Coach Wooden and Me
Our 50Year Friendship On and Off the Court
by Kareem AbdulJabbar
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More Recommenders
“Bonus for hoops fans | I highly recommend this book. Beautifully written @kaj33 ! And folks, you don’t have to be a hoops fan to appreciate or even love this read. Great true relationship story #CoachwoodenandMe | I’ve been reading a lot of coaching books lately, and this is one of my favorites. Good tips on how to be an effective leader.”
Source →Recommended by 3 notable people, including Barack Obama and Noah Kagan
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Reading Profile
Should I read this?
This is a reflective, anecdote-rich memoir by a former NBA star about his decades-long friendship with the coach named in the title. Early chapters feel intimate and instructive, sharing small incidents that illuminate how mentorship shaped decisions on and off the court. What works best is its portrait of long-term mentorship and the moral lessons that traveled beyond wins and losses. The main limitation is a tendency toward repetition and reverence — readers seeking critical distance, tactical game analysis, or brisk narrative momentum may find it slow and indulgent.
Read this if...
- •a high-school basketball coach rebuilding a program who wants real-life examples of mentorship and character lessons to model in practice and meetings, because the book foregrounds long-term coach-player influence over X-and-O detail
- •a sports journalist preparing a feature on athlete-coach relationships who needs first-person anecdotes and a long arc of influence to quote and contextualize in reportage
- •a mid-level manager or mentor in a non-sports workplace looking for narrative examples of sustained guidance and how personal standards shape decision-making over decades
Skip this if...
- •you'll likely put it down when the narrative becomes episodic nostalgia and the same recollections are retold — that is the most common slow point
- •annoying if you prefer blow-by-blow game analysis, statistics, or tactical breakdowns rather than character anecdotes and moral reflections
- •annoying if you wanted a balanced, critical portrait rather than an admiring, reverent tone that sometimes skips complicating details
INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES AND USA TODAY BESTSELLER Kareem AbdulJabbar explores his 50year friendship with Coach John Wooden, one of the most enduring and meaningful relationships in sports history.When future NBA legend Kareem AbdulJabbar was still an 18yearold high school basketball prospect from New York City named Lew Alcindor, he accepted a s...
Before You Buy
Reading Specifications
Difficulty:easy
Audience Fit
- a high-school basketball coach rebuilding a program who wants real-life examples of mentorship and character lessons to model in practice and meetings, because the book foregrounds long-term coach-player influence over X-and-O detail
- a sports journalist preparing a feature on athlete-coach relationships who needs first-person anecdotes and a long arc of influence to quote and contextualize in reportage
- a mid-level manager or mentor in a non-sports workplace looking for narrative examples of sustained guidance and how personal standards shape decision-making over decades
- you'll likely put it down when the narrative becomes episodic nostalgia and the same recollections are retold — that is the most common slow point
- annoying if you prefer blow-by-blow game analysis, statistics, or tactical breakdowns rather than character anecdotes and moral reflections
- annoying if you wanted a balanced, critical portrait rather than an admiring, reverent tone that sometimes skips complicating details
Check formats, pricing, and availability options for Kindle, physical print, or audiobooks directly.
View available editions on AmazonKey themes
Why recommended
Recommended by 5 sources and appears in Basketball, Sports, and Nonfiction.
Recommended by notable people
People and public figures who have recommended this book.
Recommendation Signals
Recommendation proof is sourced from public posts, interviews, reading lists, and cited references.
Ron Howard
“Bonus for hoops fans | I highly recommend this book. Beautifully written @kaj33 ! And folks, you don’t have to be a hoops fan to appreciate or even love this read. Great true relationship story #CoachwoodenandMe | I’ve been reading a lot of coaching books lately, and this is one of my favorites. Good tips on how to be an effective leader.”
View sources (3) ▾80%
Appears In
Not sure if this is the right fit?
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“Accidental Presidents offers eight narrative portraits of men who succeeded to the U.S. presidency without election, using anecdote-rich scenes and readable context to show how personality and circumstance interact with office power. It’s strongest as a set of self-contained stories that make succession stakes concrete for non-specialist readers; it does not prioritize dense archival argument or exhaustive methodology, so expect some interpretive generalizations and repeated themes across cases. Use it for fast historical orientation rather than scholarly deep-dives.”
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How recommendation signals are reviewed
Each recommendation is collected from a public source — interviews, articles, or curated lists — and linked to its original URL. Books with many verifiable recommendations from respected people rank higher.