It’s a great line, but I didn’t come up with it

Something curious has happened in the past several weeks.

Three or four times now, I’ve searched for my name on Twitter—yeah, I’m that guy—and I’ve come across posts that look like this:

“Things turn out best for people who make the best of the way things turn out.”—Craig Lancaster

Uh, no. John Wooden. No, seriously, he really said it.

Because I’m such an accuracy freak—blame journalism; I’m trying to break the habit—I feel compelled to publicly set the record straight, as I did several hours ago. To wit:

I know how this happened. I wrote a collection of short stories, Quantum Physics and the Art of Departure. I don’t talk a lot about this book, but I’m really proud of it. The first story, Somebody Has to Lose, is about a teenage basketball phenom and her coach, and the tangled mess that results when a town loses its mind over sports. The phenom’s father is, fictitiously, a former player on Wooden’s UCLA teams, and he has drilled this quote into his daughter’s consciousness. It’s a small part of a long story, but it’s obviously struck a chord. Not surprising. The original Wooden quote struck a chord with me.

Here’s what it looks like in print:

Once more, for the record:

It’s a great line.

But I didn’t come up with it.

John Wooden did.