Seth Davis has some pretty sweet gigs: college basketball analyst for CBS, writer for Sports Illustrated, plus a young family and a home in Southern California close enough to the beach to wet his toes. And yet he complicated all of that by investing several years of his working life writing a biography of John Wooden called, “Wooden: A Coach’s Life.”
It’s a phenomenal, detailed biography of the coach named by a panel of sports experts Sporting News convened in 2009 as “the greatest coach in American sports” — and it includes significant detail about the activities of notorious Bruins booster Sam Gilbert. We were curious what motivated Davis to invest so much of his energy into the project, and what he learned as a result.
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SN: What made you want to write a book about John Wooden? Certainly involved an awful lot of work, and it’s not like there’s a shortage of books about him.
Davis: It started with my experiences from being with the family, being around him and writing about him. And in preparation for interviews, reading what was written about him. There were a lot of books about him, but every book was written either by Wooden, with Wooden or for Wooden. I sensed early on there was a much deeper story. He was presented as a two-dimensional character — never had any flaws, never had any bad day. That’s not real life.
I didn’t want the book to be a takedown, but it is real life. To me, he makes a lot more sense. That’s what history does. You get an idea of where we’ve come, where we are and where we want to go. The Sam Gilbert thing: it’s the thing that everybody knows about but nobody knows about. When I’d be on the road in the summer talking to coaches and they’d ask me what I was working on, and I’d tell them — every single time, without fail: “Are you going to write about Sam Gilbert?” Yet if I were sitting with some buddies who are big sports fans, or even people in the industry, people would have no idea. What really happened?
He was not a perfect man, and he did not live a perfect life. But he was an extraordinary man, and he lived an extraordinary life. People will be blown away by what they don’t know about him.
SN: Have to admit that after reading the book, I thought a little less of Wooden as a coach: his disdain for scouting, the fact the zone press that invigorated the UCLA program was not entirely his concept. Did you finish your work with that impression?
Davis: No, because at the end of the day, we judge coaches by winning. So however he got there, he got there. He had Alcindor and he had Walton — maybe the two best college players ever. That’s five championships. He also won a championship with no starter taller than 6-5, and he won one with Dave Meyers and Marques Johnson as his two best players.
If anything, it’s made me wonder why more coaches aren’t like him.
Right up until the end, the working title was called, “The Teacher.” That, to me, is what he was as a basketball coach. Teach me how to play the game, and when the game starts, get out of the way. You tell me another coach who thinks of it that way today.
That’s one thing he was very humble about: ask him who was the best coach, and he would tell you the person (with the) best players. To me, I maintain he was the best coach in American sports. He didn’t have Bill Russell for a decade. He didn’t have Michael Jordan for all six championships.
SN: How much time did you spend with Wooden in preparing for the book?
Davis: I had three lengthy interviews with him over a nine-year period for columns for SI.com. The first one was right after Ben Howland got hired. I was actually living in LA. I’d just gotten married, and I had this idea that when you become coach at UCLA, John Wooden comes with it.
I knew Wooden ate breakfast at the same place every day, and I thought it would be great to get him and Ben Howland together for breakfast. And when it was over, he invited us over to his condo. He needed company. He wasn’t much of a TV watcher. He liked having people around to pass the time.
I did that three times over nine years before he died.
SN: You were very frank about booster Sam Gilbert’s activities in regards to providing UCLA players with what now would be called “extra benefits.” Does all that taint UCLA’s titles to you?
Davis: Well, I wouldn’t say it tainted the titles, but I would say it complicated my view of who he was. It helped explain to me who he was. One of the things I kind of pieced together about him is he was really an insecure man. For someone who evinced so much intelligence and expertise and confidence, he was quite insecure. I think a lot of that was coming out of the Great Depression.
As far as Gilbert, it’s not like he felt like he could really do that much about it. He had a very imperious athletic director, and that was their dynamic: J.D. Morgan was the boss. And a lot of times, to his detriment, Wooden stayed out of his players’ personal lives.
Where I think John Wooden comes out of this on the wrong side: it’s that after he retired, he spent the next 30 years of his life lecturing about integrity. When he said the NCAA never looked and found nothing — that was not true. They never looked, and when they did they found a lot.
Life is messy, and life is complicated. At some point he had to make an active decision: do I keep digging, or do I lay down the shovel?
SN: Did you sense that Wooden had any regret over his lack of action to stop Gilbert?
Davis: None. Zero. And I brought it right up to him. I was fearful about it, wasn’t sure how he would react. In his mind, it was very cut and dried: I didn’t create it, I didn’t orchestrate it, it wasn’t part of my recruiting. I went to my AD. He always believed the softest pillow was a clear conscience, and believe me, he slept well.
SN: Having researched the book, what do you think the most important factors were in the UCLA dynasty?
Davis: I just think he got better players. He caught some lightning in a bottle with the 1964 team — and this is the 50th anniversary of that team. They figured out a way to play, they got some players who were better than they realized, and they got some breaks and went 30-0. And Lew Alcindor liked the way they played. Once that winning got started, it just carried on its own momentum.
One thing about John Wooden that might be the most important: he really was pretty consistent. He made his share of mistakes, as we all do, but he pretty much held on to his value systems that he learned from his dad in Indiana. It was such a tumultuous time during the dynasty, and him being this bedrock for consistency was his greatest asset.
SN: There’s a story in the book that sounds almost apocryphal: that he was “congratulated” by a booster after the 1975 championship and the man said, “You let us down last year, but …” Sounded like it was concocted, but you had several sources confirming it’s true.
Davis: Marques Johnson was very vivid in his recollection of how incensed he was, and how bothered he was, and how entitled everybody was, people thought it was so easy. He really resented that entire attitude he had been dealing with for an entire decade.
His wife had health issues. He had a heart attack. To have some well-heeled booster make a comment like that … to me, maybe the saddest part of the whole story is those 12 years when he was winning championships were the toughest years of his life.
SN: What did you learn about Wooden through this process that surprised or shocked you?
The circumstances under which he decided to retire. Here’s the least spontaneous man on the planet. He’s going to make that decision walking off the court because he doesn’t want to go to the press conference? That story was complete fiction.
SN: You wrote about how Gene Bartow dealt with the literal shadow of Wooden in trying to succeed him. Do you think that’s still an issue for Bruins coaches 40 years later?
Davis: What I would say is you get expectations from your fan base without the same level of commitment that other programs get. You have to fight your way up to Westwood, it’s very hard to get to, some of the games are going to start at 6:00. So they don’t go to games. But you’re going to have the same level of expectations as Kansas fans or North Carolina fans or Kentucky fans or New Mexico fans.
But I also believe that for somebody like Steve Alford to leave a place like New Mexico, he had a great gig — why’d you leave New Mexico? Well, John Wooden.
Overwhelmingly, on the balance sheet JW is a huge asset, but he definitely comes with a lot of baggage.
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