Friday column: His was a life well-lived

John Wooden wasn’t a saint, and he wouldn’t have wanted anyone to think he was.

Wooden was a competitor. Nicknamed the “Indiana Rubber Man” in his playing days at Purdue for his willingness to throw his body on the floor in pursuit of a loose ball, Wooden lost none of his desire to win when he turned to coaching.

Bill Walton, who played for Wooden, acknowledged Wooden’s calm demeanor but said, “there is also the side of coach Wooden that he is this caged tiger.”

Wooden didn’t use profanity, but he could make his displeasure evident to his players with an emphatic “goodness gracious sakes alive.” He didn’t engage in sideline histrionics, but the zebras knew he was around.

“He never swore, but there was not a coach in the United States who could use the English language any better than he could,” one official said. “He was always technically and grammatically correct when he was chewing you out.”

It was probably the competitor that led Wooden to fail to run off booster and arch-fixer Sam Gilbert — the “sugar daddy” of UCLA basketball — who eventually landed the Bruins on NCAA probation. It is Wooden’s one significant failure, and it needs to be remembered.

But the competitor was only one part of Wooden. There was much more.

There was the teacher, beginning each season with the simple and surprisingly valuable lesson of how to properly put on sweat socks to avoid blisters.

There was the civil-rights advocate, early in his career keeping his Indiana State team from playing in an NAIA tournament because the tourney barred African-Americans.

There was the philosopher, constructing his Pyramid of Success, with its basic building blocks of industriousness, friendship, loyalty, cooperation and enthusiasm.

There was the husband, for a quarter century writing monthly love letters to his late wife — not only the only woman he had ever loved but the only woman he’d ever dated.

There was the moralist, stressing to his players that “a life not lived for others is not well-lived.”

There was the philanthropist. Wooden wasn’t wealthy; he never made more than $35,000 a year, but he generously gave of what he had — his time, even as his advancing age took its toll. A telling story about Wooden is that he remained listed in the Encino, Calif., phone book to the end of his days.

Wooden successfully coached young men from diverse cultures in a turbulent time — the 1960s and early ’70s. He managed this by not being brittle yet staying true to the values he learned growing up in Indiana.

One of the sayings he learned from his father, Joshua, was “Make each day your masterpiece,” which sounds trite — and is, I suppose, unless you actually try to live by it. Wooden did.

Wooden was authentic, and his players loved him for it. They believed knowing him made them better, not just on the court but in life.

John Wooden wasn’t a saint. He was, however, extraordinary, and to those who knew him, irreplaceable.

Contact Jim Gordon at gjames43@msn.com.