SWENSDAY STUFF

If John Wooden Coached Today, Would He Win?
Swen Nater

There are some who believe, if John Wooden coached today, he would not be as successful as he was. They cite two reasons; there is more parity today, and today’s player is different and more difficult to handle. Is modern basketball so different that the most successful coach of all time would not win as he did before? Has the game passed John Wooden by?

Let’s face it. There are some great coaches out there who are great recruiters, have great facilities, and have built great winning traditions. Today’s player wants his hair the way he likes it, his shoes a different brand, his socks a different color, his jersey out of his shorts (if you can call them “shorts”), and those shorts half way down his behind. Today’s player, after dunking the ball,  has a barbaric craving to glare into the crowd, pound his chest, and yell, like a beast that conquered its prey. Coach would never have allowed any of that. When I played for him, the one who made a basket, pointed at the one that passed him the ball.

If John Wooden could not win today, Marva Collins would not be as successful a classroom teacher today. In 1975, she started Westside Preparatory School in Garfield Park, an impoverished neighborhood of Chicago. Mrs. Collins is best known for applying classical education successfully. She taught Shakespeare so well, when she brought an expert adult to her classroom to answer her students’ questions, they stumped him. Most of her students were able to make it out of Garfield Park to become very successful professionals. Her story was told in the movie, “The Marva Collins Story,” starring Cicely Tyson and Morgan Freeman.

If the game passed Coach Wooden by then, like he did in 1998, Ron Clark would not be able to take a Harlem 5th grade class (that was a total mess and successfully caused several teachers to quit) to reach such high scores on the exams that year, they surpassed the honor’s class in the same school. Mr. Clark used methods that included innovation, creativity, and 55 classroom rules the first of which was, “We are a family.” The account of his success is documented in a film starring Mathew Perry, “The Ron Clark Story.”

If John Wooden could not win today, then Jaime Escalante, teaching at Garfield High School in East Los Angeles, through believing basic math students could learn advanced calculus, would not be able to motivate and press them to succeed. In 1982, 18 of his students, many of which didn’t know their multiplication tables coming in, passed the challenging Advanced Placement Calculus exam. The next year, 30 out of his 33 students passed the test. In 1987, 73 students passed and 12 passed the BC version of the test. Jaime’s story is preserved in the film, “Stand and Deliver,” starring Edward James Olmos.

Could John Wooden be successful today? I say “yes” because, like Collins, Clark, and Escalante, he was a master teacher. Master teachers not only know how to transfer information with skill, they adapt to any situation, anytime, through resourcefulness, imagination, and ingenuity.  They know, if the student has not learned, the teacher has not taught. In the midst of difficult circumstances, Wooden, Collins, Clark, and Escalante were so ambitious, they found a way to teach. They did it then, and they can do it now.

And they would do it the “Old School” way.” If Coach taught today, he would win, and he would do it with his players uniformly and appropriately dressed. Oh, and another thing. You would not see one of his players acting like a fool after he dunked the ball. 

I have discovered few learning disabled students in my three decades of teaching. I have, however, discovered many, many victims of teaching inabilities.
Marva Collins