Andrew Hill - Be Quick - But Dont Hurry: Finding Success in the Teachings of a Lifetime

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L EARNING

G ROWING UP as a sports-crazed kid in Westwood, California, I had the chance to watch some of the nations most compelling stars and teams compete in my own backyard. The Dodgers with Sandy Koufax and Don Drysdale, and the Lakers with Jerry West and Elgin Baylor were fun to watch as they battled for world championships, but they were not the most successful teams in town. That distinction belonged to a college team just a couple of miles from my house: During the 1960s and 1970s, Coach John Woodens UCLA Bruins were the most dominant and successful sports program ever seen.

Coach Woodens UCLA basketball teams were a highspeed, classy, Blue-and-Gold winning machine. While its hard to imagine that integration was still an issue in college basketball back then, those Bruins were somewhat in the vanguard, with their perfect blend of black and white, urban and rural, big and small. The starters were a black center from Kansas, two white kids from Southern California, a black guard from Philadelphia, and a Jewish forward born in Brooklyn. UCLA won its first NCAA championship in 1964, two full years before an all-black Texas Western (now University of Texas El Paso) team beat an all-white University of Kentucky team and hastened the recruitment of black ballplayers at every school in the country. The Bruins played with a consistency and controlled passion that seemed a direct reflection of their coach. The culture of Los Angeles in the 1960s was so self-consciously hip that John Woodens provincial Indiana roots made him appear to be from another planet. Unlike the style-conscious L.A. glitterati, he was very secure in who he was and where he came from. In a city where everyone wanted to be cool, this man clearly had no interest in imitating the world of movie deals, cuttingedge fashion, rock music, and air kisses. If Pat Riley was the quintessence of L.A. style as coach of the Lakers in the 1980s, Coach Wooden was its antithesis, bringing to the limelight the solid Midwestern values of substance over Showtime. Even as a young boy I could sense that there was something special about a man like this; John Wooden was cool simply because he didnt try to fit in and conform to the shifting tides of Southern California culture.

This is not to say his teams were boring. The Bruins were built on speed, quickness, a tough man-to-man defense, a withering zone press, and a relentless fast break. Now, there may be some kid in America who grows up dreaming of playing slow-down, highly structured, Princeton-style basketball, but Ive never met that kid. There was something intoxicating and captivating about the pace and attacking style of the Bruins. Many of their games were close and hard fought, but then the Bruins would generate a blistering run that devastated the opposition, the basketball equivalent of a heavyweight boxer knocking out his opponent. I was already a fan before the Bruins won their first national title in 196364, but that season pushed my infatuation to new heights.

Though the players changed through the years, the sense of style and class that came to epitomize UCLA basketball always grew out of the concepts espoused by Coach Wooden. Central to those teachings was his Pyramid of Success, which is familiar to the tens of millions of sports fans who marveled at this remarkable sports dynasty. The Pyramid was Coach Woodens attempt to diagram the key ingredients necessary for personal success (see diagram pages 1011). With a foundation based on qualities like industriousness, friendship, loyalty, cooperation, and enthusiasm, the Pyramid builds to an apex that is capped off with patience and faith. To those who have never met Coach Wooden, it seems almost too corny to be true.