Raise Your Game

Success depends on tightly focusing on the basics.

As UCLA’s head basketball coach, John Wooden won 10 national championships, including seven in a row. Since the end of UCLA’s winning streak in 1973, only two Division One basketball teams – Florida and Duke – have won back-to-back championships. 

Wooden was a standout coach because he worked hard, paid attention to details and stuck to the hard, unsung, dirty work of the basics. At the opening of each season, he would teach his players how to “put on their socks and shoes.” With any other coach, 18-year-old basketball players might laugh at these instructions, but his athletes followed his advice. Were Wooden’s socks-and-shoes regulations micromanagement gone haywire? Not at all. Few of his players suffered blisters, rashes or “chaffing.” In contrast, their opponents often suffered aching feet by the end of their games. It’s tough to play winning basketball when your feet are on fire. For Wooden, winning required controlling every game factor he could command and not wasting his time on anything else.

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