Out as a Coach but He’s Never Out of the Game

“Hello. This is John Wooden. . . ,” the scholarly voice says as the answering machine comes on.

No other words in college basketball command as much respect. Twenty-two years after he coached his last game at UCLA, he remains an icon--to a school and a sport.

His name is everywhere. There’s the Wooden Award, given annually to the nation’s best college player. There’s the Wooden Center, the fine recreational facility in the heart of UCLA’s campus. And there’s the Wooden Classic, the four-year-old college basketball showcase that returns to the Pond on Saturday.

Wooden plans to be there (and at today’s high school games) if he can shake the cold that has bothered him for a week. He wants to go because he still loves watching basketball, not because he wants to bask in the glory of the event that is named after him.

“It’s a little embarrassing, to be honest with you,” Wooden said. “You want to be grateful to the people that are doing it for you, but it’s embarrassing.”

Sometimes he seems a little uncomfortable on his perch atop the mountain. He refrains from commenting on UCLA’s handling of the suspensions of Jelani McCoy and Kris Johnson because he knows it will come off as a proclamation, not a mere opinion.

He expresses surprise at the timing of Dean Smith’s retirement at North Carolina (right before the first practice), then goes out of his way to point out that he’s not being critical.

How many other 87-year-olds have to worry that their words will be taken too seriously, let alone taken seriously at all?

Wooden remains relevant, even in a business that forgets anyone who hasn’t been to the Final Four in the last couple of years. College and pro teams still run his offensive sets. (When New Jersey Net Coach John Calipari called out “UCLA” during a game against the Clippers last week, you knew he wasn’t using a play from the Gene Bartow era.)

If you can’t have a seance with James Naismith, a conversation with Wooden is the next best thing. When Wooden analyzes basketball there’s no need for a second opinion.

On the surface, there’s every reason for Wooden’s influence to diminish. His contemporaries are going or gone from the profession. No Wooden-coached players are in the NBA anymore. Yet no UCLA coach would dare to shepherd the program without Wooden’s blessing and advice.

It’s as if his 10 NCAA championships gave him a lifetime pass.

Ten banners--seven of them in a row. Eighty-eight consecutive victories. Those are the only numbers that matter. Those are the ones that show how his teams dominated the game like none other has.

Those numbers alter the perception of his other lustrous accomplishments. Do you think he’s on the top-10 lifetime victories list? Think again. He’s not even among the top 15.

Do you know who just surpassed Wooden’s total of 664 victories? Lou Henson. How many other times does Henson draw comparisons to Wooden? How often do Norm Stewart or Lefty Driesell, both of whom have more victories than Wooden?

Wooden didn’t need to hang around to rack up all his victories. He and Jerry Tarkanian (another guy linked with Wooden in numbers only) are the only coaches to win more than 650 games in fewer than 30 seasons.

It makes you wonder why Wooden cut it short at 29 years.

“I wasn’t feeling too good and my wife’s health wasn’t too good,” Wooden said. “I found myself for the first time ever not wanting to go and meet the press and all the lights. I just felt that maybe it was time to retire.”

He also didn’t like the new NCAA rule that allowed reporters in the locker rooms after NCAA tournament games, and that the chairman of the basketball committee made it seem as if the rule was a personal vendetta against Wooden.

So how would Wooden have fared in this tabloid-TV era, when nothing is sacred or secret? A little bit of the fire comes back to his voice.

“I always put pressure on myself to do the best I could and not permit outside pressures--whether it be the media or the alumni or parents or whatever--to be a distraction,” Wooden said. “If you’re not putting pressure on yourself to do a good job, you won’t do a good job.”

He wouldn’t permit it.

With Wooden, it was always about what was inside, what lay within the players and within the program. UCLA didn’t try to get up for big games or worry about the opposition. The Bruins set the level, lived up to their own expectations and let other teams worry about how to play them.

Wooden doesn’t judge himself by what might seem important on the outside, like the championship banners or the players he sent to the NBA.

He takes pride in the graduation of his players. He takes pride in his academic accomplishments: the Big Ten medal for academic achievement he received at Purdue and his induction into the Academic All-American Hall of Fame.

“Those are things that are earned,” Wooden says. “A team wins a basketball championship. The team wins that; you helped.

“I’m more proud of things like [the academic awards].”

They’re his accomplishments, so he can rank them however he wants.

The rest of us try to do more--putting his name on a trophy, a building, a day of games--and yet it seems a little excessive.

John Wooden. What else needs to be said?