John Wooden story leads to accounts of the other two best ever at their level – Morgan Wootten and Red Auerbach

When I got the phone call on Thursday night that John Wooden was in the hospital and not expected to live much longer, the first thing I did was go and dig out the folders I have that contain the transcripts of the interviews I did seven years ago with Red Auerbach when I wrote, “Let Me Tell You A Story.”

I knew there were some great quotes from Red about Coach Wooden and I wanted to use some of them in the column I was going to write for The Washington Post—in The Post when someone dies they call it, ‘an appreciation,’—whenever the sad time came.

As I read through the quotes, I had two thoughts. The first was a funny one, a memory of running into Coach Wooden at The Final Four in New Orleans when I was working with Red on the book. He was 93 at the time, but still sharp as a tack. When I saw him one morning and went over to say hello, he asked me what I was working on.

“Well coach,” I said, “I’m actually doing a book right now on a dear friend of yours, Red Auerbach.”

“Oh that’s wonderful,” Coach Wooden said. “Red is such a nice young man.”

Red was 86 at the time. Everything in life is relative.

The other thing I thought about was how remarkably fortunate I’ve been to know—I would argue—the greatest basketball coaches who ever lived on the pro, college and high school levels. With all due respect to Phil Jackson, I would make the case that Red was the greatest NBA coach because he did more than just coach: he put together 16 championship teams. From 1950 to 1966 he WAS the Celtics: the coach, the general manager, the scout, even the marketing director. He had no assistant coaches. The Celtics kept winning after he stopped coaching because of the work he did as the GM.

I will readily admit to a bias here because of my friendship with Red but I suspect a lot of people will come down on my side of the argument.

With Wooden, there are no ifs, ands or buts. His 10 national titles is more than double the number won by any other college coach. Mike Krzyzewski and Adolph Rupp each won four; Bob Knight won three and then a handful of coaches, led by Dean Smith, won two.

As for Morgan, his record at DeMatha High School over 44 years was something ridiculous like 1,204 and 137. I’m probably off a little bit in those numbers but not by much. His most famous victory was against Power Memorial High School and Lew Alcindor in 1964, ending what was (I think) a 71 game winning streak. The story always told about that game—which was played in front of a sellout crowd of 14,500 at Maryland’s Cole Field House—was Morgan having his players use tennis racquets in practice to simulate what it would be like to shoot over Alcindor.

Working at The Washington Post, I had the chance to get to know Morgan well, which was a pleasure because he is about as nice a human being as you will meet in any walk of life. I’ve always joked that the meanest thing I ever heard Morgan say to anyone was, “how’s it going today?”

Of course when he was coaching it was different. He rarely raised his voice and, like Wooden, profanity wasn’t part of his repertoire. (Red may have used it once or twice). Years ago, I did a lengthy profile of Morgan. As part of my research for the story, I sat in on his history class—he never stopped teaching the entire time he coached.

I was a history major in college and I was lucky enough to have some outstanding professors. Morgan was the best teacher I’ve ever seen. He had a unique way of conveying the information to the students that made you want to just sit in his classroom all day. He was smart and funny, informative and sounded more like a great storyteller as he spoke than someone teaching a class. If I could have afforded the tuition back then, I might have enrolled at DeMatha just to take his class.

All three were great communicators. They had a way of connecting with their players that went well beyond teach x’s and o’s. All understood that you do NOT treat every player the same because every player isn’t the same person. Some need coddling, others need to be pushed—or shoved—to get better.

All knew when to make a point—and how to make a point. Shortly after Red made Bill Russell the Celtics player-coach, there was a snowstorm in Boston. Russell didn’t make it to the game until the start of the fourth quarter. The Celtics, with Red coaching, were leading when Russell showed up and went on to win the game—without Russell.

Afterwards, Red was furious. “Red, there was a snowstorm in case you didn’t notice,” Russell said. “I got stuck. I couldn’t get here. How can you get on me about that?”

“Because,” Red said, “Eleven other guys figured out a way to get here on time. If anything, you should have been the one guy who got here, not the one guy who didn’t.”

It was Morgan who opened the door to my friendship with Red. I had heard about his Tuesday lunches at a downtown Chinese restaurant but never dreamed there was any way to get invited—especially since Red was close to Bob Knight, who, after “A Season on the Brink,” wasn’t the president of my fan club. But I ran into Red one night doing a local TV show and he couldn’t have been more gracious. I wondered if there was any way to go to the lunch once to write a column about it.

I called my friend Jack Kvancz, who was (and is) the athletic director at George Washington and a regular attendee. “If I ask him, I’m not sure what he’ll say,” Jack said. “If Morgan asks, he’ll say yes.”

So I called Morgan. He asked and, as Jack predicted, Red said yes. I went the next week, was invited to keep coming back and never stopped going. I have lots and lots of stories about the lunches but one stands out in my memory. Red always liked to tease me about Krzyzewski, knowing we were friends.

“You know Mike never let Tommy Amaker shoot,” Red said one day, talking about Krzyzewski’s first great point guard, who is now the coach at Harvard. “The kid was a great shooter. He would have been a great pro if Mike had let him shoot.”

I loved Amaker, but he’d always been more of a passer than a shooter. I told Red I didn’t think Amaker was a shooter. Red turned to Morgan. “You saw the kid in high school, what’d you think of him?”

“You couldn’t stop him,” Morgan said. “He could score almost at will.”

I was shaking my head, saying I just didn’t see it that way when Rob Ades, another of the lunch group jumped in. “John,” he said. “You have here the greatest NBA coach ever and the greatest high school coach ever. You think YOU know more about basketball than they do?”

At that point I shut up. My guess is if Coach Wooden had been there he’d have told me I was wrong too.



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John's new book: "Moment of Glory--The Year Underdogs Ruled The Majors,"--is now available online and in bookstores nationwide. Visit your favorite retailer, or click here for online purchases

To listen to 'The Bob and Tom Show' interview about 'Moment of Glory', please click the play button below:

John's Appearance on the Tony Kornheiser Show

I made an appearance on the debut of Tony Kornheiser's most recent new radio show Tuesday. Click the permalink, then the link below, to listen to the segment on a range of topics from Red Auerbach weekly lunches to the surgery.

Click here for the radio segment: John on the Tony Kornheiser Show

A Sad Day in American History - Remembering Ted Kennedy; Back to Sports Tomorrow

I truly believe this is a sad day in American history—regardless of your politics.

I know Ted Kennedy was a punchline for many years for conservatives and also a target since, unlike a lot of Democrats, he never hid from the word liberal. But he was someone who was a force in the United States senate for a staggering amount of time—47 years—and, if you ask those who worked with him on both sides of the aisle, became one of the few people in an increasingly polarized political world who could actually get bi-partisan legislation moving in spite of Congressional gridlock.

In all, this has been a difficult summer for American icons (forget Michael Jackson PLEASE): Walter Cronkite, Eunice Kennedy Shriver and now, her younger brother, Teddy. There’s no doubt that all the living presidents from Jimmy Carter to Bush 1 and Bush 2 to Bill Clinton to Barack Obama will attend the memorial service for a man whose personal indiscretions kept him from being president but didn’t prevent him from making huge contributions to American life.

I certainly can’t claim to have known Senator Kennedy well at all. I interviewed him once, when I was researching my book on Red Auerbach. He and Red were good friends and had become very close when the senator’s son, Ted Jr., was fighting cancer as a 12-year-old. He was being treated at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. Every other Friday he had to go in for a chemo treatment and, without fail if the Celtics were in town, Red would show up with at least one of his players to try to distract the younger Kennedy. In those days the Celtics almost always played at home on Sunday afternoons and Red would set the father and son up with tickets for the game.

“I think I can honestly say that a lot of the reason Teddy got through that period were the visits from Red and his players, plus looking forward to the games on Sunday,” Sen. Kennedy said to me. “Red always tried to portray himself as this gruff, tough guy, but he was always great with kids.”

As he talked about those days, Kennedy’s voice broke a couple of times. Obviously remembering his son going through cancer was a difficult memory but there was a poignancy to his memories of what Red had done that was quite genuine. I’m glad that—thanks to Red—I had a chance to meet him and spend a little time with him.

Politics have probably never been more polarized in this country than they are now.

Democrats like me are still taking shots at Bush and Cheney and the Republicans were ripping Obama about 15 seconds after he finished his Inaugural Address. (In the case of Rush Limbaugh that’s literally true). It is worth noting then that Kennedy was probably involved in more bi-partisan legislation than any other member of Congress in spite of his (well-deserved) reputation as one of the senate’s leading liberals. If the right wing gives him credit for nothing else, it should give him credit for being one of the last important politicians to recognize that the opposition party was just that—the opposition—and not the enemy. The enemy flies planes into buildings.

There is a lot to remember about Ted Kennedy. Certainly, Chappaquiddick is part of that. So are his many fiery convention speeches through the years. What I will remember is what was (for me) a very early memory. As a 12-year-old, I stuffed envelopes in Bobby Kennedy’s campaign headquarters at 81st and Broadway during the 1968 election. I remember waking up that June morning and asking my father, who was shaving in the bathroom, who had won the California primary. That was when my dad told me that Bobby had won but had been shot in a kitchen and was in critical condition.

He died, of course, two days later and I still remember his younger brother’s eulogy. “A man who saw suffering and tried to end it. A man who saw war and tried to stop it…” Voice cracking. I got to hear his voice crack again 35 years later sitting in front of him and I flashed back to that eulogy and remembered him as a heartbroken little brother, burying an old brother as a public figure for a second time in less than five years.

Some will, of course, focus on Chappaquiddick, which can’t be ignored. Others will through the liberal word around as if it is a profanity of some kind. I hope that most will be smart enough to understand that a great man, who dealt with more tragedy in his life than most of us would see in 10 lifetimes, lost a courageous battle yesterday.

Last summer, there was a story in The New York Times about Kennedy returning to the floor of the senate after his surgery for brain cancer to cast a key health care vote. His return had been kept very quiet and he was very weak but when the doors opened and he came in—the floor was packed because of the vote—99 senators were on their feet in an instant, cheering. A number of Republicans said afterwards that even though they knew his presence signaled that they were going to lose the vote, they were happy and moved to see him.

That’s the sort of thing people should be remembering about Ted Kennedy today. And this is very much a day to think about his life and his legacy.

We can all turn our attention back to sports tomorrow.