A Coach's Diary

I have just decided to re-read John Wooden’s autobiography They Call Me Coach, and to complete it before the start of our basketball season.  Our first official practice is October 19th, so I have to get moving.  Here are excerpts from the forward to this book, written by Bill Walton.  There are so many gems in this forward about Coach Wooden, the type of man he is, and what he believed in, from the eyes and experience of one of his most accomplished players. Coach Wooden is a humble, private man who has selflessly devoted his life to make other people's lives better. With John Wooden, there is never an end to anything.  His ability to always be about what's next, always about the future, enables him to lead an incredibly active, constructive, positive and contributing life to this very day. Today, John Wooden is still our coach in so many ways.  He there with us each and every day, pushing, shaping, molding, challenging, driving us to be better,...

All of this was done in the subtlest of ways.  While our practices were the most demanding endeavors that I’ve ever been a part of – so physically, emotionally, mentally, and psychologically taxing – there was always the sense of joy, of celebration, and of people having fun playing a simple game.   Always positive, always constructive, John Wooden drove us in ways and directions that we are not aware of, always with the goal of making us better.   It is never about him, never about the struggle for material accumulation, but always about individual skill and personal development within the framework of the team, the game, and UCLA.    Our practices, our lives are constantly structured around the four laws of learning: demonstration, imitation, correction, and repetition. And repeat we do – everything, every day, until we have become John Wooden ourselves.

The exerpt below is from an article at Bruin Report Online where UCLA coach at the time, Steve Lavin, talks about his plan for his team in the upcoming season.  What I really wanted to archive for my notes is the following passage where he talks about the importance of the face break in the mid-90's. Lavin:  "And the fast break is such a key weapon, it has to be a key part of your game if you want to win the National Championship. Look at Duke and Arizona, look at Kentucky, look at our '95 team. We broke down that team and figured that 1/3 of our offense came off the break, whether you are counting on baskets generated by defensive rebounds or by the defense off of turnovers. The last 3 years, with Baron and Earl, we are talking at maybe 10-15% of our offense off of breaks." You can read the article in its entirety here:  http://www.scout.com/college/ucla/story/31671-interview-with-steve-lavin-part-1