Wooden: A Coach's Life by Seth Davis Page B

and repeatedly kicked him in the rear end as the two of them walked down two flights of stairs. “He literally helped Parson down the stairs by booting him all the way,” Powers said. Gassensmith recalled that when Wooden kicked someone, he could actually lift him off the ground. “I tell you, for a little guy he was powerful,” Gassensmith said.
    “Not everybody came out of their exposure to John Wooden and made the grade. He was very strict, and some people had a problem with that,” said Stan Jacobs, another of his former South Bend players. “There were some failures, too, who were disappointments to him, who drank, who didn’t stick to training rules, and who didn’t get their academic work done and keep it up to par.”
    Like Piggy Lambert, Wooden immersed himself in the smallest details. He refused to move on to the next fundamental until the players had mastered the one they were working on. It was all part of a grand design that extended well beyond a single practice. Once again, Wooden viewed a basketball season through the eyes of the engineer he nearly became. First, he had to set the foundation—a row of pipes here, a couple of gears there—and then he laid everything in place piece by piece. If a gear got stuck, he had to go back and apply a little more oil. Every drill, every practice built toward something, and Wooden was the only one who could see the full blueprint.
    The season began with a focus on conditioning, footwork, and movement. “Everybody was in motion all the time. Everything was done at full pace,” Powers said. When Wooden taught the players how to shoot, they had to learn the proper form first. The ball came later. Same thing with learning how to run an offense. “You just never had the ball in your hands,” said Ed Powers, Jim’s older brother. “You were always playing three on two, two on one, one on one, but you never shot the ball. It was just ballhandling. After you did that for two weeks, then you finally got to play basketball.”
    Wooden’s education as a coach was bolstered in 1941, when Notre Dame, just across town in South Bend, hired Frank Leahy to be its football coach. Leahy jealously guarded his own practices—no writers or coaches were allowed—but he took a liking to Wooden and invited him to watch. Wooden considered himself organized, but he was floored by how efficient Leahy’s workouts were. He ran a beautiful, well-designed engine. The players shuttled from drill to drill without missing a beat. The coaches also did very little talking, since each word that was spoken meant time standing idle. As a result of those visits, Wooden developed the habit of writing his practice plans on index cards so he could pull them out of his pocket without slowing down the action.
    And slowing down was the last thing Wooden wanted his players to do. Lambert’s fire-wagon style was more prevalent in Indiana than in any other part of the country, but for the most part, it was still the exception. Wooden thought it was particularly important that his South Bend teams be proficient at the fast break because they tended to be smaller than the teams they were playing. “The trick was to get all five guys thinking the way he thinks,” Ed Powell said. “I used to wonder, what kind of coach would Coach Wooden be once he gets height?”
    Also like Lambert, Wooden made sure his players took care of their feet. He taught them how to rub their feet with powder and wear two pairs of socks, and he had them wearing shoes that were one size too small. “I noticed that most players wear shoes that are too large,” Wooden said. “Basketball is a game of quick movement—stop, start, turn, change of direction, change of pace. If there’s that much sliding to the end of the toe, you’re going to get some blisters. So I decided what size shoe you’re going to wear. I want your toe right at the end of the shoe so that when you stop, there’s not going to be any sliding back and