[John Wooden's] UCLA teams won ten NCAA championships in 12 years…. No one speaks more eloquently about Wooden than Bill Walton, who played for UCLA at a troubled time in America, a time of Vietnam and Watergate, a time when young people were asking hard questions, when dissent was in style.

For Wooden, the answers never changed. "We thought he was nuts," Walton said. "But in all his preachings and teachings, everything he told us turned out to be true….

"His interest and goal was to make you the best basketball player but first to make you the best person," Walton said. "He would never talk wins and losses but what we needed to succeed in life. Once you were a good human being, you had a chance to be a good player. He never deviated from that.

"He never tried to be your friend. He was your teacher, your coach. He handled us with extreme patience…."

Today, Walton talks with the 90-year-old Wooden frequently. "He has thousands of maxims. He is more John Wooden today than ever. He is a man who truly has principles and ideas….

"He didn't teach basketball. He taught life….

"When you're touched by someone that special, it changes your life," he said. "You spend your life chasing it down, trying to recreate it.

"He stopped coaching UCLA 25 years ago. Now he just coaches the world."