Message #5358

[jim-ratliff]

I will say, although it pains me, Gary skis this terrain more smoothly than HH!

 ? ? Ron, that shouldn't pain you at all.? Lew Alcindor also played basketball better than John Wooden,
even though Wooden was one of the better coaches ever.? ?? ?

EDITED:? For you kids like Ron, John Wooden was the legendary basketball coach at UCLA that won 10 NCAA championships as a coach and is enshrined in the Basketball Hall of Fame separately as a player and a coach.? However, as great a coach as he was he wasn't as good as several of the players he taught, and one named Lew Alcindor (who later changed his name to Kareem Abdul-Jabbar) was among the greatest and certainly a better player than Wooden.? The point was that the mark of a good coach isn't how well he skis so much as how well he teaches (although I have certainly heard that HH is a pretty decent skier) and so it shouldn't pain you to point out a student skiing better than the teacher.  I imagine that if Harald were to watch Gary ski he would take some quiet pride in whatever part he played helping Gary grow to that level.