Wooden: A Lifetime of Observations and Reflections On and Off the Court

Is My Ford Better than Your Cadillac?

Preparing UCLA for a basketball game with Louisville or Arizona or Duke or Michigan, I would tell my players, “We can’t control what those other fellows do to get ready. We can only control what we do to get ready. So let’s do our very best in that regard and hope that will be good enough, yes, to outscore them. But let’s not worry about that. Instead, let’s worry about our own preparation.”

Let’s say I want to build a car—maybe a Ford or a Chevrolet or a Plymouth. I want to build it the best I can possibly build it. Will it be better than a Cadillac or a Mercedes? That’s irrelevant.

If I’m building a Ford, I simply want to build the very best Ford I can build. That’s all I can do: to come close to my level ...