True success - John Wooden

[Music] [Applause]

I coined my own definition of success in 1934 when I was teaching at a high school in South Bend, Indiana. Being a little bit, uh, um, disappointed and delusioned, perhaps, by the way parents of the youngsters in my English classes expected their youngsters to get an A or B. They thought a C was all right for the neighbor’s children because the neighbor’s children are all average, but they weren’t satisfied with their own. It would make the teacher feel that they had failed or the youngster failed, and that’s not right.

The good Lord, in His infinite wisdom, didn’t create us all equal as far as intelligence is concerned, any more than equal for size or appearance. Not everybody could earn an A or B. I didn’t like that way of judging. I did know how the alumni of various schools back in the 30s judged coaches and athletic teams; if you won them all, you were considered to be reasonably successful.

Not completely, because I found out we had a number of years at UCLA where we didn’t lose a game, but it seemed that we didn’t win each individual game with the margin that some of our alumni had predicted. Quite frequently, I really felt that they had backed up their predictions in a more materialistic manner. But I was thrown back in the 30s, so I understood that. I didn’t like it; I didn’t agree with it.

I wanted to come up with something that I hoped could make me a better teacher and give the youngsters under my supervision, whether it be in athletics or in the English classroom, something to which to aspire other than just a higher mark in the classroom or more points in some athletic contest. I thought about that for quite a spell, and I wanted to come up with my own definition. I thought that might help.

I knew how Mr. Webster defined it as the accumulation of material possessions or the attainment of position, power, or prestige—or something of that sort, worthy accomplishments perhaps—but in my opinion, not necessarily indicative of success. So, I wanted to come up with something of my own.

I recalled I was raised on a small farm in Southern Indiana, and Dad tried to teach me and my brothers that you should never try to be better than someone else. I’m sure at the time, he did that. I didn’t understand it. Well, somewhere I guess in the hidden recess of the mind, it popped out years later.

Never try to be better than someone else; always learn from others and never cease trying to be the best you could be. That’s under your control. If you get too engrossed and involved and concerned in regard to things over which you have no control, it will adversely affect the things over which you have control.

Then I ran across a simple verse that said:

"At God's footstool to confess, a poor soul knelt and bowed his head. I failed, he cried. The Master said, 'Thou did thy best; that is Success.'"

From those things and one other, perhaps, I coined my own definition of success, which is peace of mind attained only through self-satisfaction in knowing you made the effort to do the best of which you’re capable.

I believe that’s true. If you make the effort to do the best of which you're capable, trying to improve the situation that exists for you, I think that’s success. I don’t think others can judge that. I think it’s like character and reputation; your reputation is what you’re perceived to be. Your character is what you really are, and I think the character is much more important than what you were perceived to be.

You’d hoped they’d both be good, but they might not necessarily be the same. Well, that was my idea—that was what I was going to try to get across to the youngsters.

I ran across other things I love to teach, and it was mentioned by the previous speaker that I enjoy poetry and I dabble in it a bit and love it. There are some things that helped me, I think, be better than I would have been. I know I'm not what I ought to be, not what I should be, but I think I'm better than I would have been if I hadn't run across certain things.

And one was just a little verse that said:

"No, no written word, no spoken plea can teach our youth what they should be, nor all the books on all the shelves is what the teachers are themselves."

That made an impression on me in the 1930s, and I tried to use that more or less in my teaching, whether it be in sports or whether it be in the English classroom. I love poetry and all; we had an interest in that.

And somehow—and maybe it’s because Dad used to read to us at night, co-o-lamp—we didn’t have electricity in our farm home, and they had to read poetry to us, so I always liked it. About the same time that I ran across this one verse, I ran across another one that someone asked a lady teacher why she taught.

She, after some time, she said she wanted to think about that, and then she came up and said, "They ask me why I teach, and I reply, 'Where could I find such splendid company? There sits a statesman, strong, unbiased, wise. Another, later Webster, silver-tongued. A doctor sits beside him whose quick, steady hand may mend a bone or stem the lifeblood's flow.

And there, a builder upward is the arch of that church he builds, wherein that minister may speak the word of God and lead us to some school to touch the Christ. All about, a gathering of teachers, farmers, merchants, laborers—those who work and vote and build and plan and pray into a great tomorrow.

And I may say, I may not see the church or hear the word or eat the food their hands may grow, but yet again I may. And later, I may say, 'I knew him once, and he was weak or strong or bold or proud or gay. I knew him once, but then he was a boy.'

They ask me why I teach, and I reply, 'Where could I find such splendid company?'"

I believe the teaching profession. It’s true, you have so many youngsters. I think of my youngsters—UCLA: 30 some attorneys, 11 dentists, 10 doctors, many, many teachers.

That gives you a great deal of pleasure to see them go on. I always tried to make the youngsters feel that they're there to get an education, number one; basketball was second, because it’s paying their way. They do need a little time for social activities, but you let social activities take a little precedence over the other two and you’re not going to have any very long.

So that was the idea that I tried to get across to the youngsters under my supervision. I had three rules pretty much that I stuck with practically all the time. I’d learned these prior to coming to UCLA and I decided they were very important. One was never be late—never be late.

Later on, I said certain things that I had. The players, if we were leaving for somewhere, they had to be neat and clean. There was a time when I made them wear jackets and shirts and ties, but then I saw our chancellor coming to school in denim and turtlenecks, and I thought it a little not right for me to keep this other, so I let them just—they had to be neat and clean.

I had one of my greatest players that you probably heard of—Bill Walton. He came off the bus; we were leaving for somewhere to play, and he wasn’t clean and neat, so I would let him go. He couldn’t get on the bus; he had to go home and get cleaned up to get to the airport.

I was a stickler for that. I believed in that. I believe in time; it’s very important. I believe you should be on time. But I felt that practices, for example, we start on time, we close on time. The youngsters didn’t have to feel that we're going to keep them over.

When I speak at coaching clinics, I often tell young coaches in the coaching clinics—more or less they’ll be the younger coaches getting in the profession, and most of them are young, you know, and probably newly married. I tell them don’t run practices late because you’ll go home in a bad mood, and that’s not good for a young married man to go home in a bad mood.

When you get older, when you get older, it doesn’t make any difference.

[Music]

So I did believe in being on time. I believe in starting on time, and I believe in closing on time.

Another one I had was not one word of profanity. One word of profanity, and you are out of here for the day. If I see it in a game, you’re going to come out and sit on the bench. The third one was never criticize a teammate. I didn’t want that. I used to tell them I was paid to do that. That’s my job. I’m paid to do it—pitifully poor, but I am paid to do it—not like the coaches today, for gracious sakes, no.

It’s a little different than it was in my day, but those are three things that I stuck with pretty closely all the time. Those actually came from my dad, and that's what he tried to teach me and my brothers. At one time, I came up with a pyramid eventually that I'm not going—we don’t have the time to go on that—but that to help me, I think, become a better teacher.

This is something like this, and I had blocks in the pyramid. The cornerstones being industrious and enthusiasm—working hard and enjoying what you’re doing. Coming up to the apex, according to my definition of success, and at the top, faith and patience.

I say to you, in whatever you’re doing, you must be patient. You have to have patience. We want things to happen to us. We talk about our youth being impatient a lot, and they are. They want to change everything. They think all change is progress, and we get a little older, we sort of let things go, and we forget there is no progress without change.

So you must have patience. I believe that we must have faith. I believe that we must believe—really believe, not just give it word service—that things will work out as they should, providing we do what we should.

I think our tendency is to hope that things will turn out the way we want them to so much of the time, but we don’t do the things that are necessary to make those things become reality. I worked on this for some 14 years, and I think it helped me become a better teacher, but it all revolved around that original definition of success.

You know, a number of years ago, there was a major league baseball umpire by the name of George Moriarty, and he spelled Moriarty with only one “i.” I’d never seen that before, but he did. Big league baseball players, they’re very perceptive about those things, and they noticed he had only one “i” in his name.

You’d be surprised how many also told him that that was one more than he had in his head at various times. But he wrote something that I think he did what I tried to do in this pyramid. He called it "The Road Ahead or The Road Behind," and he said:

"Sometimes I think the fates must grin as we denounce them and insist the only reason we can’t win is the fates themselves have missed. Yet there lives on the ancient claim: we win or lose within ourselves.

The shining trophies on our shelves can never win tomorrow's game. You and I know deeper down there’s always a chance to win the crown. But when we fail to give our best, we simply haven’t met the test of giving all and saving none until the game is really won.

Of showing what is meant by grit, of playing through another's quit. Of playing through, not letting up; it’s bearing down that wins the cup. Of dreaming there’s a goal in sight, of hoping when our dreams are dead, of praying when our hopes have fled.

Yet losing, not afraid to fall, if bravely we have given all. For who can ask more of a man than giving all within his span?

Giving all, it seems to me, is not so far from victory. And so the fates are seldom wrong, no matter how they twist and wind. It’s you and I who make our fates; we open up or close the gates on the road ahead near the road behind."

It reminds me of another set of threes that my dad tried to get across to us: no don't whine, don't complain, don't make excuses. You get out there and whatever you’re doing, do it to the best of your ability, and no one can do more than that.

I tried to get across to my players; you never heard me mention winning. I never mentioned winning. My idea is that you can lose when you outscore somebody in a game, and you can win when you’re outscored.

I’ve felt that way on certain occasions at various times, and I just wanted to be able to hold their heads up after a game. I used to say that when a game is over and you see somebody that didn’t know the outcome, I hope they couldn’t tell by your actions whether you outscored an opponent or the opponent outscored you.

And that’s what really matters. If you make your effort to do the best you can regularly, the results will be about what they should be—not necessarily what you’d want them to be, but they’ll be about what they should.

But only you will know whether you can do that, and that’s what I wanted from them more than anything else.

As time went by and I learned more about other things, I think it worked a little better as far as the results, but I wanted the score of a game to be the byproduct of these other things and not the end itself.

I believe it was one great philosopher who said—no, no, it was Cicero—Cicero said, "The journey is better than the end." And I like that. I think that’s true.

It’s getting there. Sometimes when you get there, there’s almost a letdown, but it’s getting there that’s the fun.

I like, as a basketball coach at UCLA, for our practices to be the journey, and the game would be the end result. I’d like to go up and sit in the stands and watch the players play and see whether I’d done a decent job during the week.

And there again, it’s getting the players to get that self-satisfaction in knowing that they’ve made the effort to do the best of which they are capable.

Sometimes I ask who was the best player I had or the best teams, and I can never answer that as far as the individual is concerned. I like to—I was asked one time about that. I said, "Suppose that you in some way could make the perfect player, what would you want?"

And I said, "Well, I’d want one that knew why he was at UCLA: to get an education. He was a good student, really knew why he was there in the first place. But I want one to play, too. I want one to realize that defense usually wins championships and would work hard on defense.

But I want him to play offense, too. I want him to be unselfish and look for the pass first and not shoot all the time. I don’t want him to run that could pass and would pass.

I’ve had some that could and wouldn’t, and I’ve had some that wouldn’t because you couldn’t. So I wanted that.

I wanted them to be able to shoot from the outside. I want them to be able to be good inside, too. I want them to be able to rebound well at both ends, too.

And why not just take someone like Keith Wilkes and let it go at that? He had the qualifications, and not the only one, but he was one that I used in that particular category because I think he made the effort to become the best.

A couple—I mentioned in my book, They Call Me Coach, that two players that gave me great satisfaction, came as close, I think, as anyone I ever had to reach their full potential. One was Conrad Burke and one was Doug McIntosh.

When I saw them as freshmen on our freshman team—we didn’t have freshmen play varsity when I taught—I thought, "Oh gracious, if these two players, either one of them—they were different years—but I thought about each one at the time he was there, who if he ever makes the varsity, it must be pretty miserable if he’s good enough to make it."

You know, one of them was a starting player for a season and a half, and the other was next year, he played 32 minutes in the national championship game, did a tremendous job for us. The next year he was a starting player on the National Championship team, and here I thought he’d never play a minute when it was.

So those are the things that give you great joy and great satisfaction to see one. Neither one of those youngsters could shoot very well, but they had outstanding shooting percentages because they didn’t force it.

Neither one could jump very well, but they kept good position, and so they did well rebounding. They remembered that every shot that’s taken, they assumed it’d be missed.

I’ve had too many that stand around, wait to see if it’s missed, and then they go. It’s too late; somebody else is in there ahead of them.

And they weren’t very quick, but they played good position, kept in good balance, and so they played pretty good defense for us. They had qualities that they came close to as close to reaching possibly their full potential as any players I ever had.

So I consider them as successful as a Lew Alcindor or a Bill Walton and many of the others that we had.

There were some outstanding players. I’ve rambled enough. I was told that when he makes his appearance, I’m supposed to shut up.

[Applause]

Beautiful!