Wooden: A Coach's Life Read Online Free Page B

teams seized it. This was aided by the rules that were in place at the time. After each made basket, the teams returned to center court for a jump ball. There was also no half-court line—that would not be added until 1932—and thus no ten-second counts or backcourt violations. And of course, the sport was decades away from implementing a shot clock. Thus, if a coach had guards who were reliable, quick dribblers, they could use the entire floor to avoid the defense and run out the clock.
    Johnny did not hold the Old Fox in high esteem at first. His older brother, Cat, had been a member of Curtis’s 1924 championship team, but Cat barely got into the games. Curtis appeared to confirm Johnny’s fears early on while breaking up a fight between Wooden and one of his teammates. In Wooden’s eyes, Curtis had unfairly backed up the other fellow. “You’re not going to do to me what you did to my brother!” Johnny shouted. He flung off his jersey, his shorts, his shoes, and his socks, and he stormed off the floor in half-naked protest. He decided then and there to quit the team.
    Curtis could have regarded Wooden as an intemperate fool and bade him good riddance. But he didn’t. Instead, he spent the next two weeks trying to coax Wooden back on to the squad. Wooden resisted at first, but eventually he relented. He also never forgot his coach’s graciousness in letting him back on the team, a lesson that Wooden would apply to his own players after he started coaching.
    Wooden was fortunate to encounter early in his life a man who took his craft so seriously. Curtis systematically broke down the game into its smallest, simplest elements. His players worked for long stretches without using a basketball, and on his command they efficiently shuttled from drill to drill. A decade later, in 1936, Curtis started using a friend’s movie camera to film games and instruct his teams. He was so impressed that he convinced the high school to purchase a camera so he could use it whenever he wanted. An official from the Eastman Kodak Company told the Daily Reporter that “no one has yet attempted to teach basketball through this medium.”
    Curtis was also renowned for delivering spine-tingling locker room speeches minutes before tip-off. That was one tactic that did not impress Wooden. Hugh had so emphatically pounded the importance of keeping an even keel that Johnny did not want his emotions to overtake him. However, once the games began, Wooden was struck by how Curtis regained his composure. On one occasion, when an opposing player took a cheap shot at Wooden, Curtis prevailed upon young Johnny not to retaliate. “They’re trying to get you out of the game. Don’t lose your temper,” he told Wooden. Then he joked, “After the game is over, I’ll take on the coach and you can take on the players.”
    Unlike his brother, Johnny was a starter on Curtis’s team, and he led the Artesians to a sectional title in the 1926 Indiana state tournament. The final rounds were to be played in Indianapolis at the Exposition Center, which was called the “cow barn” because twice a year it hosted livestock shows. Martinsville made it to the championship game—its third contest of the day—where it faced Marion High School. Marion’s nickname was the “Giants,” which was appropriate because the lineup featured the tallest player Wooden had ever seen: Charles “Stretch” Murphy, a six-foot-eight-inch center. The center-jump rule made having that kind of player an enormous asset. Wooden failed to score as Martinsville lost, 30–23.
    Despite the disappointing finish, it was a terrific first season of varsity basketball for young Johnny. In the parlance of the day, he played the position of floor guard, which made him responsible for directing the offense much as a point guard does today. (A team’s other guard at that time was typically called a back guard because he served as a de facto goalie, hanging back on defense to protect his