John Wooden, 1910–2010

In a four-decade career coaching high school and college basketball, John Wooden had only one losing season—his first. After that, he established an astonishing record of victories and an enduring legend as the greatest coach in college basketball history. “You can have a pretty good argument about who is the second-greatest college coach of all time,” said Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski. “There’s absolutely no argument about who is the greatest.”

Wooden grew up on an Indiana farm in a house without electricity or indoor plumbing, said The New York Times. He started playing basketball as a young boy, but “his first basketball was a black cotton sock his mother stuffed with rags. The hoop was a tomato basket.” He went on to lead his high school team to three consecutive state finals. He went to college at Purdue University, where the 5-foot-10, 175-pound guard and team captain led his team to a national championship in 1932 and was named player of the year. He also “had the highest grade point average of any Purdue athlete that year.”

The first person to be inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame as both player and coach, Wooden made his biggest mark on the sidelines, said the Associated Press. After coaching high school and college teams in Indiana, Wooden was hired by UCLA in 1948. In addition to an “up-tempo style not well known on the West Coast,” Wooden brought his homespun philosophy. “He was a master of the simple one- or two-sentence homily,” which he distilled into his “Pyramid of Success”—a chart emphasizing hard work, integrity, and teamwork. The “gentlemanly coach” eventually established one of the greatest records of any coach in any sport, said The Christian Science Monitor. Wooden led his teams to 10 national championships, seven in consecutive years, from 1967 to 1973. During that stretch, UCLA won 88 straight victories, a record that stands to this day.

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A regular Bible reader, Wooden demanded obedience from his players even throughout the ’60s, an era in which college students were in open rebellion, said the Los Angeles Times. When star center Bill Walton returned for his final season at UCLA, his unruly red mop did not meet Wooden’s rigid standards. “Bill, that’s not short enough,” Wooden told him. “We’re sure going to miss you on this team.” Walton sped to the barber and returned with a closer cut. Over 27 years at UCLA, Wooden’s teams were marked by discipline and tenacity. In his final game, in 1975, Wooden’s “Bruins outran and out-hustled a stronger Kentucky squad, winning 92–85”—to claim another national championship.

Wooden was married for 53 years to his high school sweetheart, Nell Riley, who died in 1985. He lived in a modest condo in Encino, Calif., drove a 1989 Ford Taurus, and was a quiet presence at UCLA games before becoming too frail to attend. Despite Wooden’s unparalleled achievements—the college game’s highest award for individual excellence is named in his honor—he never lost his humility. Said former UCLA coach Jim Harrick: “He had as little ego as anybody I’ve ever known.”