Coach Wooden, when he speaks, you listen. I've taken a lot of things from him and his little blue book because to him, it's not just about basketball, it's about life as well.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
I was talking to Coach Wooden after I had signed at UCLA and over the summer, and we used to talk all the time. The thing is, talking to Bill Walton, once you throw in your two cents, he throws in the other 98 cents. He will not stop talking, I'll tell you what.
John Wooden made a name as a coach but also a life as a mentor.
The best thing you can say about any coach is his players play hard for him.
It's been an unbelievable thing for me to walk Bruin Walk and walk past Coach Wooden's statue, a guy that when I was in elementary school, it's Coach Wooden winning his final championship, his 10th in 12 years.
So you're dealing with a coach, and you're dealing with a guy who's actually experienced NBA basketball from a player's perspective and actually goes about it that way.
I have an incredible amount of basketball knowledge, and I think a lot of that is derived from having a Hall of Fame college basketball coach who was very knowledgeable of the game and I had a great high school coach who was also very knowledgeable.
I have a lot of respect for tough coaches.
We can never thank David Stern enough. His vision to use basketball to improve the quality of our lives to make this world a better and saner place, that guy, is the most important man in the history of basketball.
I enjoyed coaching so much that I just have to stay with it. Don Coryell - I love him, and I think he was a great coach - but I hear he's going to build a house on some island. He's going to divorce himself from football, and that's a mystery to me.
I had a tremendous one season playing for Coach Kubiak, and I have nothing but great things to say about him as a person and a coach.