Seth Davis - Wooden

Here is the most complete biography of the "Wizard of Westwood" of which I am aware.  The author should be congratulated for writing a balanced account of Coach John Wooden's life, giving proper praise yet pointing out the great man's shortcomings.

In this book I learned that John Wooden was a Hoosier, a great All-American basketball player in his own right at Purdue.  He coached high school roundball in South Bend and became the coach at Indiana State.  From there he went to UCLA.  He was offered the job at Purdue after 2 years at UCLA and remained as the Bruins coach only because he had a year left on his contract at UCLA.  Had he gone to Purdue, well, college basketball history would have been different to say the least.

Before the 1964-64 season during which Wooden won his first NCAA championship, the Coach won several conference championships; it's just that he would always strike out in the NCAA regional.  Pete Newell at UC-Berkley and Bill Russell at USF had a lot to do with that.

The most amazing thing I learned about "Saint John" (as his detractors snidely referred to him) is that he was know to rag the officials unmercifully AND to rag opposing players.  The latter is shocking.  A basketball coach yelling at opposing players?  Sounds unsportsmanlike to me.  This is bad for his image in my opinion to put it mildly.

Wooden play an uptempo style of basketball.  My impression is that he favored offense over defense.  He became famous for his zone press.

The author makes the point that Wooden would settle on his 6 or 7 player rotation at the beginning of the season and would not vary from that rotation.  The rest of the team hardly ever played because Wooden would not substitute even when the game was not in doubt.  This policy caused resentment amongst many of his bench warmers even years after they left UCLA.