John Wooden

John Wooden is recovering from pneumonia, and the 98-year-old basketball coaching great is expected to be released from the hospital soon. UCLA, the school Wooden coached to 10 national titles, said Friday he was admitted to a Los Angeles-area hospital Feb. 13 and is completing his recovery. "My father is doing well," said Nan Muehlhausen, Wooden's daughter. "His lungs are clear and he has been eating well. We expect him to be released soon."

The week has been, former Laker Jamaal Wilkes said, a "whirlwind. " On Monday, the NBA announced his induction Sept. 8 into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame. Then came the Lakers' decision to retire his No. 52 jersey next season. Wilkes has had plenty of chances to talk about his recent honors with friends and fans. He made a trip to the NCAA Final Four in New Orleans and appeared at Staples Center Wednesday for the Lakers-Clippers game. He attended an event at a Manhattan Beach hotel commemorating the 40th anniversary of the Lakers' 1972 championship team.

Ayeet Timothy Odeke, basketball coach at Nkumba University in Kampala, gets the look - the same one Bill Walton might have given John Wooden years ago - when he instructs his players on the proper way to put on their socks and lace up their shoes at the start of each season. "If you didn't get the words, the face would talk to you," Odeke explained. "Are you mad? Are you crazy?" It was 10 years ago, at a basketball clinic in Uganda, when Odeke was exposed to certain Wooden life lessons for the first time: Don't mistake activity with achievement.

John Wooden is dead. He hasn't coached in 37 years. He might be the finest man many have ever known next to their own fathers. And the memories remain wonderful. But like my own father, as much as I would like to go on and on about him to my children and grandchildren, they don't really care. Mention my grandparents, whom they never met, and well, forget it. Wooden is gone. But those who like to reflect on the past probably would be stunned to learn that the past doesn't mean as much to this generation as it does to them.

Almost every morning, just as daylight begins to brighten the color of the leaves on the Eucalyptus trees lining the sidewalk closest to his front door, John Wooden sets out on a 5-mile walk. The route he takes is always the same: White Oak to Burbank, up Burbank to Balboa Park, through the park, up Balboa to Ventura and back home. He could probably walk his path with his eyes closed, because in 17 years, it has never varied.

UCLA basketball coach emeritus John Wooden was informed by his 9-year-old granddaughter that her coach wanted grandpa to come and talk to the girl's elementary school basketball team. Wooden, who will celebrate his 84th birthday on Thursday, wanted to know whose idea it was. "Both (of ours)," she responded, "but I said I'd ask you because you couldn't turn me down." Wooden, the Wizard of Westwood, doesn't put up much of a defense when friends and family put the touch on him.

John Wooden, who coached the UCLA Bruins to an unprecedented 10 national basketball championships before retiring in 1975, will receive the 1987 Bellarmine medal, a humanitarian award, at a dinner ceremony here Oct. 2. The award, given by Bellarmine College, honors people "who exemplify charity, justice and temperateness in dealing with controversy." It has been won by Philip C.

1962 at Louisville, Ky. Cincinnati 72, UCLA 70 Wake Forest 82, UCLA 80 John Wooden finally reaches the Final Four in his 14th season (good thing he didn't have to follow John Wooden). This team, with future coaches Walt Hazzard and Gary Cunningham in the lineup, suffers a pair of close defeats. * 1964 at Kansas City, Mo.

Looking back on it now, after all these years, John Wooden says he had it relatively easy at UCLA. Wooden recently told the Kansas City Star, "At Indiana State, I was director of athletics, head basketball coach, head baseball coach, taught the coaching course in basketball, taught the coaching course in baseball, I finished writing my thesis and I substituted in an English course. "Then I came to UCLA, I went on vacation for 27 years. All I had was basketball."

He will awaken today in a condominium where time has not budged for 27 years. There is shag carpet on the floor, crushed velvet furniture in the corners, his late wife Nell's enduring vision on walls filled with aging clocks and plates and photographs of men in basketball hot pants. He won't turn on his cell phone, because he doesn't have one. He won't jump on the Internet, because he doesn't own a computer. He will not watch the TV in his bedroom, because it hasn't worked for years.

Ayeet Timothy Odeke, basketball coach at Nkumba University in Kampala, gets the look - the same one Bill Walton might have given John Wooden years ago - when he instructs his players on the proper way to put on their socks and lace up their shoes at the start of each season. "If you didn't get the words, the face would talk to you," Odeke explained. "Are you mad? Are you crazy?" It was 10 years ago, at a basketball clinic in Uganda, when Odeke was exposed to certain Wooden life lessons for the first time: Don't mistake activity with achievement.

In a perfect world, Joe Paterno would have been John Wooden. College basketball wouldn't have cornered the market on respect and reverence. College football would have had an entry of its own. The principles they held were similar. They said they were teachers first, stewards of athletic success a distant second, even though they each had lots of the latter. Wooden won 10 national titles and Paterno two, as well as winning the most games in the history of major-college football, 409. But legacy-building is a tricky thing.

Gene Bartow, the successor to John Wooden as UCLA basketball coach who became the architect of a new and successful athletics program at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, died Tuesday evening. He was 81. Bartow, who was diagnosed with stomach cancer two years ago, died at his Birmingham home, according to a university spokesman. Despite starting the athletics program at Alabama Birmingham and establishing the basketball program as nationally competitive, Bartow probably will be most remembered in Los Angeles as the man who replaced arguably the best coach in college basketball history and unarguably the most beloved and respected coach in this city's sports history when in 1975 he took over UCLA's program after Wooden's retirement.

Walt Hazzard, a stellar point guard who helped John Wooden win his first national championship at UCLA and became the fifth coach to follow the college basketball legend, died Friday. He was 69. Hazzard, who suffered a stroke in 1996, died at Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center following a long illness, the university announced. Hazzard had endured complications following heart surgery, his family said. The backbone of UCLA's undefeated 1964 championship team, Hazzard directed the Bruins' offense to a 98-83 victory over Duke in the NCAA final.

Rebekah Gardner hears it all the time from her counterparts on the men's basketball team at UCLA. You have to play at the Wooden Center? That little thing? "I just say, 'At least we'll have sold-out crowds,'" said Gardner, a senior guard. While the men's team ventures to the cavernous Sports Arena and Honda Center this season with Pauley Pavilion in the midst of renovations, the Bruins' women will play their home games on campus in a cozy 2,000-seat facility. "We're the only show in town," said Coach Cori Close, UCLA's new leading lady after Nikki Caldwell's departure for Louisiana State.

When it came time to say goodbye, he could not. John Wooden was dead. He was Tony Spino's friend and "I wouldn't leave him," says the UCLA athletic trainer who became Wooden's 24-hour caretaker in the coach's final years. "To see him slowly die in front of me was hard, yet I had a job to do to take care of him," Spino says. "But it really hit me when he died. I was the only one left in the hospital room and I cried my eyes out. "I couldn't go away. I waited for the mortuary to come and get him, bag him and tag him. It was so weird, it was like I wanted them to take me and not him. " It has been more than a year since Wooden's death, and Spino, 61, understands now Coach's undying devotion to his wife, Nellie, who passed 25 years before her husband.

The rumors that had been circulating for months and escalating since UCLA was ousted from the Pacific 10 Conference tournament with a final season record of 16-14 came true Wednesday morning when Athletic Director Peter Dalis met with Walt Hazzard and relieved him of his duties as the UCLA basketball coach. Hazzard had been the Bruin coach for four years, longer than any of the four other coaches who followed Coach John Wooden.

Pete Newell is a confidant and close friend of Bob Knight. They room together at some tournaments, discuss coaching philosophies over the telephone when they're apart and have even collaborated on a basketball textbook. So it would seem only natural to assume that Newell, a longtime teacher-observer of the game, would be inclined toward Knight's team in any matchup. But Newell also admires the coaching skills of Jerry Tarkanian of Nevada Las Vegas.

So here's Peter Ueberroth, L.A.'s Olympic champion, chairman of the Newport Beach investor company the Contrarian Group, sharing his office with someone else -- his border collie, Koot, for Kootenai, the Idaho county where Ueberroth found him abandoned. Koot can be regarded as a small-scale version of the rescues that Ueberroth has been called on to make in his career. Besides formidably managing the 1984 Games, he has ridden to the help of South Los Angeles after the 1992 riots, run Major League Baseball and arranged the buyback of the Pebble Beach golf course from the Japanese.

Come on, Bill Plaschke, you know why Donald Sterling gave free admission to 1,000 underprivileged children for a game against Houston, in March; the Clippers had only two home games in February, against the Bulls and Celtics, teams that people will pay to see. Would Sterling give up 1,000 paying customers to do something for charity? David Saw Diamond Bar :: How dare Bill Plaschke take on Donald Sterling! It would seem that Donald is single-handedly trying to ensure the financial well-being of The Times with his daily advisements touting himself and his rental properties.