THE EXEMPLAR
John Wooden, as a motivator, teacher, and coach is one of the most important and lasting icons of his era — in and beyond the world of sports. His teams won a remarkable 80% of the time that they took the floor over his forty-year coaching career, including sixteen conference championships, an 88-game winning streak, and ten NCAA men’s basketball championships at UCLA, four of which featured undefeated teams. These records, set in the 1960s and ‘70s, have not yet been challenged and many believe that they will stand the test of time. They are a testament as to why Wooden is generally considered the greatest coach of all time.
COACH'S PHILISOPHICAL UNDERPINNING
While the statistics might suggest some mysterious ploy, such was not the case. Simply, Coach Wooden reached and stayed at the pinnacle of his profession at UCLA, as a motivator and teacher, by embracing and living the timeless values learned from his boyhood days on a farm in Indiana. These values and desirable attributes, subsequently articulated in his "Pyramid of Success," became the philosophical and practical foundation for the most successful coaching career in history.
