Page 212 - How to Create a Winning Organization

Wooden on Leadership
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Games decided on a last-second basket obviously can go either
way, and this game was no exception. With 2:27 remaining on the
clock, John Green made two free throws for us and tied the game
at 70–70. UCLA then committed an offensive foul and turned the
ball over to Cincinnati. The Bearcats ran the clock down to 10 sec-
onds and called for a timeout.
When play resumed, Cincinnati’s Tom Thacker, a player who
hadn’t scored a single point in the whole game, took a pass from
Tom Sizer who, with three seconds left to play, dribbled to his
right, stopped, and from 25 feet away made the final basket of the
game. UCLA was outscored 72–70. The following night Cincin-
nati won their second consecutive national championship.
We had come within a whisker of winning it all. Our near-
victory was a revelation to me.
Much to my surprise, UCLA had nearly won the 1962 NCAA
basketball championship. Suddenly—shockingly—it became clear
that our inadequate basketball facility, the Men’s Gym, did not
mean we couldn’t win the national title. Walt Hazzard, Pete
Blackman, Gary Cunningham, Billy Hicks, Fred Slaughter, Kim
Stewart, Dave Waxman, John Green, Jim Milhorn, and Jim Ros-
vall, our assistant coaches, student managers, and our trainer
Ducky Drake had just about done it despite the great disadvantages
forced on us by our practice facility.
If I had been using the Men’s Gym as a rationale for poor per-
formance in past NCAA playoff appearances—we had lost in the
first round three straight times—I couldn’t use it any more. A sub-
conscious barrier had been removed; a light went on.
No longer could I tell myself “no”; no longer could I be com-
fortable with the status quo. I now knew what I should have un-
derstood long before, namely, UCLA could go all the way to the
top despite the Men’s Gym. It was up to me to figure out how to
do it.