John Wooden

John Robert Wooden ( born October 14, 1910 in Martinsville, Indiana, † June 4, 2010 in Los Angeles ) was an American professional basketball player and coach. As head coach of the UCLA basketball team (UCLA Bruins ), he won ten NCAA championships, including seven in series of 1967 to 1973. He was by far the most successful coach in the history of competition, no other coach has over four title wins. During his playing days he was nicknamed "the Indiana Rubber Man", later he was called "the Wizard of Westwood ."

Career

As a player, Wooden was active on the position of the guard for the team of Purdue University, with which he could win the 1932 national college championship. In the National Basketball League, he played for the Indianapolis Kautsky and the Hammond Ciesar All-Americans and coached parallel to high school teams. After the Second World War, in which he had served the Navy, was Wooden coach of the team of the Indiana State Teachers College, now Indiana State University. From 1948 to 1975 he was then responsible for the basketball team at UCLA, where he worked on later NBA stars like Gail Goodrich, Lew Alcindor aka Kareem Abdul- Jabbar and Bill Walton. His first NCAA title with the Bruins celebrated Wooden in 1964, it was also his first of four seasons without defeat. More titles profits he celebrated in 1965, 1967-1973 and 1975 to the end of his career. In the 1971/72 season his team won an average of more than 30 points ahead, 1971-1974 they won 88 games in a row.

Honors

Wooden received the 1972 Award for Sportsman of the Year Sports Illustrated. He was inducted as the first person ever both as a player (1960 ) and as a coach (1973 ) into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame. 2003 Wooden, the Presidential Medal of Freedom was awarded. As a sign of recognition that UCLA called, therefore, a sports recreation center after him, the John Wooden Center.