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John Wooden R.I.P.

Be quick, but don’t hurry.”

John Wooden’s career wound down a little ahead of when I got into following sports. But the echoes of The Wizard of Westwood’s achievements propagated well past the end of his tenure as UCLA basketball coach. If you tracked college basketball at all over the past 30 years you got at least one annual John Wooden appearance.

Not to mention the overly loquacious Bill Walton all over the place, who’d give you five run-on minutes on Coach Wooden whenever he got the chance.

There will be plenty of highly eloquent Wooden tributes. I won’t be able to make much of an addition. But for all the simple, folksy, life lessons he dispensed, I’m sure there was a ton of hard work behind the winning results. Don’t be deceived by the seemingly effortless achievements.

And “Be quick, but don’t hurry,” is a pretty damn good line.

Godspeed kind sir.

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