Who is the greatest basketball player ever to perform in the Calumet Region?

Is he a 7-footer with the touch of a point guard? Is he a thunderous rebounder? Is he a ball handler with a magician’s union card? Is he a hellfire and brimstone preacher-coach in the manner of Knute Rockne? Is he a fear-inspiring Vince Lombardi type? Is he a walking puzzle that few people can understand, a la Casey Stengel?

No, none of these. John Wooden is in such in a class by himself that he will never have successful imitators. He won so many NCAA national championships at UCLA that his home could command a moat.

Wooden’s ties to this part of the country started with his play for Purdue University. After a three-year winning career at Martinsville that would have satisfied most players, Wooden enrolled at PU and was named All-American all three years of his varsity career.

He subsequently coached for South Bend Central and in his spare time drove to the Calumet Region to play pro ball, first for The Whiting Caesars and then in Hammond after the civic center opened in the mid-1930s. The only league championship the Caesars ever won was in 1934 - when Wooden was the engine.

He coached at Indiana State University, where he was also the baseball coach. It was there that he burst into headlines when one of his players at a national tournament in Kansas City was treated like a new kind of pox. Wooden protested and Human Rights got the win.

That player, Clarence Walker of E.C. Washington, later became a popular teacher in the East Chicago school system and a champion tennis player. Many of you will remember Clarence, a classy guy with synapses that popped faster than a NIPSCO transformer on a rainy day.

Clarence's style of play was consistent with Wooden’s method of coaching, which had three components. One, be in better condition than your opponent. Two, execute fundamentals properly and quickly. Do everything quickly. Three, plan as a unit. Think about passing first, before shooting.

He had his players subscribe to the style of his college coach, Piggie Lambert. He taught the "Lambert theory," the team that makes the most mistakes will probably win. "If you’re not making mistakes, then you’re not doing anything," Wooden used to say.

Moreover, the Lambert style - attack, gamble, fast break, and run, run, run, also became a part of the Wooden style. He liked to think of it as entertaining, which he embraced as an obligation in a land of wall-to-wall entertainment.

As one coach said about Wooden: "He’s taught us all about quickness in basketball - from big men to guards, from offense to defense."

As for surviving in the toxicity of political correctness, Wooden simply did not even try. "If I treated everyone alike, all players would get the same amount of playing time," he said. "If I gave the players who play most often a better pair of shoes, is that partiality? No!

"The players who have better shoes are going to need them, because they’re playing more."

Opinions expressed are solely those of the writer.