EL SEGUNDO — Like everyone else who grew up captivated by the sound of the thump, thump, thump of a basketball on a court, Lakers coach Phil Jackson and guard Kobe Bryant said they mourned the passing of the legendary John Wooden on Friday.
“I just stand in awe of the guy,” Jackson said Saturday.
“As a young basketball player growing up and watching the 1962 Bruins, the ’63 Bruins, the era I came out of high school, watching this team, this pesky team of 6-foot-5 guys roll out this great defense they had, with the speed they played at, that was my first awareness of John Wooden,” Jackson added.
Jackson said he learned more about Wooden later in life. Tex Winter, Jackson’s longtime assistant with the Lakers and the Chicago Bulls, was a rival of Wooden’s UCLA teams while coaching at Kansas State.
“Tex always tells the story,” Jackson said. “His team was ahead by four points going into the last stretch of the ballgame. There’s a blizzard out in Kansas. The game was in Kansas City, which is close to Manhattan, Kan., where Kansas State is located.
“And then the UCLA girls showed up, the cheerleaders led the Bruins on to victory. (Winter) said, `I think the referees got enamored with the cheerleaders, all these beautiful California girls.’ So that’s a 40- or 50-year-old vision of a man.
Bryant was born three years after Wooden retired from UCLA in 1975, and he never attended college, jumping from high school to the NBA in 1996.
But he was well aware of the coach’s place in college basketball history.
“I think if you talk to any of his players, the thing that’s consistent is that he made them better people,” Bryant said.
Bryant recalled they spoke for 30 minutes after Chick Hearn’s funeral in 2002, mostly about the Lakers in the wake of their third consecutive championship.