Words from a basketball coach

The world’s premier basketball tournament watched all over the world, the National Basketball Association or NBA, is done and the Cleveland Cavaliers is the declared champion.

One of this season’s star players, Steph Curry is admired not only for his basketball skills, but also for being a faithful husband and a good father to his kid. Every time he sinks the ball in the hoop especially with those three-point bombs he would slap his chest and with his finger, point upwards as a gesture of saying, “Thank You Lord for that.” That’s not unusual for a basketball-crazed country like ours, we just do it a little differently. Our local players enter the court doing the sign of a cross before the game starts.

This reminds me of the great and legendary coach, John Wooden, who has led UCLA to national prominence in college basketball. A reporter once asked him how he managed to keep his cool under the great pressure of coaching college basketball.

Wooden reached into his pocket and took out a wooden cross. “When the pressure is on I hold this cross in my hand,” he explained. “Not as a good luck charm. I just hold it there to remind me that there is something more important than basketball.” 

For somebody whose entire life career is centered on basketball, he says he needs to be reminded that there is something more important than basketball.

For business people like you and me, business is everything to us, but perhaps we need to be reminded as well that there is something more important than business.

Coach John Wooden penned a poem many years ago before his passed away and the poem was printed in the memorial service program and reads as follows: 

The years have left their imprint

On my hands and on my face.

Erect no longer is my walk

And slower is my pace.

But there is no fear within my heart

Because I’m growing old

I only wish I had more time

To better serve my Lord. 

When I’ve gone to Him in prayer 

He has brought me inner peace 

And soon my cares and worries 

And other problems cease. 

He has helped in so many ways, 

He has never let me down,

Why should I fear the future

When soon I could be near His crown. 

Though I know down here my time is short

There is endless time up there 

And He will forgive and keep me 

Forever in His loving care. 

May I not waste an hour

That’s left to glorify the Name

Of the One Who died, that we might live

And for our sins, took all the blame.

Coach John R. Wooden 1910-2010 

Wooden did not only have a wooden cross in his pocket, he had a moral reference in his heart and soul. No wonder the coach who has produced many superstar players will always leave each of his basketball warriors a reminder from his words: “Be more concerned with your character than your reputation, because your character is what you really are, while your reputation is merely what others think you are.”

He also said: “What you are as a person is more important than what you are as a basketball player.”

Those words are timely reminders for all of us aren’t they? What we are as a person is more important than what we are as business people, professionals, media people, preachers and ministers, leaders etc.

Wooden would know. Because he knows there is always something or perhaps what he also means is Someone more important than basketball.That something would be character development and that Someone would be his Savior, wouldn’t that be right?

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