Out of print for more than 30 years, now available for the first time as an eBook, this is the controversial story of John Wooden's first 25 years and first 8 NCAA Championships as UCLA Head Basketball Coach. This is the only book that gives a true picture of the character of John Wooden and the influence of his assistant, Jerry Norman, whose contributions Wooden  ignored and tried to bury.

Compiled with more than 40 hours of interviews with Coach Wooden, learn about the man behind the coach. The players tell their stories in their own words.

Click the book to read the first chapter and for ordering information. Also available on Kindle.

Sports Medley: Popoff Popovich pops off again: 15 May 17

by Tony Medley

San Antonio Spurs Coach Gregg Popovich: “To this day I feel like there is a cloud, a pall, over the whole country in a paranoid, surreal sort of way. It has nothing to do with the Democrats losing the election. It has to do with the way one individual conducts himself. That’s embarrassing; it’s dangerous to our institutions and what we all stand for and what we expect the country to be. But for this individual, he’s in a game show. And everything that happens begins and ends with him. Not our people or our country; every time he talks about those things, it’s just a ruse. That’s just disingenuous, cynical, and, uh, fake.”

This is not the first time that Popovich has popped off. He is extraordinarily condescending and rude to TV interviewers. He struts his arrogance every time he stands for one of these interviews during a game.

Nobody is interested in his political opinions, which seem as biased and ill- informed as those St. Louis Rams who made fools of themselves by buying into the “hands up don’t shoot” lie.

As to Popoff Popovich’s ability to judge the character of people and to make psychological assessments of a person’s mental health, he contributed lots of money to disgraced Democrat presidential candidate John Edwards. Edwards is the lowlife who fathered an illegitimate baby while married to his wife, embarrassed his wife and the mother of his legitimate children, and lied about it while running for the Presidential nomination of the Democrat party. One should take Popovich’s affection and respect for someone of such low morals as Edwards into consideration when giving value to his gratuitous, politically biased opinion of our present President’s character and emotional health.

Here’s some gratuitous advice for Popoff Popovich: shut up in public forums about everything but basketball and try to be a little kinder and more understanding with people who are only doing their job in asking you a few questions during the game. Maybe their questions seem naïve and silly to you, but not as naïve and silly as your political opinions seem to people who are more knowledgeable of the facts than you.

But Popovich is more than just a narrow-minded bully. He’s also a selfish hypocrite. In the first game of the semi-final playoff series against Golden State, the Spurs’ best player, Kawhi Leonard, injured his ankle after a slight brush from Golden State’s Zaza Pachulia.

Leonard had actually seriously injured the ankle earlier in the third quarter when he fell back into his own bench after taking a jump shot and stepped on a teammate’s foot. It was so bad that his foot went one way and his ankle turned almost all the way to the ground. I’ve had sprains like this and they weaken the ligaments considerably.

Leonard left the game but then Popovich put him back in and that’s when he injured it again. And the only reason he turned it again was that it was so weak that it couldn’t stand up to the minimal contact he felt from Pachulia. A person with more intelligence, consideration, and common sense than Popovich would have immediately sent Leonard to the locker room to ice the ankle and then put him into a walking boot, hoping that it would heal fast enough for him to play in a few days because rest is essential to healing a sprained ankle. Instead Popovich put him back in the game and that resulted in Leonard injuring the ankle more seriously.

Probably realizing that his actions in returning Leonard to the game when he was seriously injured, à la Washington Redskins Coach Mike Shanahan destroying Robert Griffin’s career by selfishly putting him back in a playoff game when he was seriously injured causing a more serious injury, Popovich took the offense to mask his foolish move.

Popping off again, he immediately transferred the blame to Pachulia of causing the injury, saying, “A two-step lead with your foot close out is not appropriate. It's dangerous, it's unsportsmanlike. It's just not what anybody does to anybody else." Nonsense. Nobody who saw the play thought it was anything intentional. Even Clippers’ coach Doc Rivers ridiculed the idea that it was intentional. In fact, Popovich was the sole person responsible.

In 2006 when it was his own Bruce Bowen who was being accused of doing the exact same thing Popovich is accusing Pachulia of, though, Popovich was a true hypocrite, defending Bowen to the end and castigating others who were attacking Bowen as Popovich is today attacking Pachulia.

Popovich might be a good coach, but he has a lot to learn about being a good human being.