The Coach Who Started with Socks

John Wooden won ten NCAA basketball championships at UCLA — seven of them in a row. No coach in history has matched that record. Yet every season, on the very first day of practice, Wooden gathered his players — many of them the most recruited athletes in the country — and taught them how to put on their socks and tie their shoes.

He would demonstrate the technique slowly: smooth out every wrinkle in the sock, pull it snug against the heel, lace the shoe firmly from bottom to top. The players would glance at each other, bewildered. These were All-Americans. They had been playing basketball since childhood. But Wooden understood something most of us resist — greatness is built on the willingness to go low before you go high.

"It's the little details that are vital," Wooden often said. "Little things make big things happen."

The Apostle Paul wrote about One far greater than any coach or champion: Christ Jesus, "who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage; rather, he made himself nothing" (Philippians 2:6-7). The Lord of the universe knelt to wash dusty feet.

If the greatest basketball coach who ever lived could begin each season on his knees demonstrating socks, and if the Son of God could stoop with a towel and basin, then perhaps our resistance to humble, unglamorous service reveals not our strength but our insecurity. True greatness has never been afraid to start small.