John Wooden, Gary Cunningham, and John Stockton: "Not Good Enough"
When you are good at what you do, you may be tempted to compare yourself with people in your field who are even better. This is OK is your goal is steady self-improvement. But it's not OK is you suffer from self-doubt. If you keep thinking, "I'm just not good enough, but he is," you're heading for trouble.
These three men were good at what they did. They did not seem to be bothered by how good others were. Then they got better. Much better.
JOHN WOODEN
Wooden labored in the shadows at UCLA from 1948 until 1962. He had good teams, but they were not good enough to get UCLA national attention. This never seemed to bother him. He stuck to his knitting. He developed his skills as a coach.
For over two decades, UCLA's teams played league games in the men's gymnasium. It was so small that there is a Wikipedia entry on it. It was known as the B.O. barn. Most high schools had larger basketball courts. Then it got smaller. In 1955, the Los Angeles city Fire Marshal declared the building unsafe for a crowd of greater than 1,300. UCLA basketball was an afterthought for UCLA's administration.
Then, seemingly out of nowhere, his team got to the final four in 1962. It almost got to the finals. It missed by two points. There was one year of drought. Then there was a breakthrough like no other in college basketball history. He won 11 NCAA basketball championships, 1964-75. No other Division I men's basketball coach will match this record. The NBA drafts the great players before they finish their second year. It's "one and done." The slightly less great ones are "two and through."
He became famous outside of basketball after he retired in 1975. He is remembered for his pyramid of success. It is not just a list of platitudes. It is a list of goals.
He coached famous players who, in their retirement, are still interviewed by TV crews and sportswriters. Among the ones quoted, they all say the same thing: Wooden's philosophy influenced them greatly after they left UCLA. A lot of them say that his philosophy was not influential in their lives while they were players, but after they ceased to be players, they remembered what he said, and they found that it was useful. I have no doubt that this is the case.
GARY CUNNINGHAM
Unless you are a long-term UCLA basketball fan, you have not heard of him. He played for Wooden. But he did more than play for him.
I saw him play in his senior year in high school. His school was in the same league. We had a more successful team, but no one could stop him. He was a first-team forward in southern California (not counting Los Angeles City, a separate competing region). He was a pure shooter.
As a senior at UCLA in 1962, he made it to the cover of Sports Illustrated. He is the guy trying to stop USC's John Rudometkin, which was a thankless task. (Number 45 was John Green, who married my cousin.)
That team went to the NCAA final four, the first Wooden team to do so. They lost by two points in the final 20 seconds to Cincinnati in the semi-final game. Cincinnati defeated Ohio State the next evening. Close, but no cigar. Two years later, Wooden won his first NCAA championship with a 30-0 season. He hired Cunningham.
In his first game as a coach, his freshman team in the fall of 1965 defeated the varsity when the varsity was ranked number one in the nation. It was a rout: 75 to 60. The frosh were unstatemanlike. They ran off the court shouting "We're number 1." Yet the varsity was still voted number one the next week. Every sportswriter and basketball coach in the country knew what was coming in the following year. And so it did: three NCAA championships in a row. But in the fall of 1965, "UCLA was number one in the nation, but number two on campus." That was the assessment of Lew Alcindor, aka Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, who was on that freshman team. Cunningham had recommended the game. Wooden had not been enthusiastic. But Cunningham persisted. Wooden consented. It was the first game ever played in the huge Pauley Pavilion. It was broadcast on local TV. Wooden lost the game. In 2010, Cunningham reminisced.
“I didn’t know how to behave,” Cunningham said. “Afterward I was embarrassed and I stayed in the locker room and I didn’t come out and talk to the press or anything. … On Monday, we came to work, and (Wooden) called me in the office, and I thought that was it. I coached one game and I’m done.”
No problem. Wooden wanted to discuss recruiting. Cunningham sat at Wooden's right side when his teams won eight of their 10 national championships. But he was rarely (if ever) interviewed by the media. If you watch this video on Wooden's career, you will see him again and again. TV viewers did. No one noticed or remembered.
Which UCLA basketball coach had the highest percentage of wins in his career? Not Wooden. Cunningham, 1977-78 (86%).
He has a Wikipedia page.
He is an example of somebody who has had an outstanding career, but who has lived in the shadow of a giant. He never showed any sign of being discontented with the role. His outlook is a fine example of Wooden's philosophy in action. Wooden never talked to his players about winning. He talked about doing the best that you can possibly do, and then being content with your achievement. His father taught him this in rural Indiana, and he never forgot it. He taught Cunningham this, and Cunningham never forgot. I don't know if he was the first person ever to teach Cunningham this principle, but he certainly did teach it, and Cunningham did live it.
In 2017, Cunningham received the Wooden "Keys to Life" award. This is awarded annually by the Fellowship of Christian Athletes. I can't think of anyone who deserved it more.
JOHN STOCKTON
Stockman also stuck to his knitting. He did not make the 1984 Olympic team. Later that year, he was drafted by the Utah Jazz. He was a relatively unknown player from Gonzaga University, a Catholic school. When the Jazz announced this, people in the audience booed. Stockton played for the Jazz for the next 19 years. Salt Lake City named a street after him after he retired.
ESPN rated him the number-three point guard in NBA history, behind Magic Johnson and Oscar Robertson. It ran this photo.
When you are number three behind those two, you don't have to hang your head. He had more assists than anybody else in NBA history: 15,806. He also had more steals than anybody else: 3,265. He retired 15 years ago, but nobody has come close to these two records. He showed up, year after year. There were no scandals. There were no public threats to jump teams for more money.
He played on the Olympic dream team of 1992 in Barcelona. In Barcelona, there was madness about seeing members of the dream team. People wanted autographs. One day, Stockton and his wife and kids got off the team bus. They just wanted to walk to the streets. This incident took place.
Yes, there was someone with a professional camcorder who recorded this. Stockton was wearing a mic. But the video is representative.
He was not asked to leave the Jazz after 19 years. He just decided he wanted to spend more time with his family. He figured he had played enough basketball. He said this: "Sitting in the hotel room waiting for games wasn't making up for what I was missing at home." He was content with his career. Since his career was spectacular, why not? A columnist writes this:
Ultimately, the deeper in the stats you go, the more and more you find. Stockton was one of a kind, and if only the reporters of his era delved into the stats as deeply as bloggers do would they have examined his greatness and appreciated him as a current player more.But that would have just led to more attention, something John wasn't interested in as a player.
When he retired at age 41, he said this: "I'm sure there are people that have won championships that haven't had to work very hard at it, and we worked very hard and haven't done it. Yet I feel a lot of reward out of the effort that it took to compete for that." Pure Wooden.
I think he had it right. He played his games, cashed his checks, retired in comfort, and never looked back.
CONCLUSION
No matter how good you are, somebody is better. If he is not better right now, he will be better in a year or two.
No matter how much you achieve, if you compare yourself with somebody else who has achieved more, you will be tempted to conclude that what you achieved was substandard. This is a mistake. Wooden knew it was a mistake. His father knew it was a mistake. If you've done your best, you are off the hook of guilt. It is easy to hang yourself on the hook of guilt. I recommend against it.