DISTURBING NEWS: The Atlanta Braves head coach has left because of…

Jerry Hoover, a legendary Indiana high school basketball coach, reluctantly accepted a quick phone interview, appearing somewhat annoyed by the press surrounding his retirement from Blackford High to prevent his risk of catching COVID-19.

He is unable to comprehend the significance of an 86-year-old coach making a losing squad win for the ninth time. After all, he once learned a great deal about basketball from a coach who was much older than that in a single chat.

Hoover doesn’t hesitate to name the greatest in his field ever when asked to.

Who is the best basketball coach of all time? Wooden. “Johnny Wooden,” said Hoover. “We just interacted once. I went out there and spent seven hours with him when he was ninety-seven. Wonderful man. Amazing man.

“He was really a nice man,” said Hoover. His players were first and foremost brilliant. Nothing gets done in the absence of players. Lew Alcindor, better known by his stage name Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, was perhaps the best player of all time up until 1973. In order to start an NBA franchise, Alcindor had to be signed first.

Hoover and Wooden had a lot in common, even outside of their mutual coaching of the Bruins. Hoover and Wooden are both Indiana natives who were walk-ons for Purdue University’s basketball team. Wooden has been an All-American three times. Ward “Piggy” Lambert was Wooden’s varsity coach and Hoover’s freshman coach at Purdue. In Springfield, Massachusetts, Wooden was admitted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in 1960 as a player and in 1973 as a coach. In March 2019, Hoover, at eighty-four, was admitted as a coach into the Indiana Basketball Hall of Fame.