John Wooden-Difference between winning and success

It is another Wooden contribution, however, that I fear will endure. He has given us the basketball moralist, someone for whom the fundamentals are themselves a kind of faith. Wooden provided a framework for linking on-court play with virtue. A bounce pass is not just fundamentally sound, but somehow morally expedient; a missed dunk is a straight path to damnation. Leave aside some of the more repellent conclusions this might lead one to—it is simply a boring and blinkered way of watching a basketball game. This, ultimately, is John Wooden's legacy: He taught us to take a profane bit of beautiful exercise and turn it into church.

Bill Russell, seldom inclined to accommodate the media, stopped in his tracks at the mention of Newell's name. Jerry West and Oscar Robertson revealed their frustration, to this day, over losing to Newell's pack of Cal plowhorses. His former players talked reverentially for hours, wishing it could have been days.

And Wooden? He'd just as soon change the subject. He wouldn't admit to me that Newell had his number, even though the evidence was plain for all to see.

There was a landmark Cal-UCLA game, unencumbered by television interests, in which neither Wooden nor Newell had called a timeout. It was a source of pride for both men; forget the flash cards, the meetings or even an assistant coach. Their players knew what to do - any time, any situation - and they were in shape. Timeouts were a blatant sign of weakness.

With about four minutes left, Wooden had no choice; one of his players was noticeably dragging. He called time, and Cal went on to win. That was the spring of 1957, and the streak was born. "Do you know that they never beat us again?" said Newell, who retired three years later with eight straight wins against Wooden. "And they never played timeouts again with us. Psychologically, that had so much to do with our confidence every time we played them. Our guys just figured, 'We never called timeout. They did.' "

Newell was a heavy smoker and caffeine-addled and very tightly strung. Doctors told him he needed, for health reasons, to quit coaching.

So Newell quit, at the height of his powers, in the prime of his career . . . and lived another half-century.

He stepped away at a time when Cal, not UCLA, was the West Coast basketball power.

Wooden had his way with Newell early, but Newell bested Wooden the last eight times the coaches met.

Newell got to the mountaintop first, in his early 40s. Wooden didn't win his first NCAA title until his early 50s.

Imagine what might have been had Newell continued to coach against Wooden's powerhouse UCLA teams.

The year Newell led Cal to the championship game in 1960, UCLA finished 14-12. It was Newell's success that forced Wooden to rethink his approach, reassess his coaching techniques and retool for an unprecedented run in college basketball history.

Had Newell not been forced to quit, though, would Wooden have won 10 national titles in a 12-year span?

Would there have been a UCLA dynasty?

In an era when only the conference champion qualified for the NCAA tournament, might Cal have siphoned off a few league titles and denied UCLA the chance?