You may have seen the Kevin Costner movie Field of Dreams—“Build it and they will come.”Coach Wooden did that. He built his basketball program a certain way—athletically, ethically, morally—because he believed it would attract a certain type of person, the kind of individual he wanted on the team. And if he didn’t have success that way, it was all right with him because he felt his program made sense; in every way it made sense to him. So he was going to do it that way.
Coach was almost a mystic in knowing what would happen. And, he was right—when he built it, they came. I was one of them. I chose UCLA in large part because of what I saw and heard regarding those values. Dr. Ralph Bunche and Jackie Robinson wrote to me saying UCLA was a great place for an education and athletics. Willie Naulls told me that race wasn’t an issue with Coach Wooden. And one of the most important things in my decision was seeing Rafer Johnson on the Ed Sullivan Show.
I knew he was a world-class athlete, but he was on the show aspresident of the student body at UCLA. That told me the school appreciated him for more than just being a jock. It told me a whole lot about what UCLA was about. With his hair parted in the middle, Coach looked like he fell off a box of Pepperidge Farm cookies. That was misleading.
In the gym he was a very, very tough man, extremely demanding. He wanted it done a certain way, and he would get out there and demonstrate what that way was. Coach was about 57 years old when I arrived at UCLA— almost 40 years older than the rest of us. But he would never ask his players to do what he wouldn’t do.
You appreciate that, when the leader is willing to get right out there and work alongside you. You’re not just hearing stuff from somebody who hasn’t been there and done it.
He knew what he was talking about, so he had that credibility. He got respect. Winning was never mentioned by him. For Coach Wooden it was, “Fellas, we’ve got to play at our best. Let’s do that.” That’s a lot different from saying, “Fellas, we’ve got to win.” A lot different. Race? Religion? They didn’t matter. What mattered was the effort you made on the court and in the classroom. What mattered was your behavior, your conduct, your values.
Of course, that included a strong work ethic. He wanted our best effort. If that wasn’t good enough, he accepted the results. Coach Wooden figured maybe that’s the way it’s supposed to be. But he wanted our best effort before he’d be willing to say, “That’s the way it’s supposed to be.” By the second week of practice at UCLA, I was just totally hooked on how he did things—the progression of skills he had us work on and then putting it all together as a team.
When they outlawed the dunk, he told me, “Lewis, everybody will be playing under the same rules no matter what they are. This game isn’t about the dunk shot.
So just go on and play; it’s the same for everybody.” Very matter of fact. Mentally, I got past the rule change outlawing the dunk shot very quickly.
One of his strongest assets as a leader was his patience. A lot of players were skeptical about various things, and it would take a while to win them over.
Coach would let them try it their way and fail. He was good at that. It’s the best way to teach. Because after they failed, they wanted to know how to do it right. They wanted to learn how to do it right more than they wanted to prove Coach wrong.
So, here’s this 57-year-old guy, and he gets out there and shows them how to do it right. He knew how to do it right—in all departments.
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar: UCLA varsity, 1967–69; three NCAA national championships