John Wooden

John Robert Wooden (October 14, 1910 – June 4, 2010) was an American basketball coach and player. Nicknamed "the Wizard of Westwood", he won ten National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) national championships in a 12-year period as head coach for the UCLA Bruins, including a record seven in a row. No other team has won more than four in a row in Division I college men's or women's basketball. Within this period, his teams won an NCAA men's basketball record 88 consecutive games. Wooden won the prestigious Henry Iba Award as national coach of the year a record seven times and won the Associated Press award five times. As a 5-foot-10-inch (1.78 m) guard with the Purdue Boilermakers, Wooden was the first college basketball player to be named an All-American three times, and the 1932 Purdue team on which he played as a senior was retroactively recognized as the pre-NCAA tournament national champion by the Helms Athletic Foundation and was retroactively listed as the top-ranked team by the Premo-Porretta Power Poll. He played professionally in the National Basketball League (NBL). Wooden was inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame as a player (1960) and as a coach (1973), the first person to be enshrined in both categories. One of the most respected coaches in the history of sports, Wooden was admired by many of his former players, including Lew Alcindor (later Kareem Abdul-Jabbar) and Bill Walton. He was known for delivering short, simple motivational messages to his players, including his concept of the "Pyramid of Success", which emphasized success in life as well as in basketball. Wooden's 29-year coaching career and reputation for leadership contributed to a legacy that extended beyond sports into fields such as business, personal development, and organizational leadership.