COACH WOODEN'S UCLA HIGH POST OFFENSE

If you ever have the opportunity to hear Don Meyer speak at a clinic or one of his academies, at some point during the lecture he will make the following statement: “All coaches should study John Wooden.” And before we get into review of his most recent project, we want to start by echoing Coach Meyers belief that we can all become better at our profession (as well as personally) by studying John Wooden.

It certainly isn’t by accident that arguably the greatest coach of any sport in our generation has also developed a long list of some of the best coaching books available. No library is complete without Practical Modern Basketball or They Call Me Coach. In the past decade, Coach Wooden has gone through a renaissance in terms of his journalistic contributions. The past decade over ten books have been penned by or about Coach Wooden.

We generally assign a book to our team to read in the summer and during the season. During the 2005-06 year, is was My Personal Best: Life Lessons from an All-American Journey by Coach Wooden. Two other outstanding books include Wooden On Leadership and Wooden: A Lifetime of Reflections and Observations On and Off The Court.

His most recent books have been philosophical in nature — with the exception of, John Wooden’s UCLA Offense. And, in true Wooden fashion, you will be hard pressed to find a better book in terms of detailing a system of play.

Understand at LSU we are strictly a motion offense program but this book still remained a must have for our staff. First, because there are teaching points in the cutting, screening, passing and receiving of the High Post Offense that carries over into motion and therefore was a book that helped our execution. It should also be noted that before becoming a motion team, Coach Gunter was a big believer in the High Post Offense and it was a staple through most of her career. In fact, we sometimes use elements of the High Post Offense as an entry into our motion.

The second reason for reading this book is it gives you a great history lesson into some early offensive innovations. Chapter 1: Origin of the Offense is worth the price of the book alone. Wooden, as no other coach could, details the coaches and players who changed the face of the game in terms of forcing rules to be adopted because of their play. The chapter also delves into the earliest version of his offense and how it began many years ago. Of course, you get to see the flexibility of Coach Wooden as he shows many adaptations of the offense which he ran with equal success with small teams and those with dominating post players such as Lew Alcindor and Bill Walton just to name a few.

However, the most valuable part of Coach Wooden’s new release is the accompanying DVD. Coach Wooden uses players on the court to demonstrate the offense in every phase with 90 minutes of quality coaching. The visual ability to watch the players execute brings the words in the book to life. Even more valuable are the large number of video clips of Coach Wooden at practice with some of the great UCLA teams. It is a special glimpse inside the development of his team. There are also many game clips of his UCLA teams. Certainly these are not only educational but historical as well.

Above all, I enjoyed the DVD portion where Coach Wooden is watching tape, breaking down the execution and talking about specific things he is seeing. It is extremely well put together — with a great deal of help from one of his former players, Swen Nater.

Absolutely no coach should be without this for their library. Coach Wooden spent several decades coaching his players and has spent a lifetime coaching coaches. This latest book/DVD project shows why he is so special. In the introduction, he closes with the following passage from an anonymous author:

No written word, no oral please,
Can teach our youth what they should be,
Nor all the books on all the shelves.
It’s what the teachers are themselves.