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This time of year has
sports fans euphoric since it is the beginning of the baseball
season and March Madness is heating up. A new book, Conversations
with Coach Wooden by former UCLA baseball coach Gary Adams
is very relevant since it combines both these sports. But
it’s more than just a sports book because it explains
how two coaches reflected on life and tried to retain important
American values that appear lost today. Gary Adams shared
an office with Coach Wooden for almost a decade after the
legendary basketball coach’s retirement.
The book reflects on Wooden’s core philosophies and
principles behind his numerous basketball successes. It also
shows how Wooden influenced Adam’s career and coaching
style as they became very close friends. Adams stated that
his first year of coaching was Wooden’s last. After
retiring, UCLA’s Athletic Director asked Adams if he
wanted a high profile officemate. “The book describes
how we met and told me ‘Gary, you know you are coaching
my favorite sport, baseball.”
Adams went on to say that during an interview Wooden commented
that he was never asked to be an assistant baseball coach.
Adams chuckled as he noted, “I would have been proud
and honored for him to be my bench coach. Can you imagine
having Coach Wooden as my right hand man to help me think
about what I should do? Unfortunately, during those times
there was never such a thing as a bench coach.”
There are many stories about former players, as well as how
both coaches viewed the changes to the games. Both coaches,
as with today, believed change is not necessarily for the
better. Regarding basketball Wooden was disheartened with
the one and done, the slam-dunk, and the “show-off”
players. He felt basketball was no longer a sport but pure
entertainment. For him, the beauty of basketball was in the
fundamentals of it being a team sport. In the book Adams quotes
Wooden, “Those fancy behind-the-back passes and showmanship
slam dunks do not make the execution of the game any better.
They are only done to entertain the fans. Well it does not
entertain me.” He went on to say that the best basketball
is having sound fundamentals that emphasize “good old-fashioned
teamwork.”
Wooden thought “the slam dunk may be good for entertainment,
but it’s not good for the game.” He once told
Adams that at a UCLA basketball game a Bruin went high in
the air and did a pirouette slam-dunk. His response was, “that
player would have been sitting on the bench before his feet
landed on the ground.”
Baseball according to both coaches has not changed for the
better with the American League rule of having a designated
hitter. Adams said he and Coach Wooden did not like the designated-hitter
rule because it took the strategy away from the game. Would
a pitcher who is doing well be pulled for a pinch-hitter?
Conversations with Coach Wooden is an engrossing book for
both a sports fan and a non-sports fan. If you like basketball
or baseball, you will love the personal stories of the coaches
and players in this book. But beyond that is the life lessons
these two coaches taught through the sports of baseball and
basketball. These lessons seem to have been forgotten by some
Americans today.
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