COACH JOHN WOODEN PASSED AWAY TONIGHT AT THE AGE OF 99. THIS IS AN UPDATE OF A POST WRITTEN TWO YEARS AGO.

Coaching is one of the most honorable professions there is.  A few money- and headline-grabbing exceptions distort the fact that the fast majority of sports coaches are motivated by factors other than money.  No team can reach its potential without good coaching, and no coach brought more teams closer to realizing their potential than John Wooden, the best basketball coach, and one of the best coaches of any game, who ever lived.

Wooden’s teams changed the the sport of basketball, from a polite Hoosiers-style half-court square dance, to a baseline-to-baseline rampage of disruptive defenses and extreme athleticism., and they have the championships to show for it.  As someone who grew up in Indiana like Wooden did, I always related to how The Coach used basketball as an allegory for life.  That’s how it was for a high school kid in Indiana.  Basketball was life.

Coach Wooden’s teams showed how the game, and not just the game of basketball, any game, should be played.  He was an educator who just so happened to use a basketball court as his classroom.  The players who had the good fortune to play for him got gifts that lasted long after their playing days were over.  Here are some of Coach Wooden’s fundamentals: (more…)