John Wooden was the greatest basketball coach in NCAA history. His teams were known for hustle, teamwork, and competition. LIFE Business Founder Orrin Woodward is known for similar qualities. He refuses to be outworked; he loves to work as part of a team; and, he loves honest competition. Orrin has said many times, true competition creates cooperation. What team are you part of? Perhaps, like John Wooden and Orrin Woodward, it's time for you to start playing to win.
On October 14, 1910, in Hall, Indiana, into a Dutch-Irish family, John Robert Wooden was born. The farmhouse, where he grew up, had few of the modern day conveniences, like running water or electricity, but young John was given something much greater by his parents, an unbeatable work ethic. In Wooden’s nugget filled book Wooden, written with Steve Jamison, he reveals the secret to his superhuman work ethic, “My dad, Joshua, had great influence on my own personal definition of success, . . . . one of the things that he tried to get across to me was that I should never try to be better than someone else. Then he always added, ‘But Johnny, never cease trying to be the best you can be. That is under your control. The other isn’t.’ . . . . The concept that success is mine when I work my hardest to become my best and that I alone determine whether I do so, became central to my life and affected me in a most profound manner.” Wooden may not have won every contest he entered, but he was rarely, if ever, outworked. This legendary work ethic, one of the cornerstones of Wooden’s success, led a farm boy from the fields of Indiana, to UCLA, in Los Angeles, leading to ten NCAA titles in his last twelve years, including a record seven in a row. There are many qualities that can be learned from John Wooden, but central to his philosophy and life was his mastery of his profession by the consistent and persistent work ethic over time.
As a player at Purdue University, Wooden was not blessed physically with a Michael Jordan frame, but he maximized what he was given, quickness and speed, through sheer determination and work ethic. In fact, Piggy Lambert, Purdue’s coach for 29 years, said that Johnny was the best-conditioned athlete that he ever coached in any sport. Strong words of praise from Lambert, who won 11 Big Ten basketball titles as head coach at Purdue. Wooden said, “Later, I applied the same philosophy to our teams: focus all your effort on what is within your power to control. Conditioning is one of these things. How your mind functions is another.” Wooden’s legendary work ethic, led Purdue to the 1932 Helm’s Foundation unofficial national championship, and him into the college hall of fame. But to Wooden, the fame of winning was secondary to the inner peace of knowing that one has done his personal best. Wooden’s definition of success exemplifies this, “Success is the peace of mind that is a direct result of self-satisfaction in knowing you did your best to become the best you are capable of becoming.” In other words, one can lose, but still win, if he did his personal best. On the other hand, one can win, but still lose, if he didn’t do his personal best. This philosophy imbued all of his teams with an unquenchable drive for excellence night in and night out. Wooden believed that the external scoreboard was secondary to the internal scoreboard, where players competed more against themselves, rather than the competition, to reach their potential, he explained, “Championships were never the cake; they were the icing. Doing our best was the cake.”
Wooden coached high school basketball for eleven years before moving into the NCAA by accepting the head coaching position at Indiana State. After two years there, in which Wooden led his Indian State team to the NAIB finals, Wooden, in 1948, accepted the head coaching position at UCLA. He was led to believe that UCLA would soon have a state of the art basketball facility to support his efforts. However, the promise wasn’t fulfilled until nearly seventeen years later, forcing his UCLA teams to practice under less than optimal conditions. To say that the UCLA facilities were outdated would be an understatement, with many modern high schools having better training facilities. It’s hard to imagine, but Wooden’s future UCLA dynasty practiced basketball on the third floor of the old Mens Gymnasium, the same floor that both the gymnastic and wrestling programs used for their practices, many times simultaneously. In fact, the place was infamously labeled the B.O. barn, from its lack of ventilation along with the inherent smells emanating from hard working athletes. Wooden shares, “For sixteen years, I helped our managers sweep and mop the floor every day before practice because of the dust stirred up from the other activities. These were hardship conditions, not only for the basketball team, . . . You could have written a long list of excuses why UCLA shouldn’t have been able to develop a good basketball team there. Nevertheless, the B.O. barn was where we built teams that won national championships in 1964 and 1965. You must take what is available and make the very most of it.” When one studies Wooden, a recurring theme seems to be, that whatever the situation, by applying disciplined hard work, it will be conquered. Instead of waiting for conditions to improve, thus helping the team improve, Wooden focused on improving the team through a spirited effort that eventually led to improved surroundings.
Few recognize, that it took Wooden sixteen years to put all the puzzle pieces together, launching the dynasty in 1964 with UCLA’s first NCAA title. Most people are too impatient with the success process, applying hard work for a day, a week, or maybe even a year, expecting to be a champion without the full 10,000 hour investment. How many people are willing to invest sixteen years, with no titles, yet remain as committed, if not more so, at the start of year seventeen? But Wooden, in his mind, viewed things differently, his teams were winning long before their 1964 NCAA title, because his teams strived to reach their full potential. Wooden, in his book, Wooden on Leadership, also written with Jamison, describes his philosophy, “There is a standard higher than merely winning the race: Effort is the ultimate measure of success. . . . When it’s over, I want your heads up. And there’s only one way your heads can be up – that’s to give it your best out there, everything you have. . . . To my way of thinking, when you give your total effort – everything you have – the score can never make you a loser. And when you do less, it can’t somehow magically turn you into a winner.” For most champions, it’s that extra effort, when everyone else is out of gas, that makes the difference between victory and defeat. Wooden tapped into the inner motivation of his players, helping them to fulfill their potential, leading to practices that were more intense than the majority of the games.
Over and over in life, one finds that hard work creates its own luck. Examine the chain of events, leading to Lew Alcindor (now Kareem Abdul Jabbar), one of the all-time most recruited collegiate athletes, attending UCLA. Because Wooden instilled pride into his teams, expecting superior work ethic, regardless of the practice conditions at the B.O. barn, UCLA overcome the hardships, winning two consecutive championships. Because they reached the finals, the games were aired on T.V. before a national audience. One of the interested fans, who watched the games was a young Lew Alcindor, who became intrigued with the burgeoning UCLA dynasty. Alcindor interest in UCLA led to a commitment from the athletic director, J. D. Morgan, to finish building the Pauley Pavilion by the fall of 1965, in time for the basketball season. Another case of L.U.C.K. – Laboring Under Correct Knowledge striking again.
