I first met John Wooden when we shared a platform in southern California while speaking to an auto club conference. If there was a more humble and honorable man on this earth, I have not yet met him. Those were the two words that jumped out at me when we chatted.

“Talent is God given,” Wooden would say. “Be humble. Fame is man-given. Be grateful. Conceit is self-given. Be careful.”

John Wooden epitomized the word “Coach.” He was known to say that “A coach is someone who can give correction without causing resentment.” It was so remarkable how much he was able to get out of his athletes. He defined ability as “Poor man’s wealth.”

“Things turn out best for the people who make the best of the way things turn out,” he told the crowd in Los Angeles that day we met. “There are many things that are essential to arriving at true peace of mind, and one of the most important is faith, which cannot be acquired without prayer.”

John Wooden died on June 4, 2010. He would have been 100 on October 14, 2010. He was inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame as both a coach and a player, the first to be enshrined in both categories.

A humble man from tiny Hall, Indiana, Wooden was a farm boy at heart and his values reflected as much. “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 counseled. “Consider the rights of others before your own feelings, and the feelings of others before your own rights.”

Coach Wooden once told me in an interview that the most he was ever paid as a head basketball coach was a modest $35,000 per year, a pittance by today’s standards. He turned down ten times that much to coach the LA Lakers. But then, he was never in coaching for the money. His speaking fees and book royalties in his retirement far exceeded what he made on the hardwood.

John Wooden’s “Pyramid of Success” included a premise that success in life starts with faith and patience. Other key “building blocks” in his pyramid included “Competitive Greatness, Poise, Confidence, Condition, Skill, Team Spirit, Self-Control, Alertness, Initiative, Intentness, Industriousness, Friendship, Loyalty, Cooperation and Enthusiasm.” Remarkably simple… and yet simply remarkable!

“Be prepared and be honest,” Wooden has said over and over again. “What you are as a person is far more important that what you are as a basketball player.

Don't let what you cannot do interfere with what you can do.”

Wooden and I shared holiday cards over the years. I often quote him in my speeches not only because he’s so quotable but he lived the example. He was deeply in love with his wife, Nell, who died in 1985, leaving a terrible void in his life. He often spoke of it from the platform. “You can't live a perfect day without doing something for someone who will never be able to repay you.” He learned that from Nell.

Wooden remained devoted to Nellie, even decades after her death, until his own death. Since her death, he kept to a monthly ritual (health permitting)—on the 21st, he visited her grave, and then wrote a love letter to her. After completing the letter, he placed it in an envelope and added it to a stack of similar letters that accumulated over the years on the pillow she slept on during their life together.

John Wooden believed that you have to be self-aware. “You can't let praise or criticism get to you. It's a weakness to get caught up in either one,” he would say. “Adversity is the state in which man mostly easily becomes acquainted with himself, being especially free of admirers then.”

“Don't measure yourself by what you have accomplished,” he told the group of salesmen that day in southern California, “But by what you should have accomplished with your ability. Failure is not fatal, but failure to change might be.”

While Wooden was a “change merchant” in his beliefs and often spoke on that topic. However, he was also quite a traditionalist. “The worst thing about new books is that they keep us from reading the old ones,” he quipped. “It's the little details that are vital. Little things make big things happen. It's what you learn after you know it all that counts.”

Wooden was blessed with a lot of great talent during his tenure at UCLA. Not only did he lead Purdue in the 1932 National Championship game, he also coached in ten others for the Bruins.

He believed in basics. During one 46-game stretch during his tenure as a professional player, he made 134 consecutive free throws. You win with the basics. And win he did. During 27 seasons, he led the Bruins to 10 NCAA Titles in his final 12 seasons, including seven in a row while winning 620 games.