me is.
He's a very high agency person and he tries to instill that in his players as well. So here's what one of them said about it. He gave us a tremendous amount of self-confidence. We basically got to the point where the other team was nothing to us. He didn't belittle them in any way.
but he had us ignore them so much that in my mind, I didn't have any use for the other team. Okay? So they just know, like, look, we're good. We're really well conditioned. Who cares what the other team is or what they do? If we just run our stuff. We have victory completely within our control. All right, so Wooden was insane about his team's nutrition and rest. He, of course, encouraged his players to eat light, especially on game days, and he also encouraged them to take naps.
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So go to gainsinbulk.com and use code Ben to get $20 and a free shaker bottle and funnel. Again, that is gainsinbulk.com and use code Ben, or just follow the link in the show notes to get the discount automatically applied. Thank you to Gains in Bulk for sponsoring this episode. So it's a complete turnaround. The previous year, the team had finished 12-13, and in his first year, they finished 22-7, the most wins in a season for UCLA since the school started playing basketball in 1919.
So his very first season, he takes a losing squad and produces the best team that UCLA has ever had. And for his first four years, they win the PCC title every year. Okay, so... However, they're not winning national championships. They were not quite as successful as he had been at Indiana State. And then a decade passes. I think one thing that's good to remember is that true success takes a long...
time. The first decade that John Wooden coaches at UCLA, he has the program turned around, but they never win a national championship. By 1955, they are knocking on the door. You know, they're one of the best teams in the country, but... There's this player, Bill Russell. If you're a big fan of basketball, you've heard of him. He plays for the University of San Francisco, and he beats them every time they play. He would go on to win 11 championships in the NBA with the Boston Celtics.
Bill Russell is one of the, depending on how you slice it up, he's definitely one of the five best basketball players of all time. Some people consider him the best because of how much he won. But UCLA has these kind of championship caliber teams, but they can never get past Bill Russell. And then after that, the University of California, Berkeley, just up the state, just a little bit north of UCLA, become very good. And so they start beating them in the late 1950s.
And so it's like he's getting close, but he can't quite get over the hump. And then, in fact, in 1959, Wooden almost suffers his first losing season as a college coach. They do manage to pull out a winning record, but just barely. He does manage to turn things around a little bit, but you know, from an outsider perspective, you might start to say, okay, he's had now what 12 years. He's never won a championship.
and maybe his best days are behind him. You know, he had these really good teams, but they never got over the hump. However, John Wooden finally makes his breakthrough in the 1963 season. And what makes the difference? Two things. One is that John Wooden hated recruiting. He viewed college as education, right? He thought players should go to the school that they wanted to go to and that he would make the best talent that he had. And so this is a major disadvantage because every other...
you know, coach is going out and recruiting the best players, telling them, Hey, come here. So in the 1960s, he relents a little bit and finally lets his assistant coaches start to go out and do some real recruiting. And so in the 60s,
he starts to get some better players. The other thing is that one of his assistants comes up with something called the zone press. So basically, this is a form of zone defense that extends all the way up the floor and puts pressure on the opposing team from the second.
They inbound the ball. Okay, usually when you play defense, you sit back and wait for the team to come to you, and then you just defend around the basket. But no, he starts defending the entire court. And if you are going to press, usually it's a man-to-man press. which means you have one of your players guard one of the opposing players, as opposed to a zone press, which means that each player is not attached to an offensive player, but each player is attached to a zone, an area of the court.
What a zone press does is it allows you to trap, to send two players at the ball and then the other players can kind of sit back and look to deflect or intercept any passes. This is a very effective strategy. Not because they always got turnovers. In fact, many teams were able to beat the zone press and get baskets. However, John Wooden's teams were always the best conditioned and the fastest.
And so this forces his opponents to play at his fast paced up and down style. It takes everyone by surprise. No one can figure out how to beat UCLA when they're doing this zone press. And so in the 1963 season. The competition didn't know what hit them. This zone press is a total phenomenon. The team went 30-0. Hardly any of the games that they played were even close. Many of the games are close in the first half, but people just can't keep up with UCLA, and they always...
managed to run away with it in the second half. They win the national championship by 15 points. They didn't have a single player taller than 6'5". That's like an amazing fact, hard to imagine, but their zone press and attacking style are so effective that it didn't matter.
And this kicks off what is one of the most stunning runs in basketball history. The next season, they lose just one game. Actually, the first game of the season, they lose by 27 points, maybe a little bit of championship hangover. But then they went undefeated the rest of the season.
and win a second championship in a row. The next year, the Bruins, that's their mascot, by the way, the UCLA Bruins. So the next year, the Bruins came in second in the conference and failed to make the NCAA tournament, which at the time only accepted conference champions. But then the next year...
The 1966 season would kick off the truly unprecedented part of Wooden's career. That was the first year that Lou Alcindor played for Wooden, the player who would eventually convert to Islam and change his name to Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. And Kareem, once again, is one of the two or three greatest basketball players of all time, depending on who you ask. It's basically like Bill Russell, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, LeBron James, Michael Jordan.
I think those are the only people that you can actually make a case for, for the greatest basketball player of all time. Kareem is one of them. So with Kareem on the team, UCLA won three championships in a row. His style is very different. from John Wooden's because Kareem, his big thing is he's just huge. Uh, he's a good shooter. He's got really soft hands and he's like seven two. So what do you do with a guy who's that tall?
but also has good ball skills. You know, no one can figure it out. And so they have to slow way down, completely change styles with Kareem Abdul-Jabbar on the team, but they do very effectively and like they just roll over everyone. with Kareem on the team. However, you can't just say that it's Kareem that brought them success because they won two before he showed up and then they win four more after he leaves for a total of seven championships in a row.
Can you imagine that? Seven championships in a row. People start to forget that it's even possible for a team other than UCLA to win the college basketball national championship. Okay, seven in a row. And just by way of reference. since the end of this run, which is, uh, what 1972, I think, uh, there have only been back-to-back champions three times. So since the 1970s, it has only occurred three times.
that someone has won two championships in a row and no one has even won three in a row, let alone seven. So it shows the true greatness of John Wooden that he can have that consistency. for that long. And it shows his versatility. He can slow it down and win it with a huge player like Kareem. He can speed it up and win with the zone press. He can do anything. He can play any style and beat anyone.
The other great player, if you're talking about the history of John Wooden at UCLA, that he gets is Bill Walton. So it's with Bill Walton on the team that the Bruins go 30-0, have perfect seasons, two seasons in a row, win two championships, and end up setting a record. with an 88-game winning streak spanning four seasons. Four seasons, 88 games, zero losses. And by the way, a crazy stat that I didn't read in any of these books, but I found on Wikipedia, Bill Walton himself.
had a 142-game winning streak spanning from high school until he finally lost a game in the middle of his senior year at UCLA. 142 games without losing. Actually, one of the major headaches for John Wooden at this time... is that people say that he is ruining college basketball. Like it's not fun to watch. We just know that UCLA is going to win every single year. This constant complaining, it wears on him as do the constant high expectations. And so he's getting a little bit tired of coaching.
And so he's starting to look at retirement and he's saying, how much longer do I want to do this? The Bill Walton experience goes a little bit awry his senior year. As I noted, they lose a game. Bill had always been a free spirit. This was the early seventies.
the counterculture was in, people were protesting the Vietnam War, and Walton was very into all of this. He was very into smoking pot, dropping acid, and protesting the Vietnam War, which created some conflict between him and Coach Wooden, who ran his team like a Navy platoon.
He insisted on clean shaves and close cropped hair for everyone. There's one great story reading now quote, one day, Bill Walton came to practice after a 10 day break, wearing a beard. I asked him, Bill, have you forgotten something? He replied, coach, if you mean the beard, I think I should be allowed to wear it.
It's my right. I asked, do you believe in this very strongly? He answered, yes, I do coach very much. I looked at him and said politely, Bill, I have a great respect for individuals who stand up for those things in which they believe. I really do.
and the team is going to miss you. After which, of course, Bill Walton gets the message and goes to the locker room and shaves. Like, okay, I thought it meant a lot to me. I guess it doesn't mean that much to me. So anyway, after two championships to make it seven in a row.
During Bill Walton's final year, the team is just not as focused as they should be. They don't have great chemistry led by Bill Walton. Some of them are more worried about protesting and the counterculture than they are playing basketball. And so they lose. in the NCAA tournament. And again, Wooden had already been considering retiring. And so he's like, man, maybe it's just time to call it quits. But he knows that if he does, he'll feel like a quitter, right? He'd won all this time.
And then he has one season where he doesn't win the championship and he quits. And so he says, all right, I need to come back for one more year. And without Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, without Bill Walton, it's his chance to prove that he's still a winner. It's not just these great players, but it's Wooden who is kind of the key to all this. And so he does. He comes back. They have a fantastic year. He wins one more championship in 1975 to make it an even 10 NCAA championships.
And so just again, to kind of chart that out for you, he wins two championships in a row. Then he has one season where they don't win the championship. And then he wins seven championships in a row. Those are mostly with Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Bill Walton. then they lose one, and then he wins one final season and then retires. So it's just unprecedented. It's amazing. It's an incredible run. It's also amazing to think about all those years as a high school basketball coach.
and then with Indiana State, and then 10 years with UCLA, and no championships. It feels like if you're the greatest coach of all time, during those more than two decades, you should show that you're the man. But it just goes to show that, I don't know, like sometimes great things take a long time to figure out. And it took a long time for John Wooden to put it all together. But when he did, the success was unparalleled. So he retires.
He writes some books. He does some sports camps. He does some speaking gigs. In the meantime, the men's basketball head coaching job at UCLA becomes like the defense against the dark arts at Hogwarts. The expectations are so high that no one could hold down the job for more than two years.
Without wooden, they actually don't end up winning another championship for more than 20 years. I guess I should take this time to mention that some people try to make excuses. They say that the UCLA boosters, so those are like... rich fans who helped pay for stuff. And they say that they were paying the players and that Wooden was using this to his advantage. And it is true that the boosters were paying the players.
They were giving them free equipment. They were letting them stay at their mansions. They were giving them cars, taking them out to restaurants. They were giving them all sorts of technically illegal gifts. But it was no worse than other programs and Wooden had nothing to do with it.
In fact, he often told his players to stay away from some of these shady characters. But look, if this was the reason that Wooden was winning all these championships, then why didn't they keep winning championships after he left? The boosters hadn't suddenly left LA. You know, it's not like there were insufficient rich people in Los Angeles, California. So I think that's a thin excuse of people who want to poke holes in the wooden legacy.
Others want to give credit to his assistants, especially Jerry Norman. He does deserve a lot of praise. He's the guy who recruited a lot of their great players, and he's the one who helped come up with the zone press. However... Jerry Norman, great coach, great innovator in basketball. At the end of the day, he was there for less than half of Wooden's championships. So once again, it's like, if Jerry Norman was the key to his success, then how come he won without Jerry Norman?
Some people want to give credit to his star players, Kareem and Bill Walton. Again, they deserve credit. However, once again, these only account for about half of his championships. So genuinely, there is no way to assail the accomplishments of John Wooden at UCLA. He was the greatest coach of all time. I don't have a lot to say about the end of his life. He lived a quiet life of dignity. He got terribly depressed when his wife died. And I think it's like a couple of years that he just.
He was in a funk. However, the birth of one of his grandchildren kind of pulls him out of it and re-engages him in life. He moves into this role as sort of an elder statesman of basketball. Again, he's doing clinics, he's coaching, he's offering opinions. He's often at UCLA games and he ages quite well, lives into his nineties. However, he does die in 2010. So let's move on to our takeaways.
I think that is the most interesting thing for this episode because I have a ton of quotes from him about his approach, his methods, and I think these are super interesting. Normally, this is where I would cut it off for free subscribers, but you know what? You come here all the time. This one's on me.
I like to release an entire episode for free listeners every now and then so that people can see what it is that the premium subscribers are getting access to. So welcome everyone. Let's talk takeaways. Here is my...
five-part guide for taking over the world like John Wooden. And then I'll talk through 10 to 15 of my favorite other quotes that I found particularly impactful. So the five steps. Number one, prepare more intensely than you perform. Here's how Bill Walton described practices with John Wooden.
Quote, in fact, games actually seemed like they happened in a slower gear because of the pace at which we practiced. We'd run a play perfectly in scrimmage and coach would say, okay, fine. Now reset. Do it again. Faster. We'd do it again. Faster. And again. Faster. And again. And I think that is generally a good idea. Are you practicing under more difficult circumstances than you will have to perform? There is another quote I like that goes, practice doesn't make perfect, only perfect practice.
makes perfect. And that is what John Wooden was trying to do. Perfect practice at a breakneck speed. Okay. Number two, the power of taking simple virtues very seriously. So let's walk through his pyramid of success really quick. Here are the principles in it. Okay. He had this pyramid and all these different stones in the pyramid, all these different steps that lead all up to success. And on the first layer, he had industriousness, friendship, loyalty.
cooperation, enthusiasm. Second layer, self-control, alertness, initiative, intentness. Third layer, condition, skill, team spirit. Fourth layer, poise, confidence, and then the peak is competitive. greatness is your mind blown by any of those principles oh industrious team spirit confidence oh i hadn't thought of that you know obviously not
But that's not the point. The point is that each of these principles are extremely powerful if you actually take them very seriously. Okay, I want to return to his two sets of three. You know, don't whine, don't complain, don't make excuses, never lie, never cheat, never steal. This makes me think of my dad. Sorry, dad. I know you listened to this and you're probably gonna be embarrassed by this, but my dad never lies. Never. We were playing this game. It's called secret Hitler.
It's like mafia or werewolf. It's a secret identity game, right? You're trying to find Hitler and eliminate him. And my dad is horrible at it because he just can't lie. He's 75 years old and it's probably been 60 years since he has ever told a lie. It's actually funny because like in this game, he's just constitutionally incapable of misleading the other players. So it's really easy to pick him out when he's been assigned the role of bad guy. Anyway, he's the most trusted person I know.
Everyone who has ever worked with him or associated with him just trusts him completely. And it is because of this one very, very simple virtue. Don't lie, but he takes it very seriously, more seriously than anyone I know. And that was the John Wooden way. John Wooden was very much like that. And so I think if you just think of the principles, the virtues that matter most to you in your life.
what if you were just 100% completely perfect in abiding by those virtues? And I think there's incredible power that comes from that. Okay, number three, this is related to number two, execution beats strategy. Here's what John Wooden had to say about his strategic thinking. Quote, there is no area of basketball in which I am a genius. None. Tactically and strategically, I'm just average. And that is not offering false modesty. And by the way, I'll add here as a...
little note, that is in fact not false modesty. Basically, everyone agrees that he was an adequate strategic thinker, but he wasn't great at it. Okay. He goes on. We won national championships while I was coaching at UCLA because I was above average in analyzing players, getting them to fill roles as part of a team, paying attention to fundamentals and details and working well with others.
both those under my supervision and those whose supervision I was under. Additionally, I enjoyed very hard work. Okay, that's it. John Doerr, who was an early employee at Intel and one of the Silicon Valley's great venture capitalists. He backed Google and Amazon, all these great companies. He said, ideas are easy. Execution is everything. So that is the real key to John Wooden. He just executed. So don't worry so much about your strategy.
Usually it's best to keep your strategy pretty simple. Worry about flawless execution. Worry about the details. And that is what Wooden did. No super complicated strategies, even his big strategic innovation that he was known for, the zone press. was not like complicated and it wasn't the strategy itself, which led to his success. It was the fact that they were so well conditioned that the zone press could work. Okay. So again, the conclusion there.
execution beats strategy every time. You should spend 90% of your time and effort thinking about execution, only 10% about strategy. Number four is this idea that you can create yourself.
John Wooden reminds me of Benjamin Franklin. I already mentioned that comparison in that he really believed that he could master these character attributes and he was systematic about how he went about improving himself. There's this great exercise that John Wooden describes in his book. Here's what he says, quote,
Take a moment and draw a circle around the following personal characteristics that you possess. Confidence, poise, imagination, initiative, tolerance, humility, love, cheerfulness, faith, enthusiasm, courage, honesty, serenity. I hope you circled them all because all are within each of us. It is simply up to us to bring them out. Okay. I love this exercise because I feel like most of us are actually scared of progress, or at least we're scared of acknowledging.
progress or that we possess certain virtues, right? Do you have confidence? Do you have love? Do you have humility? Do you have courage? It feels weird in today's democratic age to raise our hands and say, yes, I have. humility. I have confidence. I have courage. I am good. I am strong, you know, whatever. But Benjamin Franklin and John Wooden both believed, well, why shouldn't I be able to master the attributes that I most admire? And so I just like that, like...
These things that I'm pursuing, I'm pursuing them in order to actually master these things, not to fall short and beat myself up. But like, yeah, if I'm trying to become hardworking, I should within a matter of months be able to say, yes, I am a hardworking person.
So I think what can help in that pursuit is to just lay it out there. What would it take for you to consider yourself brave or humble or confident or diligent or whatever it is you're working on? And once you have defined it, then accomplish it. And then don't be shy. about acknowledging, at least to yourself, the virtues that you have mastered. And by the way, I should mention that I
You know, I've been thinking about this both from Benjamin Franklin and from John Wooden. And so I finally put together my list. Benjamin Franklin had 13 attributes. I put together 10, which I'm looking at right now, that I want to... master this year. So I have purposeful, diligent, joyful, active, honest, frugal, assertive, creative, grateful, and fast. And I've written down what that means.
for each of these attributes, what it would take for me to feel like I have successfully mastered each of these attributes. And then I did the Benjamin Franklin thing of like putting together a little chart so I can mark off each day when I have. done each one. And I take it one virtue at a time. Okay. I think that's a very worthwhile exercise to really improve my life. I love it. So I think that's another thing to keep in mind, that fourth step. It is possible to improve and create yourself.
And then fifth is speed. All of the great ones in every field are obsessed with speed. Napoleon and Julius Caesar were obsessed with marching faster than their enemies. Edison and Steve Jobs were obsessed. with speed in a corporate sense, with removing unnecessary hurdles and executing as quickly and efficiently as possible. All of his players, the thing that they most remembered was Wooden yelling, quickly, quickly, hurry up, hurry up.
He was always shouting that during practice, more than anything, he wanted his players to be moving fast. Speed is just such an important attribute, one that you need to value in everything. Promote people who work quickly. Default to shipping rather than perfecting. Speed is the essence of life. One of Wooden's teams was referred to as the speed merchants. I think that is a great way to think of yourself. There is always money to be made if what you sell is speed.
Okay, so that is step five, speed. And one note to add, one of Wooden's favorite phrases was, be quick, but don't hurry. And I think that's important to note. Wooden never wanted his players to hurry, to be out of control. He wanted them to move absolutely as fast as they could while doing things the right way. Okay. So it is speed, but speed while doing things the right way. And that leads me to number six, my sort of bonus virtue at the end, which is be true to yourself.
Practice what you preach. Bill Walton said this about wooden. Coach gained respect with a very simple method. By his personal example, he worked harder, longer, smarter, and was more dedicated, loyal, concerned, caring, detailed, meticulous, and enthusiastic. than anyone I have ever worked with. Here's what Wooden said about it, quote, as Polonia said to his son Laertes in William Shakespeare's Hamlet, this above all to thine own self be true. And it must follow as the night, the day.
thou canst not then be false to any man. This is so true, and I believe it is the first point in dad's creed for a reason. You must know who you are and be true to who you are if you are going to be who you can and should become. You must have the courage to be true to yourself. Okay. I love that quote from Wooden. You must have the courage to be true to yourself. Okay. So there you go. That is the five-step guide plus one to taking over the world.
John Wooden style. With that, let's move into my end notes. Some of my other favorite quotes from John Wooden. One, I like this quote because I think it captures the contradiction of Wooden. He really was a philosopher coach who exuded calm. who believed in doing things the right way more than he believed in winning. And yet at the same time, he was like a competition addict. He had an insatiable desire to win. Here's the quote.
Wooden's new charges were struck at how this genial, quiet, reserved Midwesterner was transformed once he stepped onto the basketball court. Eddie Sheldrake said, But when you look at those beady eyes and that pointed nose and you get him on you, he's wiry. Let him guard you for a game and you'd wish you'd never went on the basketball court. That's the truth. Okay. Again, I just think that's an important element of his nature. Very calm.
very analytical, but very passionate at the same time. And somehow that combination, I think is the engine that fueled his greatness. Okay. Another thing about him, he was obsessed with statistics, people who really want to improve. are always data junkies when it comes to their improvements. I think of Arnold Schwarzenegger, right? He measured his body more than any of the other bodybuilders. He was measuring his body multiple times per day. He wanted that data.
It wasn't enough to look in the mirror. He wanted hard data on how he was doing, how he's improving. And one of the ways that Wooden excelled was by keeping statistics even in practice. Here's the quote. Baseball fan that he was, he was a numbers freak who devoured the sporting news every week. Wooden also kept detailed statistics for every scrimmage. His goal was to decide which six or seven players would make up his rotation for the entire season.
Okay. And I just like that idea of, you know, every coach gets statistics from the game, but Wooden was also getting statistics from practice. So he was looking for more data sources, more inputs. to get a more informed look at who actually were his best players okay here is a funny story one of his players gets suspended after he doesn't want to work hard in practice and then they have a shouting match at practice
And then Wooden kicks him off the team, but they reconcile a couple of weeks later. And here's the result. Asked by a reporter about his two-week vacation from the basketball team the year before, Norman replied, Mr. Wooden and I just had a few differences. So we had a heart to heart talk. I wasn't working too hard in practice for one thing. And Mr. Wooden didn't like that. So he told me what he thought. And I told him what I thought. And we reached a compromise. We decided to do things his way.
That was often the type of compromise that wouldn't reached, okay? Let's compromise. You'll do things my way. One thing that I like to think about is be so good that people think you're cheating. So when Wooden first gets to UCLA, they have this rinky-dink little gym, and it has no air conditioning, and it gets really hot when you get a full crowd. And remember, Wooden's teams were known for their conditioning. So for opponents, going into the sweat box is intimidating.
is going to be really hot and you're going to have to just run all night with the best conditioned team in the country. And so he gets accused of heating up the place on purpose in order to psych out his opponents. Okay. And here's the quote about it. Quote, wouldn't thought the accusations were ridiculous.
There was no way, as far as I know, that the heat could be turned on in the place. I don't think there was any heat, as a matter of fact. It was just when the crowds got in there, it was warm, he said. Yet he did not go out of his way to dispel the conjecture. It didn't displease me that other teams felt that it was a sweatbox.
We didn't do anything to change their feeling, he said. I wanted them to dislike coming into play. The more they felt that they couldn't win there, the less likely they were going to win there. Okay, pretty great. Like, how does that make you feel? I like that idea of creating an aura or mystique. We can't be beat. We might be cheating. Woe unto all who come into this sweat box. It's very clever.
by coach wooden a nice little bit of mental manipulation okay one other quote you know i mentioned that wooden didn't like to alter his strategy much for games a little bit he would but mostly he liked to keep it the same
right? We have practiced one thing. Let's do the thing we've been practicing. So here's a quote about this. Wooden was a very good fundamental coach. He was very good at planning practices. He was very good at the relationships with the players, Norman said, but he didn't have much in the way of strategy.
His whole attitude was you play the way you practice. And I think this is a good attitude. You play the way you practice and you win by having better execution, by practicing more. In general, I think his approach is better. than changing everything to fit the circumstances. Do things the way you do things and only make minor adjustments to account for the circumstances. It reminds me of Napoleon. For all of his tactical brilliance, and, you know, as opposed to Coach Wooden,
he was known as a great strategist, right? However, his battle plan was basically always the same. Attack quickly, fix the enemy in front, probe for weaknesses, and converge your best forces on the most important point at the decisive moment of the battle.
That was basically it every time. He could be tactically brilliant when he needed to be, but most of the time he didn't feel the need to be. And so both Wooden and Napoleon kept things tactically pretty simple. They just moved faster and worked harder. than their opponents and were better prepared. All right, here's a good quote. Wooden applied the same laws of learning to his basketball classes that he once applied to his English classes. Explanation, demonstration, imitation, correction.
And then repetition, repetition, repetition. I'll never forget hour after hour working on a pivot, said Jerry Evans, who had been a freshman during Wooden's first season in 1948. Okay. I really liked that formula for teaching explanation. demonstration. So explain what you're going to do, then demonstrate it. Then imitation, have them imitate and then correct them as necessary. So explanation, demonstration, imitation, correction, and then repetition, repetition, repetition.
until it's perfect. It's a great formula for learning or teaching anything. On the idea of never enough, listen to this, quote, if a player did something wouldn't liked, he would bark, good, now do it faster. Wooden also preferred to serve up his advice in small individual portions rather than addressing the team as a whole. He was never one for meetings. They just slowed things down. All right.
That's a great paragraph. I think it packs a few things in, um, correct individually. So you don't slow down the team limit meetings. And it's something that I have observed that great leaders always give out praise very sparingly. It's never enough. They are always pushing. to be better, do better, to be perfect. And so I like Wooden's response to when people did things good or the right way. Good. Now do it faster. I think those of us who are addicted.
to having a nice friendly relationship with our subordinates could learn something from that. You know, don't give out praise too easily. Instead, when someone does things the right way, all you say is good. Now do it faster.
And then this quote, I think is really interesting. I have talked about this idea of the experimental mindset and why you should actually want to fail because it means you're trying new and innovative things. And that was something coach wouldn't believed. Here's a quote from him, quote, my coach at Purdue, Piggy Lambert.
constantly reminded us, the team that makes the most mistakes will probably win. That may sound a bit odd, but there's a great deal of truth in it. The doer makes mistakes. Coach Lambert taught me that mistakes come from doing, but so does success. The individual who is mistake free is also probably sitting around doing nothing. And that is a very big mistake. Okay. So that's a great idea. The team that makes the most mistakes wins. Mistakes of commission because you're trying things.
because you're doing your best, or the best kind, and you learn and you'll probably do better than people who are not out there making mistakes. Just a few more ideas that I really love, and these are kind of aphorisms from Coach Wooden, so I won't add anything to these.
These are just great, concise ideas from Coach Wooden. The first. When I was teaching basketball, I urged my players to try their hardest to improve on that very day, to make that practice a masterpiece. Too often we get distracted by what is outside our control.
You can't do anything about yesterday. The door to the past has been shut and the key thrown away. You can do nothing about tomorrow. It is yet to come. However, tomorrow is in large part determined by what you do today. So make today a masterpiece. You have control over that.
All right. I love that idea. Make today a masterpiece. Next one. A favorite observation of my dad's was the following. Never believe you're better than anybody else, but remember that you're just as good as everybody else. That's important. No better, but just as good. Next one. Be more concerned with your character than your reputation. Character is what you really are. Reputation is what people say you are. Reputation is often based on character, but not always.
Next one. Perfection is what you are striving for, but perfection is an impossibility. However, striving for perfection is not an impossibility. Do the best you can under the conditions that exist. That is what counts. Next one. Cervantes wrote, the journey is better than the end. He is right. And that is why I derived my greatest satisfaction out of the preparation, the journey day after day, week after week, year after year.
you must also realize that your goal will be simply a byproduct of all the hard work and good thinking you do along the way, your preparation. Okay. And then my final quote that I'll share, and I think this is my favorite one from Wooden. I shared at the beginning.
And I'll share it again now. People usually know what they should do to get what they want. They just won't do it. They won't pay the price. Understand there is a price to be paid for achieving anything of significance. You must be willing to pay the price. Okay. I love that idea. And that is the last thought I want to leave you with. Be willing to pay the price. It reminds me of an episode of one of my favorite podcasts, Becoming the Main Character. And the episode is about Odin.
And it talks about how Odin wanted wisdom more than anything. And he was willing to carve out his own eye in order to be endowed with wisdom. Okay. He paid that price. He made that sacrifice. You have to be willing to do what it takes to take over the world. So there you go. Speaking of which, this is the very end of the episode. Silly hours. But, you know, pay the price. That was the central message of Odin, who was previously known as Woden. And that was the message of John Wooden.
Is that a coincidence? Or was the Wizard of Westwood really something more? Was he, you know, the bent old man? Was John Wooden, Woden in disguise, come to show the power and the potential and the possibility of Anglo-Saxon man? Yeah, I don't know. But I do know that Wooden is a great example of like a prophet, a lawgiver, right? He would come in and give the law.
He would show people, he was a true Muad'Dib, right? He showed the way. He would come into these programs that were totally listless and didn't know how to win. And he would show them how to win by giving his players a new way of life. I dream of a great American wooden, a coach of the nation, a man who will cleanse this nation of its sloth, its stupidity, its ugliness.
and usher in an age of cleanliness, of intelligence, of beauty that will last for 500 years. I pray for the coming of this national Coach Wooden. Do you look for the same? I hope so. Until next time, this is How to Take Over the World. Thank you for listening.