Connon: No, Duke's Mike Krzyzewski is Not the G.O.A.T. Over UCLA's John Wooden
As definitive as it often is, the word "best" can be used subjectively more often than not.
On top of that, "greatest" is a term that carries a lot of weight in the sports world, but again does not have the most concrete definition out there.
Both words have been drifting around frequently in the college basketball landscape as of late, mostly pertaining to Duke men's basketball coach Mike Krzyzewski now that his retirement has finally arrived. Coach K had already let the world know that this would be his last hurrah, and that final push for title No. 6 wound up getting cut short by North Carolina in the Final Four on Saturday night.
But don't let the nostalgic Twitter threads or goodbye posts lead you astray – John Wooden is still the best to ever do it, and the greatest men's college basketball coach of all time.
This isn't exactly a hot take, or at least it shouldn't be. Ben Bolch of the Los Angeles Times addressed the Wooden vs. Coach K argument back in June of 2021, not long after Krzyzewski announced that he would be retiring at the end of the following season. UCLA athletic director Martin Jarmond has replied to social media posts honoring Coach K with pictures and graphics of Wooden with his treasure trove of trophies, rallying Bruin fans around the Wizard of Westwood online.
For their careers, Wooden had an .804 winning percentage and Krzyzewski was .766.
Krzyzewski went 50-50 against Duke's archrival North Carolina, while UCLA was so dominant under Wooden that they didn't even have a true rival. The Bruins went 61-20 against crosstown foe USC, 56-17 against Cal, 61-14 against Stanford, 11-4 against Notre Dame and 7-0 against Arizona.
UCLA had a historic 88-game winning streak spanning three years, and at one point won 38 NCAA tournament games in a row. Duke never had a perfect season under Krzyzewski, and after their back-to-back titles in 1991 and 1992, their following championships were typically preceded by eight-year droughts.
Wooden never had a losing season. Krzyzewski had four. Heck, Wooden only had one season with a winning percentage under .600, while Krzyzewski had eight.
Yes, Krzyzewski has the most wins of all time, but he also coached 18 years longer than Wooden. Teams also played more games per season in Krzyzewski's era compared to Wooden's, making gross wins an inaccurate metric to rely on for a direct comparison.
If Krzyzewski had called it quits after 29 seasons like Wooden did, he would have finished with 694 wins instead of the 1,202 he has today, admittedly still more than Wooden. But because of the scheduling differences, looking at the overall records in that span is going to be a more telling sign of their success – Wooden went 620-147 while Krzyzewski went 694-240 in their respective 29-year opening spans.
Credit Krzyzewski for his longevity, but it isn't as if Wooden ran out of steam at any point. He led the Bruins to the 1975 NCAA title, then retired on the spot. Had Wooden come back, he still would have been the best coach in the country coaching the best team in the nation, considering he closed out his career winning it all in 10 of his final 12 campaigns.
Wooden had far more postseason success, even disregarding the difference in career lengths. No matter which way you cut it, 10 titles is greater than five. Wooden's 12 Final Four appearances may have just been surpasses by Krzyzewski's 13, but Duke ran into disappointment after disappointment in more than half of those national semifinal trips.
And then if it is all adjusted for career length, Krzyzewski would have ended up with three championships, had he retired 29 years in like Wooden had. Looking at it the other way around, imagine how many more championships Wooden could have won if he had stayed at UCLA another 18 seasons.
Would Wooden have had the foresight to recruit Michael Jordan, who once said UCLA was his dream school until they didn't pursue him early enough? Would the Marques Johnson-led Bruins have won in 1976 or 1977, or maybe the core built around Reggie Miller in the mid 1980s? Even the Ed O'Bannon-Tyus Edney squad would have theoretically been Wooden's last crew, and they went on to win it all without him in 1995.
It's all laughably hypothetical, but the point is that Wooden would have had to win negative five championships in those two bonus decades to sink to Krzyzewski's level, and he more than likely would have ended up bolstering his track record with all the talent coming through Westwood.
And speaking of that talent, a quick look at UCLA's retired numbers or on-campus Hall of Fame should give an even more clear answer to the question at hand.
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (then Lew Alcindor) and Bill Walton are almost unanimously on everyone's Mount Rushmore of greatest college basketball players of all time, and they are both in the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame. Gail Goodrich and Jamaal Wilkes are Hall of Famers as well, with Marques Johnson being a notable snub after missing out as a semifinalist again in 2022.
Krzyzewski has coached a grand total of one Hall of Famer – Grant Hill, who made it in back in 2018 and has arguably the least deserving resume of any post-merger player to earn the distinction thanks to his brief five-year peak. That's mostly due to injuries rather than Hill's talent or Krzyzewski's player development skills, but still, even Coach K's lone Hall of Famer is in the bottom tier.
To play devil's advocate, there is a strong argument to be made from that comparison that claims Krzyzewski succeeded despite not having all-time talents, whereas Wooden was propped up by them. But identifying generational talents, attracting them, letting them flourish and setting them up for success beyond the campus is all part of the job, and it is still something Wooden has over Krzyzewski.
Hill never won an NBA title, and neither did Carlos Boozer, Christian Laettner, Luol Deng, Elton Brand or JJ Redick. Abdul-Jabbar won six, Wilkes won four, Walton won two and Goodrich won one.
Wooden built the Pyramid of Success from the ground up, and he made its teachings and lessons so effective that those who learned its ways under his tutelage carried those takeaways to the next level. The culture Wooden built is difficult to form into something tangible, but his influence both in Westwood and in the basketball world as a whole is nearly unmatched.
The Duke Brotherhood is strong and the Blue Devils are still a wildly successful program, truly ascending to blue blood status under Krzyzewski's guidance if they weren't already there before. To be second best out of the thousands of coaches ever to hold a clipboard and whistle at the college level is no easy task, and it shouldn't be seen as an insult or a slight against him.
Krzyzewski just wrapped up an illustrious career, and he should be commended for his success, but just remember – Coach K lost to his most fierce rival in the Final Four in the last game of his career, while the Wizard of Westwood left the game on top, victorious at the end of yet another record-shattering championship run.
Nearly 50 years later, Wooden is still on top.
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