Former UCLA men's basketball coach John Wooden believes we all teach by our example; what Mr. Wooden taught was the Pyramid of Success.
Former UCLA men's basketball coach John Wooden's Pyramid of Success is his careful selection and arrangement of the habits that are the fundamentals of his definition of success, which is "peace of mind that is a direct result of self-satisfaction in knowing you made the effort to become the best that you are capable of becoming."
"No written word, no spoken plea
can teach our youth what they should be.
Nor all the books on all the shelves:
it's what the teachers are themselves."
A favorite poem of John Wooden (Author unknown)
The Pyramid is built of fifteen habits that Mr. Wooden's players developed through daily basketball practice, all leading to the competitive success for which his teams became known.
The foundation of all that is to come is, first, "industriousness," then "friendship, loyalty, cooperation, and enthusiasm;" in short, the foundation of the Pyramid is the knowledge that life, like basketball, is a team game. "The main ingredient in stardom," Mr. Wooden told his players, "is the rest of the team."
The qualities of each level are synergistic, but the cornerstones, industriousness and enthusiasm, are especially synergistic together, forming the starting point to the whole philosophy. The Pyramid allowed Mr. Wooden's players to summon their best anytime, and they began the summoning by being enthusiastic about their work. Mr. Wooden subtly showed his players his own enthusiasm during games by holding in front of him a game program that he was constantly rolling tighter and tighter.
The first layer atop the foundation is Mr. Wooden's mental row of "self-control, alertness, initiative, and intentness." Mr. Wooden valued mental and physical quickness more than any other skill - players who played on the verge of being out-of-control but who were still under control. His favorite maxim is, "Be quick, but don't hurry." As a 5-ft 10-in guard at Purdue University, Mr. Wooden played at breakneck speed and was sent to the court floor, which he would bounce up off, so often that he was nicknamed "The India Rubber Man." The teams he played on won a state championship in high school, and what was then the equivalent of the national championship in college.
Mr. Wooden turns to the basketball court proper, inspired by his college coach Piggy Lambert, with the physical row of "condition, skill, and team spirit." For fifteen years, Mr. Wooden worked on the Pyramid; industriousness and enthusiasm were always the cornerstones, but skill was ultimately placed at the very heart. Coach Wooden did not give pregame motivational speeches: emotional peaks are followed by valleys. "Intensity makes you stronger. Emotionalism makes you weaker." He taught his players to "think small" during games - to concentrate on quick but proper execution. A writer for Time magazine commented that Mr. Wooden's ideal player would be "part robot and part racehorse." Mr. Wooden did not even mention the opposing team or its star player, and former Wooden center Bill Walton has joked that he had to buy a game program to find out whom UCLA was playing.
After the mental and physical comes the spiritual row of "poise and confidence." This row can be thought of as Mr. Wooden's definition of success: peace of mind which is a direct result of self-satisfaction in knowing you made the effort to become the best of which you are capable. Mr. Wooden's demeanor during games has been compared to someone waiting to have their muffler changed, but he was showing steely confidence in his players. "Don't look over at me," he would tell them during games. Mr. Wooden's college coach and mentor, Mr. Lambert, believed, paradoxically, that the team that made the most mistakes would probably win, because it is to be expected that players will make mistakes in games, and failure to take initiative is often the biggest mistake of all.
Asked about his UCLA teams' ten national championships and the apex of his Pyramid, which is "Competitive Greatness," Mr. Wooden quotes Cervantes that the road is better than the inn. "Competitive Greatness" turns out to be a byproduct of what has gone before, and the so-called corny phrases that built the Pyramid turn out not to be words at all but the example set by Mr. Wooden and his players.
John Wooden Interview - Academy of Achievement
John Wooden Interview - Purdue University
John Wooden Interview - UCLA
A 2007 e-mail to Mr. Wooden with his reply:
Dear Mr. Wooden:
Do you have any thoughts about the University of Chicago's decision (granted, it was in 1939) to end participation in Division 1 athletics on the basis that major college football diverts universities from their educational mission?
President Robert Maynard Hutchins abolished football at the University of Chicago. He told the students:
"An educational institution can do one thing uniquely: it can educate. It is by its success in performing this one function that it must be judged. The object of the University of Chicago, therefore, is to help you get the finest education that its resources and intelligence can supply. It is your responsibility to make the most of your opportunities, to cooperate with the University in the achievement of its aims - and to go forth and preach the gospel."
There is a very funny Second City sketch called "Football Comes to the University of Chicago." A typical coach teaches "Football 202" and struggles with the intellectual students. One student states his field is the "History of Arithmetic." When the coach mentions the football positions called "ends," the student interrupts and asks where the beginnings for those ends are, because all ends must have beginnings, according to Aristotle.
To me, you are a living extension of the Greco-Roman moralists such as Cicero, Seneca, Musonius Rufus, Dio Chrysostom, Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius, Philo and Plutarch, who were slaves, politicians, and emperors, and who gave solid advice on envy, anger, and talking too much, and on how to be a good parent and friend, grow old gracefully, and know what true happiness is. Together they form "The Missing Page" in philosophy. To me, you are the missing coach at the University of Chicago.
Division 1 athletics can be a distraction for universities from their educational mission, but even science can be a distraction from the essential question of how to live well.
Mr. Wooden's (prompt) reply:
"Coach Wooden sends his greetings and thanks you for your question. While he chooses not to judge the decision you mention, Coach Wooden wants you to know that he believes education - classroom schooling - is the fundamental purpose of a college or university. Athletes or athletic programs that stray off that path are doing themselves a disservice.
Nevertheless, good 'schooling' can be extended to the field or court by good coaching, and he is an admirer of Chicago's Amos Alonzo Stagg."
Recommended Course on the Greco-Roman Moralists
From Wooden, pp. 104-5
"The Importance of Basketball"
Basketball is just a game, but if I was doing my job as a coach that game of basketball would help prepare our players to do well in life, to reach their full potential as individuals.
When they did that, I felt proud as a coach. That's more rewarding to me than championships.
I'm asked if I'm proud of all the players of mine who went on to the pros.
Yes, but I'm equally proud of the ones who became doctors, lawyers, dentists, ministers, businessmen, teachers, and coaches.
A coach whose philosophy I admired was the football coach at the University of Chicago, Amos Alonzo Stagg. After a successful year a reporter told him, "Coach, it was a great year!"
Coach Stagg corrected him, "I won't know for twenty years or so."
John Wooden
"The Importance of Basketball"
Basketball is just a game, but if I was doing my job as a coach that game of basketball would help prepare our players to do well in life, to reach their full potential as individuals.
When they did that, I felt proud as a coach. That's more rewarding to me than championships.
I'm asked if I'm proud of all the players of mine who went on to the pros.
Yes, but I'm equally proud of the ones who became doctors, lawyers, dentists, ministers, businessmen, teachers, and coaches.
A coach whose philosophy I admired was the football coach at the University of Chicago, Amos Alonzo Stagg. After a successful year a reporter told him, "Coach, it was a great year!"
Coach Stagg corrected him, "I won't know for twenty years or so."
John Wooden
Books by John Wooden
Reader Feedback
andrphilip wrote...
Thank you for making this lens. I am a fan of anyone who is a fan of John Wooden. I have the book shown above in the middle: Wooden. I grew up listening to and watching late night reruns of UCLA Basketball. I think the Wicks-Rowe era is the best of Wooden coaching. The book Wooden proves that Coach Wooden was more than a jock; he was a philosopher. The tips he gives in the book Wooden are priceless. The pyramid is genius.
Posted September 04, 2008
LuisValdes wrote...
Your lens is great, as is the man, Wooden. The Wizard of Westwood, record speaks for itself. The fundamentals that he taught go well beyond basketball. Congratulations on your lens!
Luis Valdes
Posted April 20, 2008
Why Wooden Passed on One Exceptionally Talented Player
The scholarship papers were signed and in Mr. Wooden's coat pocket as he visited the player's home, but the player was disrespectful of his mother in front of Mr. Wooden.
"What I have found is just because the talent and giftedness is there doesn't mean you're going to be able as a coach to bring it out of them. But if their values are there - the right ones - you can bring it out of them every time."
John Wooden
The scholarship papers were signed and in Mr. Wooden's coat pocket as he visited the player's home, but the player was disrespectful of his mother in front of Mr. Wooden.
"What I have found is just because the talent and giftedness is there doesn't mean you're going to be able as a coach to bring it out of them. But if their values are there - the right ones - you can bring it out of them every time."
John Wooden
The True Starting Point of the Pyramid
Although Mr. Wooden would never say it, his own example was the starting point and foundation of the Pyramid. LSU coach Bob Starkey writes: "Mr. Wooden swept the court before every practice because of a layer of chalk left by the gymnastics team's earlier practice. He did it simply because he wanted the floor swept, but imagine the message sent to the players who observed him doing it."
Although Mr. Wooden would never say it, his own example was the starting point and foundation of the Pyramid. LSU coach Bob Starkey writes: "Mr. Wooden swept the court before every practice because of a layer of chalk left by the gymnastics team's earlier practice. He did it simply because he wanted the floor swept, but imagine the message sent to the players who observed him doing it."
The Outlet Pass and The Walton Gang
by Ralph Drollinger
After grabbing a defensive rebound, I turned to make the outlet pass to the awaiting guard near the half-court sideline. I threw away the outlet pass (it was intercepted). Coach Wooden blew his whistle, stopped practice and kindly instructed me in front of my teammates, The Walton Gang, "Ralph, you are not to throw away the outlet pass."
About a half hour later, I threw away another outlet pass. Coach questioned me, "Ralph, do you know why you are not to throw away the outlet pass?"
Near the end of practice, guess what happened? I threw away the outlet pass. Coach sat me down at half-court, and in the shadows of The Walton Gang exhorted me, "Ralph, if you throw away one more outlet pass, you will be denied the privilege of practice with your teammates."
John Wooden's example was to inordinately concentrate on the inviolate fundamentals.
by Ralph Drollinger
After grabbing a defensive rebound, I turned to make the outlet pass to the awaiting guard near the half-court sideline. I threw away the outlet pass (it was intercepted). Coach Wooden blew his whistle, stopped practice and kindly instructed me in front of my teammates, The Walton Gang, "Ralph, you are not to throw away the outlet pass."
About a half hour later, I threw away another outlet pass. Coach questioned me, "Ralph, do you know why you are not to throw away the outlet pass?"
Near the end of practice, guess what happened? I threw away the outlet pass. Coach sat me down at half-court, and in the shadows of The Walton Gang exhorted me, "Ralph, if you throw away one more outlet pass, you will be denied the privilege of practice with your teammates."
John Wooden's example was to inordinately concentrate on the inviolate fundamentals.
Sports Illustrated
Mar. 19, 2007
"Birth Of A Dynasty"
Alexander Wolff
Only after John Wooden challenged his own coaching methods - and applied new tactics to a headstrong mix of players in 1963-64 - did he make his mark at UCLA
UCLA BASKETBALL today seems shot full of the John Wooden magic. This season's Bruins, who are 26-5 and considered a strong title contender heading into the NCAA tournament, wear facsimiles of classic UCLA uniforms and share the commitment to defense that produced 10 national championships in the 1960s and '70s. A pilgrim to Pauley Pavilion might easily believe the UCLA dynasty began with a simple wave of the Wizard's wand, but in fact, Wooden spent 16 years in Westwood unable to elevate the program much beyond mediocrity. He questioned himself and tinkered, and ultimately came wisdom - and then victory on a scale unlikely ever to be matched.
The old coach, 96 now, is such a passionate collector and spouter of aphorisms that it's easy to regard them as quaint. But one sign that Wooden hung on the wall of his office serves as a worthy caption for the first of UCLA's title teams, the 1963-64 Bruins, who went undefeated without a starter taller than 6'5": When you're through learning, you're through. Keep that in mind as you read their story.
UCLA had enjoyed only four winning seasons in the previous 20 years when 37-year-old John Wooden took over as the Bruins' coach in 1948, so the team's accomplishments in his first season - most important, beating Cal for the Pacific Coast Conference title after being picked to finish last - delighted the campus. Over the next 14 seasons the Bruins racked up winning records every time out. Still, it wasn't until Wooden was 53 that a team of his won a national title. The first three times his Bruins qualified for the NCAA tournament - in '50, '52 and '56 - they failed to win their opening game. Today the chat boards and talk show hosts would have taken him down a decade before he had bagged his first title.
Wooden believes that "six or seven" of those early teams could have won a national championship - "not should have," he wrote in his autobiography, They Call Me Coach, "but could have." All they lacked were luck and timing. In 1952, the day before the start of the NCAA tournament, starter Don Bragg stumbled coming out of the shower and broke his toe. The only player in Wooden's first 15 years in Westwood to later stick as a pro, Willie Naulls, happened to play between '53 and '56, precisely when Bill Russell reigned at San Francisco. No sooner had Russell left than UCLA's football team was discovered to have been part of a leaguewide pay-for-play scandal, and the school's three-year probation was applied to all sports. After which came Cal and its Hall of Fame coach, Pete Newell; though Wooden beat Newell seven straight times at one point, the Golden Bears turned the tables beginning in '57, eventually taking eight straight from the Bruins and winning an NCAA title along the way.
So, despite UCLA's relative success, Wooden took heed of another sign on his office wall, the one that read, IT'S WHAT YOU LEARN AFTER YOU KNOW IT ALL THAT COUNTS. From studying Newell he learned the virtues of patience and simplicity. He sat in on a psychology class and decided that he didn't want yes-men as assistants. Sometimes he even courted conflict with players because he believed a worthwhile lesson might emerge from the clash. He asked other coaches to scout his team and share their critiques. And he would spend each off-season poring over the meticulous records he kept of his practices, wondering what he might do differently.
In the spring of 1960, after a 14-12 season that would turn out to be his worst at UCLA, Wooden reassessed everything. He concluded that his teams tended to fade late in the season and wondered if he worked the players too hard in practice. Moreover, when he substituted, the reserves didn't mesh well with the starters. A single tweak to his practice plan - he began to rotate reserves among the first five more often in scrimmages - solved both problems. Two years later the Bruins reached the national semifinals, where they suffered a controversial last-minute charging call and a two-point loss to eventual champion Cincinnati.
Preposterous as it may sound, winning per se was never Wooden's main emphasis, even as the Bruins reached that doorstep. As Doug McIntosh, a reserve on the 1964 team, says, "The word win never escaped his lips. Literally. He just asked us to play to our potential."
The great lesson from the Cincinnati game, Wooden says, was simply this: "I learned we could play with the best." The next season UCLA finished 20-9, but six of those losses were by four points or fewer. Wooden sensed an imminent turn in the program's fortunes. In January 1963, on the flight home from two close losses at Washington, he whipped off some doggerel for Pete Blackman, a recent Bruins player and fellow poetry aficionado. It included a lengthy lamentation on the shortcomings of his team, but ended with these lines:
I want to say - yes, I'll foretell
Eventually, this team will jell
And when they do, they will be great
A championship will be their fate.
With every starter coming back,
Yes, Walt and Gail and Keith and Jack,
And Fred and Freddie and some more
We could be champs in sixty-four.
"Freddie" was guard Freddie Goss, who wound up sitting out the 1963-64 season as a redshirt. The "some more" turned out to be two small-town sophomores, McIntosh, a center from Lily, Ky., and Kenny Washington, a guard from segregated schools in Beaufort, S.C. Each was perfectly suited to be a reserve and seemed to save his finest contributions for the biggest games. And then there were Walt and Gail and Keith and Jack and Fred.
To be sure, guards Walt Hazzard and Gail Goodrich and forward Jack Hirsch had been high school players of distinction in their respective high schools in Philadelphia, Los Angeles and Van Nuys, Calif. But all were seemingly one-dimensional: Hazzard, a passer; Goodrich, a shooter; and Hirsch, a defender. Goodrich accepted a scholarship as a Polytechnic High junior when, at 5'8" and 120 pounds, he correctly intuited that he wasn't likely to get an offer much better than UCLA's. At first he was wary of Hazzard, who had the ball most of the time, but Goodrich soon realized that if he moved to an open spot, Hazzard would find him - for Hazzard loved to deliver the ball as much as Goodrich longed to launch it. "I defy you to find two finer guards who ever played on the same team," says Hirsch. "They averaged 43 a game between them, and we had no shot clock or three-pointer."
Hirsch was a player unlike any Wooden had encountered, on or off the court. Hirsch was a poker-playing sharpie who had grown up in Brooklyn, learning the subtleties of basketball on the playgrounds of Bedford-Stuyvesant. His father had become wealthy from a chain of bowling alleys, and when the family moved to the West Coast, Jack brought along a knack, at 6'3", for stealing rebounds from, and improvising shots over, taller players. "I was two or three years ahead of these other guys as far as how the game should be played," says Hirsch, whose dad promised to quit a five-packs-a-day smoking habit if his son played at UCLA. "Wooden adapted to me as much as I did to him. Everyone else was afraid of him. But even though he seemed to hold my life in his hands, I knew I could always go back to playing cards. He's admitted his stubbornness kept him from winning sooner, and I was one of the people who opened his eyes because of how crazy I was."
As for center Fred Slaughter and forward Keith Erickson, neither went to UCLA on a full basketball scholarship. But that was a reflection of their versatility, not their ability. Slaughter had been a sprinter in high school in Topeka, Kans. - he ran the 100 yards in 9.9 seconds - and had a choice of colleges at which to run. He ultimately accepted the Bruins' offer of a scholarship split between track and basketball. Erickson had grown up just down the freeway from the Westwood campus, in El Segundo, but had never seen a Bruins basketball game until he played in one. No other school had offered him a ride for basketball, and UCLA's deal was half for hoops and half for baseball; though volleyball, which he would play in the '64 Tokyo Olympics, was the sport in which he first displayed his astonishing jumping ability.
When practice began in October 1963 the players scaled three flights of stairs to what was known as the B.O. Barn, the cramped and fetid men's gym on campus where the basketball court shared space with wrestling mats and gymnastics equipment. Chalk drifting over from the pommel horses had to be swept off the court before practice; two managers pushed mops while Wooden walked in front of them, backward and crouched over, dribbling water out of a bucket as if, he says, he were "feeding the chickens back on the farm." The B.O. Barn once accommodated 2,400 spectators, but in 1955 fire marshals prohibited crowds of more than 1,300. For the program to pay for itself, the players had to become vagabonds. So for home games that season the Bruins bused to the L.A. Sports Arena, which was virtually on the USC campus; the Long Beach Arena, 25 miles away; and even the gym at a community college in Santa Monica. The Bruins would essentially play 30 road games.
With their raw athletes, split scholarships and three-ring practices in that hoops hayloft, the 1963-64 Bruins were less a basketball team than a rarefied phys-ed class, with Wooden the gym teacher. He was then known as Johnny, a transplanted Hoosier whose superbly conditioned teams played the pell-mell Midwestern style but weren't regarded as very sophisticated defensively.
(cont.)
Mar. 19, 2007
"Birth Of A Dynasty"
Alexander Wolff
Only after John Wooden challenged his own coaching methods - and applied new tactics to a headstrong mix of players in 1963-64 - did he make his mark at UCLA
UCLA BASKETBALL today seems shot full of the John Wooden magic. This season's Bruins, who are 26-5 and considered a strong title contender heading into the NCAA tournament, wear facsimiles of classic UCLA uniforms and share the commitment to defense that produced 10 national championships in the 1960s and '70s. A pilgrim to Pauley Pavilion might easily believe the UCLA dynasty began with a simple wave of the Wizard's wand, but in fact, Wooden spent 16 years in Westwood unable to elevate the program much beyond mediocrity. He questioned himself and tinkered, and ultimately came wisdom - and then victory on a scale unlikely ever to be matched.
The old coach, 96 now, is such a passionate collector and spouter of aphorisms that it's easy to regard them as quaint. But one sign that Wooden hung on the wall of his office serves as a worthy caption for the first of UCLA's title teams, the 1963-64 Bruins, who went undefeated without a starter taller than 6'5": When you're through learning, you're through. Keep that in mind as you read their story.
UCLA had enjoyed only four winning seasons in the previous 20 years when 37-year-old John Wooden took over as the Bruins' coach in 1948, so the team's accomplishments in his first season - most important, beating Cal for the Pacific Coast Conference title after being picked to finish last - delighted the campus. Over the next 14 seasons the Bruins racked up winning records every time out. Still, it wasn't until Wooden was 53 that a team of his won a national title. The first three times his Bruins qualified for the NCAA tournament - in '50, '52 and '56 - they failed to win their opening game. Today the chat boards and talk show hosts would have taken him down a decade before he had bagged his first title.
Wooden believes that "six or seven" of those early teams could have won a national championship - "not should have," he wrote in his autobiography, They Call Me Coach, "but could have." All they lacked were luck and timing. In 1952, the day before the start of the NCAA tournament, starter Don Bragg stumbled coming out of the shower and broke his toe. The only player in Wooden's first 15 years in Westwood to later stick as a pro, Willie Naulls, happened to play between '53 and '56, precisely when Bill Russell reigned at San Francisco. No sooner had Russell left than UCLA's football team was discovered to have been part of a leaguewide pay-for-play scandal, and the school's three-year probation was applied to all sports. After which came Cal and its Hall of Fame coach, Pete Newell; though Wooden beat Newell seven straight times at one point, the Golden Bears turned the tables beginning in '57, eventually taking eight straight from the Bruins and winning an NCAA title along the way.
So, despite UCLA's relative success, Wooden took heed of another sign on his office wall, the one that read, IT'S WHAT YOU LEARN AFTER YOU KNOW IT ALL THAT COUNTS. From studying Newell he learned the virtues of patience and simplicity. He sat in on a psychology class and decided that he didn't want yes-men as assistants. Sometimes he even courted conflict with players because he believed a worthwhile lesson might emerge from the clash. He asked other coaches to scout his team and share their critiques. And he would spend each off-season poring over the meticulous records he kept of his practices, wondering what he might do differently.
In the spring of 1960, after a 14-12 season that would turn out to be his worst at UCLA, Wooden reassessed everything. He concluded that his teams tended to fade late in the season and wondered if he worked the players too hard in practice. Moreover, when he substituted, the reserves didn't mesh well with the starters. A single tweak to his practice plan - he began to rotate reserves among the first five more often in scrimmages - solved both problems. Two years later the Bruins reached the national semifinals, where they suffered a controversial last-minute charging call and a two-point loss to eventual champion Cincinnati.
Preposterous as it may sound, winning per se was never Wooden's main emphasis, even as the Bruins reached that doorstep. As Doug McIntosh, a reserve on the 1964 team, says, "The word win never escaped his lips. Literally. He just asked us to play to our potential."
The great lesson from the Cincinnati game, Wooden says, was simply this: "I learned we could play with the best." The next season UCLA finished 20-9, but six of those losses were by four points or fewer. Wooden sensed an imminent turn in the program's fortunes. In January 1963, on the flight home from two close losses at Washington, he whipped off some doggerel for Pete Blackman, a recent Bruins player and fellow poetry aficionado. It included a lengthy lamentation on the shortcomings of his team, but ended with these lines:
I want to say - yes, I'll foretell
Eventually, this team will jell
And when they do, they will be great
A championship will be their fate.
With every starter coming back,
Yes, Walt and Gail and Keith and Jack,
And Fred and Freddie and some more
We could be champs in sixty-four.
"Freddie" was guard Freddie Goss, who wound up sitting out the 1963-64 season as a redshirt. The "some more" turned out to be two small-town sophomores, McIntosh, a center from Lily, Ky., and Kenny Washington, a guard from segregated schools in Beaufort, S.C. Each was perfectly suited to be a reserve and seemed to save his finest contributions for the biggest games. And then there were Walt and Gail and Keith and Jack and Fred.
To be sure, guards Walt Hazzard and Gail Goodrich and forward Jack Hirsch had been high school players of distinction in their respective high schools in Philadelphia, Los Angeles and Van Nuys, Calif. But all were seemingly one-dimensional: Hazzard, a passer; Goodrich, a shooter; and Hirsch, a defender. Goodrich accepted a scholarship as a Polytechnic High junior when, at 5'8" and 120 pounds, he correctly intuited that he wasn't likely to get an offer much better than UCLA's. At first he was wary of Hazzard, who had the ball most of the time, but Goodrich soon realized that if he moved to an open spot, Hazzard would find him - for Hazzard loved to deliver the ball as much as Goodrich longed to launch it. "I defy you to find two finer guards who ever played on the same team," says Hirsch. "They averaged 43 a game between them, and we had no shot clock or three-pointer."
Hirsch was a player unlike any Wooden had encountered, on or off the court. Hirsch was a poker-playing sharpie who had grown up in Brooklyn, learning the subtleties of basketball on the playgrounds of Bedford-Stuyvesant. His father had become wealthy from a chain of bowling alleys, and when the family moved to the West Coast, Jack brought along a knack, at 6'3", for stealing rebounds from, and improvising shots over, taller players. "I was two or three years ahead of these other guys as far as how the game should be played," says Hirsch, whose dad promised to quit a five-packs-a-day smoking habit if his son played at UCLA. "Wooden adapted to me as much as I did to him. Everyone else was afraid of him. But even though he seemed to hold my life in his hands, I knew I could always go back to playing cards. He's admitted his stubbornness kept him from winning sooner, and I was one of the people who opened his eyes because of how crazy I was."
As for center Fred Slaughter and forward Keith Erickson, neither went to UCLA on a full basketball scholarship. But that was a reflection of their versatility, not their ability. Slaughter had been a sprinter in high school in Topeka, Kans. - he ran the 100 yards in 9.9 seconds - and had a choice of colleges at which to run. He ultimately accepted the Bruins' offer of a scholarship split between track and basketball. Erickson had grown up just down the freeway from the Westwood campus, in El Segundo, but had never seen a Bruins basketball game until he played in one. No other school had offered him a ride for basketball, and UCLA's deal was half for hoops and half for baseball; though volleyball, which he would play in the '64 Tokyo Olympics, was the sport in which he first displayed his astonishing jumping ability.
When practice began in October 1963 the players scaled three flights of stairs to what was known as the B.O. Barn, the cramped and fetid men's gym on campus where the basketball court shared space with wrestling mats and gymnastics equipment. Chalk drifting over from the pommel horses had to be swept off the court before practice; two managers pushed mops while Wooden walked in front of them, backward and crouched over, dribbling water out of a bucket as if, he says, he were "feeding the chickens back on the farm." The B.O. Barn once accommodated 2,400 spectators, but in 1955 fire marshals prohibited crowds of more than 1,300. For the program to pay for itself, the players had to become vagabonds. So for home games that season the Bruins bused to the L.A. Sports Arena, which was virtually on the USC campus; the Long Beach Arena, 25 miles away; and even the gym at a community college in Santa Monica. The Bruins would essentially play 30 road games.
With their raw athletes, split scholarships and three-ring practices in that hoops hayloft, the 1963-64 Bruins were less a basketball team than a rarefied phys-ed class, with Wooden the gym teacher. He was then known as Johnny, a transplanted Hoosier whose superbly conditioned teams played the pell-mell Midwestern style but weren't regarded as very sophisticated defensively.
(cont.)
Only later, after UCLA's first several titles, would Wooden begin to dominate the recruiting scene, picking and choosing among the top players in the nation. In fact, the coach disliked recruiting, and only welcomed out-of-state players if someone else initiated the contact. McIntosh would have attended Tennessee, but the coach there, a Purdue alum like Wooden, resigned suddenly and was happy to steer his recruit to a fellow Boilermaker. Hazzard arrived thanks to a connection twice removed: He was recommended by Naulls, who from the Philly playgrounds knew Woody Sauldsberry, Hazzard's distant cousin. Meanwhile, Hazzard recommended Washington, who played pickup ball in Philly while spending summers visiting a sister; Washington had arrived in Los Angeles unseen by any UCLA coach - and two inches shorter and 40 pounds lighter than advertised - after cowering in the back of a Greyhound for three days.
Washington emerged from that bus into a dreamland, the polar opposite of the Jim Crow south. "At first you say, 'No, it can't be,'" he recalls. "And then you see this university, this microcosm of the world, and say, 'Well, why not?'" Those first couple of years he would write buddies back home, telling them they wouldn't believe what he'd seen: guys flooding dormitory floors to slide around on them, and putting matches to their farts, and drinking beer. And this guy Hirsch, who drove his own red Pontiac Grand Prix, called the coach "John" or "J-Dub" or "Woody" to his face.
"Yes, buses were being burned by the side of the road," Washington says of the harassment of Freedom Riders in the early '60s. "But African-Americans had faith, because if the whole country were like that, we'd still be in chains. And then I'd see this man who practiced what he preached, and that was like beauty. Wooden had structure, a philosophy based on fairness. He was a small-town person, too. The same things his father taught him, my father taught me. I felt like a foster child."
"We all came by accident," says Hirsch, whose father, failing to hold up his end of the pact he had made with his son, died of lung cancer just months after the championship season ended. "But we had great quickness, great hands, great communication, great chemistry."
"We used to talk about how we were the all-American team, a group of guys from such diverse backgrounds, yet on the court were a perfect mesh," Slaughter says. "Two black, two white, one Jewish, who after games would go in our separate directions. But game time, practice time, ride-the-bus time, we were pretty well matched. We liked to protect each other. We liked to do our jobs. And we just enjoyed playing for the man."
Once a year Wooden made it a point to poll his players, asking them who they thought should be starting. He did this to test his own judgment, and to have something with which he might shoo away a parent disgruntled over a son's playing time. Wooden had never before, and would never again, find such unanimity on this question as he did during the 1963-64 season.
Shortly after he announced his retirement in 1975, in the aftermath of his final title run, Wooden confided to a young alumnus that he had blundered badly early in his career by associating too much with yes-men. "Whatever you do in life, surround yourself with smart people who'll argue with you," he said. Wooden didn't mention any names, but he was tipping his hat to one smart, argumentative assistant coach in particular.
Jerry Norman had played on three of Wooden's early teams, and he had the kind of contrarian spirit that both drives coaches nuts and steals their hearts. He was an instigator, but instigators are also initiators - and in athletics the initiators tend to seize opportunity. "Very headstrong, set in his ways, and profane," Wooden called Norman in his autobiography. "Jerry gave me fits. I don't believe I ever had a boy more strong-willed, more sure of himself and more outspoken." Wooden kicked him off the team for two weeks during the 1950-51 season. Yet after Norman did turns in the service and as a coach for Wooden's brother Maurice, the principal at West Covina (Calif.) High, his old college coach brought him back, first to run the freshman team and then, in 1963, to serve as a varsity assistant. "I guess I wanted a rebel," Wooden wrote, "someone who would stand up to me."
Like his boss, Norman had been influenced by UCLA's nemesis, Pete Newell, who retired as Cal coach in 1960. Newell believed that a team controlling the tempo controlled the game. Accordingly, over the 1962-63 season, the Bruins had looked to push the pace at every opportunity. In their next-to-last game, a 51-45 win over Stanford for the conference title, they'd used a full-court, man-to-man press to that end. They forced almost 20 turnovers, Norman says, but still scored only 51 points.
After UCLA lost to Arizona State in the Bruins' NCAA tournament opener, Norman caucused with his boss. He argued that a full-court, man-to-man defense forces the opponent to advance the ball with the dribble, which chews up time. If the Bruins really wanted to hasten changes in possession and shorten each possession, the team needed a zone press, with the kinds of traps that only a foolish dribbler would try to slalom through. Opponents would have to advance the ball by passing, and human nature being what it is, those passes would eventually become hurried and careless. UCLA's quick hands, long arms and sprinters' speed would lead to deflections and interceptions, and soon the ball would be headed the other way. The Bruins would score, and the way they'd score - suddenly and as a result of turnovers - would sow, as Wooden later put it, "disharmony and disunity" on the opposing team.
There was more. Force a turnover as a result of a zone press, Norman argued, and the five UCLA players would be spread across the breadth and most of the length of the floor - the better to take advantage of Hazzard's skill in transition. Size may be an advantage in basketball, but it dissipates when spread over the court. And if the Bruins opened a lead with a flurry of baskets, their opponents would have to adopt a faster tempo to catch up, playing right into UCLA's hands. "I laid out the rationale," says Norman, who had used a 2-2-1 zone press successfully as coach of the Bruins' freshman team. "We had no size, and we played in a conference in which teams liked to walk the ball up the floor. The idea wasn't to steal the ball, remember. That would be an ancillary benefit. It was to increase tempo."
Wooden was skeptical. He had used a zone press effectively in his first college job, at Indiana State, but he feared that players had become too skilled to be flummoxed by one. It wasn't Norman who ultimately won over Wooden so much as the presence of Erickson, whose lateral quickness, sense of timing and gambler's sangfroid made him the perfect safetyman at the back of the 2-2-1. Cal coach Rene Herrerias would liken him to "a 6'5" Bill Russell," and Wooden came to call Erickson the finest athlete he had ever coached.
Wooden eventually concluded that he had erred in not using a zone press earlier. "When I came to UCLA, I expected to use it more often, and a number of years I had the personnel for it," he says. From 1957 through '59 he had coached Rafer Johnson, the Olympic decathlon champion-to-be, and kicked himself for not recognizing in Johnson another ideal backliner for the 2-2-1. "I tried it for a while and gave up on it," Wooden adds, reproaching himself. "And as a coach, you know, you preach patience."
The zone press, Wooden came to realize, had additional virtues. It built morale and promoted cohesion. And just as a lumbering team was vulnerable to it, a bunch of big galoots couldn't really make it work.
At the front of the press Wooden deployed Goodrich, who despite his wraithlike physique had huge hands and a 37-inch sleeve length, and the 6'5" Slaughter, who was fast enough to sprint back and set up if an opponent broke into the forecourt, but whose broad 235 pounds made breaking the press even more of a challenge. "They had a poor little person trying to throw the ball in, trying to see around me," Slaughter recalls. "And please, don't try to throw a long pass. While I was running and jumping at the front of the press, Keith was running and jumping at the back."
If Erickson picked off the most passes, the ensuing baskets usually came as a result of the decisions by Hazzard, who lined up with Hirsch near midcourt and, just as Norman envisioned, tended to wind up with the ball in the open floor. "Walt and Gail never called a play for the rest of us," Erickson says. "Much to our chagrin and to their credit. But we were best when we were running, so we didn't really need plays." The Glue Factory, one wag called the Bruins press. Another called it Arranged Chaos. Asked what it was like to face the 2-2-1, USC coach Forrest Twogood responded with a question of his own. "Have you ever been locked up in a casket for six days?" he said. "That's how it feels."
(cont.)
Washington emerged from that bus into a dreamland, the polar opposite of the Jim Crow south. "At first you say, 'No, it can't be,'" he recalls. "And then you see this university, this microcosm of the world, and say, 'Well, why not?'" Those first couple of years he would write buddies back home, telling them they wouldn't believe what he'd seen: guys flooding dormitory floors to slide around on them, and putting matches to their farts, and drinking beer. And this guy Hirsch, who drove his own red Pontiac Grand Prix, called the coach "John" or "J-Dub" or "Woody" to his face.
"Yes, buses were being burned by the side of the road," Washington says of the harassment of Freedom Riders in the early '60s. "But African-Americans had faith, because if the whole country were like that, we'd still be in chains. And then I'd see this man who practiced what he preached, and that was like beauty. Wooden had structure, a philosophy based on fairness. He was a small-town person, too. The same things his father taught him, my father taught me. I felt like a foster child."
"We all came by accident," says Hirsch, whose father, failing to hold up his end of the pact he had made with his son, died of lung cancer just months after the championship season ended. "But we had great quickness, great hands, great communication, great chemistry."
"We used to talk about how we were the all-American team, a group of guys from such diverse backgrounds, yet on the court were a perfect mesh," Slaughter says. "Two black, two white, one Jewish, who after games would go in our separate directions. But game time, practice time, ride-the-bus time, we were pretty well matched. We liked to protect each other. We liked to do our jobs. And we just enjoyed playing for the man."
Once a year Wooden made it a point to poll his players, asking them who they thought should be starting. He did this to test his own judgment, and to have something with which he might shoo away a parent disgruntled over a son's playing time. Wooden had never before, and would never again, find such unanimity on this question as he did during the 1963-64 season.
Shortly after he announced his retirement in 1975, in the aftermath of his final title run, Wooden confided to a young alumnus that he had blundered badly early in his career by associating too much with yes-men. "Whatever you do in life, surround yourself with smart people who'll argue with you," he said. Wooden didn't mention any names, but he was tipping his hat to one smart, argumentative assistant coach in particular.
Jerry Norman had played on three of Wooden's early teams, and he had the kind of contrarian spirit that both drives coaches nuts and steals their hearts. He was an instigator, but instigators are also initiators - and in athletics the initiators tend to seize opportunity. "Very headstrong, set in his ways, and profane," Wooden called Norman in his autobiography. "Jerry gave me fits. I don't believe I ever had a boy more strong-willed, more sure of himself and more outspoken." Wooden kicked him off the team for two weeks during the 1950-51 season. Yet after Norman did turns in the service and as a coach for Wooden's brother Maurice, the principal at West Covina (Calif.) High, his old college coach brought him back, first to run the freshman team and then, in 1963, to serve as a varsity assistant. "I guess I wanted a rebel," Wooden wrote, "someone who would stand up to me."
Like his boss, Norman had been influenced by UCLA's nemesis, Pete Newell, who retired as Cal coach in 1960. Newell believed that a team controlling the tempo controlled the game. Accordingly, over the 1962-63 season, the Bruins had looked to push the pace at every opportunity. In their next-to-last game, a 51-45 win over Stanford for the conference title, they'd used a full-court, man-to-man press to that end. They forced almost 20 turnovers, Norman says, but still scored only 51 points.
After UCLA lost to Arizona State in the Bruins' NCAA tournament opener, Norman caucused with his boss. He argued that a full-court, man-to-man defense forces the opponent to advance the ball with the dribble, which chews up time. If the Bruins really wanted to hasten changes in possession and shorten each possession, the team needed a zone press, with the kinds of traps that only a foolish dribbler would try to slalom through. Opponents would have to advance the ball by passing, and human nature being what it is, those passes would eventually become hurried and careless. UCLA's quick hands, long arms and sprinters' speed would lead to deflections and interceptions, and soon the ball would be headed the other way. The Bruins would score, and the way they'd score - suddenly and as a result of turnovers - would sow, as Wooden later put it, "disharmony and disunity" on the opposing team.
There was more. Force a turnover as a result of a zone press, Norman argued, and the five UCLA players would be spread across the breadth and most of the length of the floor - the better to take advantage of Hazzard's skill in transition. Size may be an advantage in basketball, but it dissipates when spread over the court. And if the Bruins opened a lead with a flurry of baskets, their opponents would have to adopt a faster tempo to catch up, playing right into UCLA's hands. "I laid out the rationale," says Norman, who had used a 2-2-1 zone press successfully as coach of the Bruins' freshman team. "We had no size, and we played in a conference in which teams liked to walk the ball up the floor. The idea wasn't to steal the ball, remember. That would be an ancillary benefit. It was to increase tempo."
Wooden was skeptical. He had used a zone press effectively in his first college job, at Indiana State, but he feared that players had become too skilled to be flummoxed by one. It wasn't Norman who ultimately won over Wooden so much as the presence of Erickson, whose lateral quickness, sense of timing and gambler's sangfroid made him the perfect safetyman at the back of the 2-2-1. Cal coach Rene Herrerias would liken him to "a 6'5" Bill Russell," and Wooden came to call Erickson the finest athlete he had ever coached.
Wooden eventually concluded that he had erred in not using a zone press earlier. "When I came to UCLA, I expected to use it more often, and a number of years I had the personnel for it," he says. From 1957 through '59 he had coached Rafer Johnson, the Olympic decathlon champion-to-be, and kicked himself for not recognizing in Johnson another ideal backliner for the 2-2-1. "I tried it for a while and gave up on it," Wooden adds, reproaching himself. "And as a coach, you know, you preach patience."
The zone press, Wooden came to realize, had additional virtues. It built morale and promoted cohesion. And just as a lumbering team was vulnerable to it, a bunch of big galoots couldn't really make it work.
At the front of the press Wooden deployed Goodrich, who despite his wraithlike physique had huge hands and a 37-inch sleeve length, and the 6'5" Slaughter, who was fast enough to sprint back and set up if an opponent broke into the forecourt, but whose broad 235 pounds made breaking the press even more of a challenge. "They had a poor little person trying to throw the ball in, trying to see around me," Slaughter recalls. "And please, don't try to throw a long pass. While I was running and jumping at the front of the press, Keith was running and jumping at the back."
If Erickson picked off the most passes, the ensuing baskets usually came as a result of the decisions by Hazzard, who lined up with Hirsch near midcourt and, just as Norman envisioned, tended to wind up with the ball in the open floor. "Walt and Gail never called a play for the rest of us," Erickson says. "Much to our chagrin and to their credit. But we were best when we were running, so we didn't really need plays." The Glue Factory, one wag called the Bruins press. Another called it Arranged Chaos. Asked what it was like to face the 2-2-1, USC coach Forrest Twogood responded with a question of his own. "Have you ever been locked up in a casket for six days?" he said. "That's how it feels."
(cont.)
The Bruins dropped a hint of what was in store just before Christmas, when they took out unbeaten Creighton and muscular Paul Silas. But it would be six days later, against No. 3 Michigan in the L.A. Classic, when UCLA conclusively demonstrated how speed could trump size. The Wolverines called their frontline of Bill Buntin, Oliver Darden and Larry Tregoning the Anvil Chorus, and guard Cazzie Russell was an All-America and future collegiate player of the year. Hirsch nonetheless locked up Russell, Slaughter shut down the 6'7", 250-pound Buntin, and the Bruins won 98-80, improving their record to 8-0. Harry Combes, coach of the Illinois team the Bruins would beat the next night for the tournament title, called it "the best performance in a single game I've ever seen by a college team." Nonetheless, it wasn't until January, after Georgia Tech beat Kentucky and the Bruins rang up 121 points against Washington State, that UCLA ascended to No. 1 in the polls. A team unmentioned in SI's preseason Top 20 suddenly found itself lording over the sport.
In each of their 30 games, the Bruins used the zone press to deliver at least one game-altering spurt, a period of two or three minutes in which UCLA outscored its opponent by 10 or more points. These Bruin Blitzes, as they came to be known, usually took place before the end of the first half. In a few instances - such as a 100-88 win over Stanford, in which Erickson's three steals spurred an 18-3 run that put UCLA up 77-65 - opponents didn't get blown away until the second half. But those decisive runs always came.
UCLA's confidence flowed from its coach. "A couple of times when we were way down, I remember looking over at him with his legs crossed and program rolled up," Slaughter recalls, "and I'd think, Hey, if he's not worried, I'm not worried." Sometime in February, Slaughter remembers, he picked up an out-of-town paper and read speculation that the Bruins might go undefeated. It hadn't occurred to him. "We were too busy having fun," Slaughter says, "and beating the crap out of everyone."
If a lightness persisted among the players, it's because their success seemed so unexpected and sudden. The fans embraced the lark of it, wearing their red we try harder buttons from Avis's popular ad campaign. Just the same, this wasn't a case of a team that would only appreciate what it accomplished with the passage of time. "As it was unfolding," says reserve forward Rich Levin, one of five end-of-the-benchers who called themselves the Mop-Up Squad, "we knew it was special."
In their first game of the NCAA tournament, in the West Regional in Corvallis, Ore., the Bruins trailed Seattle late before Goodrich bailed them out, finding Washington for a layup and free throw, then scoring on a layup himself off a steal in a 95-90 victory. The next night UCLA fell behind San Francisco early, trailing by 13 in the first half. The blitz came like the cavalry, "right at the end of the game," Erickson remembers, delivering the Bruins to the Final Four in Kansas City, Mo.
There they drew a virtual home team, Kansas State. "They're up five with seven minutes to play," Hirsch recalls, "and their best player takes a 15-footer. The ball is in the net, and somehow comes out. I grab the ball, throw it down to Gail for a layup, and we're down three. If that ball goes in, with no shot clock.... " He lets you imagine the consequences. "It's as if God said, 'This team is going undefeated.'"
UCLA drew even at 75 with four minutes left, and then another K-State shot went in and out. This time the Blitz had been modest, 11 points in three minutes, but it was enough to make UCLA a 90-84 winner and set up a title-game matchup with Duke. Like Hirsch, Wooden knew that as superbly as his team had performed all season, fate seemed to be playing an ever larger role. "Somehow we keep our poise and get out of the jams we get ourselves into," Wooden said on the eve of the final. "Now we have to do it one more time."
Skeptics remained. "There is no way for UCLA to beat Duke," wrote Dick Wade of The Kansas City Star. "The Blue Devils simply have too much - height, shooting ability, rebounding ability and defense." At least Wade had been smart enough to preface his prediction with this: "If you're silly enough to apply logic to basketball."
Logic fled the arena late in the first half, shortly after Erickson had picked up his third foul with UCLA trailing 30-27. Here came the blitz by which all others would be measured. Hirsch made three steals. Goodrich scored eight points. Washington, playing before his dad for the first time, knocked down two jumpers. And Erickson, disregarding the fouls, blocked several shots. Twice Duke called timeout, but to no avail. By the time the Bruins' run had ended - after one Blue Devil turned to Slaughter and said, "Hey, can you guys slow down?" - UCLA had scored 16 unanswered points in slightly more than 2 1/2 minutes to take a 43-30 lead. Off the bench, McIntosh and Washington would combine for 23 rebounds; Duke's two 6'10" frontliners, Hack Tison and Jay Buckley, would get only 10 between them. UCLA forced 29 turnovers and coasted, 98-83, to finish 30-0. "Don't let it change you," Wooden told his players in the locker room. "You are champions and must act like champions."
Five times during that season the Bruins scored more than 100 points; only six times did they win by five or fewer. Over the ensuing months Wooden would field some 700 inquiries from coaches asking how the press worked. He has always called that first title team the one that came "as close to reaching its potential as a team could come," and given his definition of success, that is the highest praise he could deliver.
"People say he didn't have the horses before us," says Hirsch. "No - he didn't win because he wasn't a great coach. He was a good coach who filled in all the blanks."
Wooden agrees. "We'd have had a little better chance in earlier years," he says, "if I'd have known a little more."
Who knew? The Wizard of Westwood was really the Master of the Midcourse Correction. The 1963-64 title team stands as both a summation of everything he had learned to that time and a grand experiment in the coaching arts that he would apply to win nine more championships. Precept after precept was tonged and tempered in the crucible of that season: The game rewards quickness above all, victory begins with defense and, perhaps most important of all, it's what you learn after you know it all that counts.
In each of their 30 games, the Bruins used the zone press to deliver at least one game-altering spurt, a period of two or three minutes in which UCLA outscored its opponent by 10 or more points. These Bruin Blitzes, as they came to be known, usually took place before the end of the first half. In a few instances - such as a 100-88 win over Stanford, in which Erickson's three steals spurred an 18-3 run that put UCLA up 77-65 - opponents didn't get blown away until the second half. But those decisive runs always came.
UCLA's confidence flowed from its coach. "A couple of times when we were way down, I remember looking over at him with his legs crossed and program rolled up," Slaughter recalls, "and I'd think, Hey, if he's not worried, I'm not worried." Sometime in February, Slaughter remembers, he picked up an out-of-town paper and read speculation that the Bruins might go undefeated. It hadn't occurred to him. "We were too busy having fun," Slaughter says, "and beating the crap out of everyone."
If a lightness persisted among the players, it's because their success seemed so unexpected and sudden. The fans embraced the lark of it, wearing their red we try harder buttons from Avis's popular ad campaign. Just the same, this wasn't a case of a team that would only appreciate what it accomplished with the passage of time. "As it was unfolding," says reserve forward Rich Levin, one of five end-of-the-benchers who called themselves the Mop-Up Squad, "we knew it was special."
In their first game of the NCAA tournament, in the West Regional in Corvallis, Ore., the Bruins trailed Seattle late before Goodrich bailed them out, finding Washington for a layup and free throw, then scoring on a layup himself off a steal in a 95-90 victory. The next night UCLA fell behind San Francisco early, trailing by 13 in the first half. The blitz came like the cavalry, "right at the end of the game," Erickson remembers, delivering the Bruins to the Final Four in Kansas City, Mo.
There they drew a virtual home team, Kansas State. "They're up five with seven minutes to play," Hirsch recalls, "and their best player takes a 15-footer. The ball is in the net, and somehow comes out. I grab the ball, throw it down to Gail for a layup, and we're down three. If that ball goes in, with no shot clock.... " He lets you imagine the consequences. "It's as if God said, 'This team is going undefeated.'"
UCLA drew even at 75 with four minutes left, and then another K-State shot went in and out. This time the Blitz had been modest, 11 points in three minutes, but it was enough to make UCLA a 90-84 winner and set up a title-game matchup with Duke. Like Hirsch, Wooden knew that as superbly as his team had performed all season, fate seemed to be playing an ever larger role. "Somehow we keep our poise and get out of the jams we get ourselves into," Wooden said on the eve of the final. "Now we have to do it one more time."
Skeptics remained. "There is no way for UCLA to beat Duke," wrote Dick Wade of The Kansas City Star. "The Blue Devils simply have too much - height, shooting ability, rebounding ability and defense." At least Wade had been smart enough to preface his prediction with this: "If you're silly enough to apply logic to basketball."
Logic fled the arena late in the first half, shortly after Erickson had picked up his third foul with UCLA trailing 30-27. Here came the blitz by which all others would be measured. Hirsch made three steals. Goodrich scored eight points. Washington, playing before his dad for the first time, knocked down two jumpers. And Erickson, disregarding the fouls, blocked several shots. Twice Duke called timeout, but to no avail. By the time the Bruins' run had ended - after one Blue Devil turned to Slaughter and said, "Hey, can you guys slow down?" - UCLA had scored 16 unanswered points in slightly more than 2 1/2 minutes to take a 43-30 lead. Off the bench, McIntosh and Washington would combine for 23 rebounds; Duke's two 6'10" frontliners, Hack Tison and Jay Buckley, would get only 10 between them. UCLA forced 29 turnovers and coasted, 98-83, to finish 30-0. "Don't let it change you," Wooden told his players in the locker room. "You are champions and must act like champions."
Five times during that season the Bruins scored more than 100 points; only six times did they win by five or fewer. Over the ensuing months Wooden would field some 700 inquiries from coaches asking how the press worked. He has always called that first title team the one that came "as close to reaching its potential as a team could come," and given his definition of success, that is the highest praise he could deliver.
"People say he didn't have the horses before us," says Hirsch. "No - he didn't win because he wasn't a great coach. He was a good coach who filled in all the blanks."
Wooden agrees. "We'd have had a little better chance in earlier years," he says, "if I'd have known a little more."
Who knew? The Wizard of Westwood was really the Master of the Midcourse Correction. The 1963-64 title team stands as both a summation of everything he had learned to that time and a grand experiment in the coaching arts that he would apply to win nine more championships. Precept after precept was tonged and tempered in the crucible of that season: The game rewards quickness above all, victory begins with defense and, perhaps most important of all, it's what you learn after you know it all that counts.
