|
|||
|
|||
|
 |
|
|
DIRECTV WOODEN LEGACY MEDIA CONFERENCENovember 13, 2013Greg WoodenTIM SIMMONS: Just your thoughts about the new format for the tournament? GREG WOODEN: You know what, the entire Wooden family is excited to be associated with this DirecTV Wooden Legacy tournament. I would like to also thank ESPN and the Honda Center for renaming this event after my grandfather. We're excited. We've been part of the Wooden Classic with the Honda Center since‑‑ almost 20 years. I think the inception‑‑ TIM SIMMONS: 1994, I think. GREG WOODEN: 1994. It's always been a great event. My grandfather really never liked to have anything named after him. That wasn't his thing. But what this event did do was it brought his family and his friends together for just a real, real nice weekend, great basketball, and just great times. TIM SIMMONS: Going from just a one‑day tournament to three days is probably going to be a lot of basketball for you. GREG WOODEN: It's going to be a lot of basketball. I think they've got four games at Fullerton on Thursday, four at Fullerton on Friday and then four at the Honda Center on Sunday. So it's a lot of basketball. And hopefully they've got some really, really good teams. I think it's a tough time for teams to travel, and boy, we sure appreciate the fact that all these teams are coming out here for a Thanksgiving tournament. TIM SIMMONS: Are you involved in any way with basketball? I've seen on the website where I think with the IMG academies you've done some work. What are you doing with the sport nowadays? GREG WOODEN: You know, I'm not doing too much with the sport. When my grandfather passed away we had a lot of people that we knew were going to come after us, and he did such a wonderful job with his name for many, many years doing things the right way, we didn't want to screw it up. So I interviewed a bunch of different companies, and we ended up hiring IMG as our agent just to represent the family, and our whole goal was to make sure that if we do something that if he was here today, it would be something that he would kind of put his hands on and really, really be glad we were doing it. The IMG academies, they're teaching a lot of his philosophies down there, and so I'll go in there occasionally and just talk, share stories about my grandfather. TIM SIMMONS: If there was one story that you might tie in with the Wooden Classic, as you said, he didn't like having his name necessarily on something, but in your conversations with him after he retired, did he ever talk about tournaments like this? GREG WOODEN: What he really would talk about is he enjoyed being able to sit in the hotel lobby, talk to players, talk to coaches, talk to his family, talk to his friends and just share stories of growing up on a farm in Indiana. I mean, a story that kind of‑‑ what kind of touches me a little bit is there used to be a John Wooden tradition, and the John Wooden tradition was played at the fieldhouse in Indianapolis. So we would go back for that every year, and that also happened to be Thanksgiving weekend. So when they renamed this tournament after my grandfather Thanksgiving weekend, it brought back a lot of memories of that. And the last trip that my grandfather went to Indiana was in 2005, and my girls were young, and so I really didn't want to fly back there with my girls because it was just a hard time to travel back there, but my wife talked me into it, so we all went back as a family, and I'll tell you, as well‑known as he seemed to be in LA, in Indiana we drove into Martinsville, and I mean, the streets were just lined‑‑ and Martinsville is kind of like a downtown Mayberry. Everybody on that town was lined up on the streets waiting for him to kind of drive in. He went to a bookstore and signed autographs and took pictures for probably about two hours, and it was really, really neat to see my grandfather in his hometown of Martinsville, stop by his house, see where my grandmother used to live, go to the cemetery where his parents were buried, go to the high school gym where he started playing high school basketball. In renaming this tournament kind of brought me back to those memories of some real, real special times. TIM SIMMONS: Do you have any thoughts, obviously you've got two players in the tournament, McDermott from Creighton and Carson from Arizona State, they're both on the Wooden Watch List, and of course Doug McDermott has been a two‑time Wooden All‑American. Any thoughts about watching those two players? GREG WOODEN: Excited. Excited to watch them, and especially excited that McDermott came back for his senior year. I know there's so much pressure on these players nowadays to leave early. My grandfather, it's one thing he sure would have liked to see is players stay in college for four years, get their degree. So I am excited to see these players play. TIM SIMMONS: Greg, we look forward to meeting you in a couple weeks out there. Any parting shots that you'd like to add? GREG WOODEN: No, just want to thank you guys once again for all that you do for basketball. TIM SIMMONS: Thank you very much. GREG WOODEN: You have a great day. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
|
||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
About ASAP Sports •
FastScripts Archive •
Recent Interviews •
Captioning •
Upcoming Events •
Contact Us
FastScripts | Events Covered | Our Clients | Other Services | ASAP in the News | Site Map | Job Opportunities | Links |
|
ASAP Sports, Inc. | T: 1.212 385 0297
|