Wooden On Leadership: How to Create a Winning Organization

Ward “Piggy” Lambert (1888-1958) was the head basketball coach at Purdue University from 1918 to 1946 and was inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in 1960. At Purdue, Lambert compiled a record of 371-152, won 11 Big Ten Conference titles, and won the Helms Athletic Foundation National Championship in 1932. Wooden was the star player on Lambert’s 1932 championship team. Wooden refers to Lambert several times throughout his work, specifically mentioning that he was a revolutionary coach who changed the way that basketball is played. Lambert’s style, which was in part adopted by Wooden when he became a coach, was known as a “fire wagon” style of play because of the fast pace (42).

Born Lewis Alcindor in Harlem, New York in 1947, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar is acknowledged as one of the greatest basketball players in the history of the sport. By the time Abdul-Jabbar was a senior in high school, he was already seven feet tall, and he became one of the most highly recruited athletes in college sports history. He chose to attend UCLA and play for Wooden, enrolling in the fall of 1965. During all three of his varsity seasons for the Bruins, 1967-1969, Jabbar was named the National Player of the Year and the Most Outstanding Player of the NCAA Tournament. The Bruins won the national title all three years and compiled an overall record of 88-2 during his varsity seasons. Jabbar was the top overall pick in the 1969 NBA Draft, after which he won six NBA titles, won six NBA Most Valuable Player Awards, and became the league’s all-time scoring leader. Wooden refers to Abdul-Jabbar many times throughout his work, but most prominently in Chapter 4 when he discusses values. According to Wooden, Abdul-Jabbar chose to play for Wooden at UCLA because of the values he found there—specifically, he saw evidence of equality and scholastic merit and found that Wooden was “blind to color”; he also received credible testimonials from people he respected.

Born in California in 1952, Bill Walton is widely regarded as one of the greatest collegiate basketball players in NCAA history. Like Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Walton was one of the most highly recruited basketball players in the nation. He decided to attend UCLA and play for Wooden, enrolling in 1970 and becoming the team’s starting center throughout his three varsity seasons, 1972-1974. Also like Abdul-Jabbar, Walton was named the National Player of the Year three times and was twice named the NCAA Tournament’s Most Outstanding Player. Walton led the Bruins to two national titles, a still-standing NCAA record 88-game winning streak, and an overall record of 86-4 during his three seasons. He was the top overall pick of the 1974 NBA Draft and won one NBA title and one NBA Most Valuable Player Award before injuries derailed his career. Wooden also alludes to Walton many times throughout the book. In Chapter 5, for example, Wooden writes that Walton “consistently tested the limits of what was acceptable behavior” (87). Walton, who was a notorious counterculture figure of the 1970s, was once barred from traveling with the team for a road game because he broke Wooden’s rule about traveling with “a clean and neat appearance” (87).

Denny Crum (1937-2023) was a basketball coach who guided the Louisville Cardinals to two national championships, in 1980 and 1986, and six total Final Four appearances. Crum played for Wooden at UCLA as a guard from 1957 to 1959. Following his playing career at UCLA, Crum became one of Wooden’s assistant coaches from 1967 to 1971, during which time the Bruins won the national title each year. In Chapter 13, Wooden refers to Crum in a passage entitled “Always Question, Always Probe.” Wooden writes of Crum that he “asked more questions than anyone [he’s] ever met” (203), but he also notes that Crum always did this in an intelligent manner because he wanted to understand the logic behind decisions.