I'm telling you, when a building goes down, like your old high school, or someone close to you dies, a piece of you goes with them. Over four months ago I paid homage to Tom Brookshire, he of Philadelphia Eagle and "This Week in Pro football" fame and what he meant for my love of that sport.

Well, now you can put John Wooden in that group.

After falling under the spell of Reggie Jackson and baseball in the summer of '69, plus football later that year, basketball was next on my list, as a I became a huge fan of rookie Lew Alcindor and the Milwaukee Bucks. During Milwaukee's run from the cellar to the top of the heap, the NCAA tourney grabbed me by the imagination as I watched Curtis Rowe, Steve Patterson, Henry Bibby and Sidney Wicks help UCLA continue the dominance stared in the early '60s and taken to another level by Alcindor (soon to become Kareem Abdul-Jabbar).

The Bruins were methodical in approach, but totally effective and smothering to opponents, as they ran over one team after another in 1970 on their way to the fourth of what would eventually become seven straight national titles.

It was all orchestrated by head coach John Wooden, who, to my eight-year old eyes, just looked like another elementary school principal. That aside, Wooden knew his hoops and what's more, he taught all of his players about life and how the lessons learned on the court were extremely pivotal to their very beings.

One look at his two best players verifies those facts. Abdul-Jabbar and Bill Walton were both dominant big men, more than any others in NCAA history, as they strung together 88-2 and 114-5 records, respectively, and six national titles. However, it was what they were off the court that tells most about Wooden the coach and the man.

Abdul-Jabbar was an introverted intellectual who loved history (the major in which he earned his Bachelor's) and jazz music. He was very much against the status quo and very much pro-black, but he and coach Wooden learned from each other. More importantly, they learned how they could work together, different sets of values or not, to make UCLA a cut above the rest. Kareem, as you may have seen on the halftime interview during Game two of the LA-Boston series, spoke of Wooden in a tributary tone usually reserved for fathers.

Walton was the same, if not more so. In his recollections of the Wizard, he and Wooden bumped heads plenty during their years together ('70-'74). It was the perfect storm, as Wooden, the disciplined, organized Mid-Westerner, met the stereotypical California kid in the anti-war-pro-demonstration-forget- the- establishment Walton.

As with Abdul-Jabbar, they had their differences, but were able to put them aside long enough to forge an un-forgettable run through the collegiate ranks that included 88 straight wins, and in the process they created their own private mutual admiration society.

Every coach wants to win as much as John Wooden did at UCLA, but, secretly, all coaches would love to hear the respect the two legends bestowed upon Wooden from their own players someday. It would be the definite sign that their job as a coach was a job well done.