Wooden and Walton

Former UCLA Basketball Coach John Wooden passed away last Friday. There are many of you who are not old enough to remember a time when the NCAA Tournament was the UCLA Invitational. Between 1964 and 1975, UCLA won ten of twelve NCAA Tournaments. If freshmen could have played in 1966 it would have been 11 of twelve. And it took a great (and historically underrated) North Carolina State team 3 overtimes to stop a seven year run in 1974. A year later in Wooden’s final game he led his underdog Bruins over Kentucky for his tenth title.

Some would say that it helped to have recruits like Lew Alcindor (Kareem Jabbar), Bill Walton and many other All-Americans, but there are many teams like Michigan’s “Fab Five” of the 90′s and last year’s Kentucky team that have not won despite having the best recruiting class.

Many coaches talk of “building character” but take big money from shoe companies, recruit kids who can’t read, and will leave their school and their players for a big offer in a heartbeat. John Wooden was not like that. He was as different from John Calipiri or Rick Pitino as Abraham Lincoln was from Rod Blagojevich.

Those who played for him credit him with making them successful in life more than on the court. Most of his players have achieved great success in life and most outside of basketball. To a man, they sing his praises and none more so than Bill Walton.

In a statement released through UCLA on Saturday, Walton praised his mentor. There were two sentences in particular from that statement that really caught my eye.

“John Wooden represents the conquest of substance over hype, the triumph of achievement over erratic flailing, the conquest of discipline over gambling, and the triumph of executing an organized plan over hoping that you’ll be lucky, hot or in the zone.”

“John Wooden also represents the conquest of sacrifice, hard work and commitment to achievement over the pipe dream that someone will just give you something, or that you can take a pill or turn a key to get what you want.”

Wow, I never heard a better or more succinct explanation of why some succeed while others do not. Wooden was famous for his “Pyramid of Success” which you can read and have explained by the Wizard of Westwood himself at his website. I am not much for self-help gurus. The only thing most of them have ever been successful at is selling self-help books and lectures. Maybe if Tony Robbins had won 88 games in a row, like UCLA did, I’d buy his books. But Wooden did succeed; as a player he was a National Champion and Hall-of-Famer; as a Coach no one came close; as a husband, father, grandfather, friend, and citizen it would be hard to find anyone so loved and respected.

Wooden’s philosophy on success is applicable to any endeavor in life. For example, those two sentences from Bill Walton are probably the best advice you could ever give any trader: “Discipline over gambling….executing an organized plan over hoping that you’ll be lucky…sacrifice, hard work, and commitment over the pipe dream that someone will just give you something…

This is the philosophy that we try to teach here. In trading there are, as Walton says, no pills to take or keys to turn, although some of our competitors are selling just that. We tell our students that the keys to success in trading are those same things that Coach Wooden taught on the hardwood: Commitment, sacrifice, hard work, and discipline.But you also need to know what you are doing, and that is where we come in. In the middle of Wooden’s pyramid is a box labeled “Skill”. Wooden said “At the very center of the Pyramid of Success is Skill. You have to know what you’re doing and be able to do it quickly and properly”. We can help you with that part of the pyramid; the rest is up to you.

So stop all of your “erratic flailing” and join us.