John Wooden and Lew Alcindor during a practice in March 1969
By Tony Solorzano
I knew that this day would come one day, but it still is hard to fathom that Coach is gone. I know he’s finally reunited with his beloved Nell, which he’s been waiting for since her passing 25 years ago. However, in the days since John Wooden passed from this place of existence, I have been thinking about his impact on life, and the one thing he was never comfortable with.
So let me share with you something I wrote this week- Coach Wooden’s disdain for being called “The Wizard of Westwood”
If there was one thing John Wooden disliked-the man did not know the meaning nor chose to use the word “hate” in his vocabulary- it was the nickname given to him by sports writers, like myself, as “The Wizard of Westwood.” Nothing vexed him more than that moniker.
“I think of a wizard as being some sort of magician or something, doing something on the sly,” he once said about the title. “I don’t want to be thought of that way.”
It is, of course, understandable that Coach would feel that way. He was teaching simple lessons that reverberated not only on the court but also in life. Also his Midwestern upbringing no doubt also played a hand in this. But I think that given his passing, there is another way of looking at the moniker he disliked, one that comes from, of all people, the creator of the Harry Potter series, J. K. Rowling.
In her now-famous series of novels, Harry Potter’s most beloved of his teachers was the headmaster of Hogwarts, Albus Dumbledore. Like Wooden, Dumbledore was not only training Harry for his destiny to defeat the Dark Wizard Voldemort, but also provided him with tools for his life after.
In some ways, Coach Wooden and Albus Dumbledore are cut from the same cloth; both understand the pitfalls of life. Where Coach used the game of basketball to frame his philosophy which is more famously known as the “Pyramid of Success,” Dumbledore used his life experience, which included the mistakes he made, in his effort to prepare Harry for what lay ahead in his young life.
In some respects, Coach Wooden was not a magician in the sense he felt, there was no trick to the lessons he taught, there was no wave of a wand that made things clear to his students, but he was a magician in one sense, if nothing else, he opened up a world of possibilities to his players outside of basketball that some had never considered.
He did the same for the little children at Newport Beach’s Mariner elementary school, when he visited the classroom of a teacher who created a character-education program based on his pyramid and the children’s book he co-wrote, “Inch and Miles: The Journey to Success.”
John Wooden was not a wizard in the truest sense of the word. He had no magic spells up his sleeve, he only had the wisdom of a life well lived to impart upon those he taught, even those who never picked up a basketball. And for that we shall be forever grateful.
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