John Wooden

Basketball, UCLA. Wooden won ten NCAA titles in twelve seasons and planned every practice to the minute on index cards that he kept for decades. Psychologists Roland Tharp and Ronald Gallimore sat in on his sessions in the 1970s and found most of his coaching was short, specific instruction rather than praise or speeches. Players such as Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Bill Walton have described lessons that began with how to put on socks.