Coach of the Leg Lamps
Indianapolis, Indiana
John Wooden was a famous basketball coach, born in central Indiana. The city of Indianapolis wanted to honor him with a bronze statue. What it got was "Wooden's Legacy," sculpted by Jeffrey Rouse, which shows an older Wooden -- he coached until he was 64 -- in a game huddle, surrounded by five pairs of disembodied human legs. The intent, presumably, was to make Wooden the star and the players anonymous.
But the legs are all that people talk about.
Dedicated on March 10, 2012, the statue was quickly dubbed Coach of the Christmas Story Lamps -- a reference to the lady's leg lamp in the film A Christmas Story, which also supposedly took place in Indiana. Others have said that the statue reminds them of a grisly accident, or that Wooden appears to be crouching in a department store window, surrounded by dummy parts from the Banana Republic down the street.