Basketball Coach Quotes

I am very excited to be the head women's basketball coach at Beloit College, ... This is a great opportunity for me. I am looking forward to putting my stamp on the program. I am confident that I can and will be successful here. ~ Don Adams

A Coach must never forget that he is a leader and not merely a person with authority. ~ John Wooden

As Pat Riley, the basketball coach, said, Anytime you stop striving to get better, you're bound to get worse. ~ Brian Tracy

In the absence of feedback, people will fill in the blanks with a negative. They will assume you don't care about them or don't like them. ~ Pat Summitt

Oh, you know. I'm queen of the rumor mill. It seems like there's been a new rumor about me every week since I got here. Comes with being the new girl, I guess. Have you heard the one where I seduced the basketball coach? That's a personal favorite. ~ Cynthia Hand

I could maybe coach kids' basketball. I know enough about basketball where I feel like I could coach 12-year-olds pretty effectively. ~ Hannibal Buress

I don't look at myself as a basketball coach. I look at myself as a leader who happens to coach basketball. ~ Mike Krzyzewski

The more things we can get kids to do correctly off the court, the more they will do correctly on the court. ~ Mike Jarvis

I grew up in a small town in Illinois, and my dad was a basketball coach. Thanks to him, I have excellent fundamentals in both basketball and baseball. ~ Nick Offerman

Good shooters take the shots; best shooters take most of the shots. ~ Don Meyer

It is not what you teach, but what you emphasize. ~ Don Meyer

I grew up in Arkansas and that's the law. My dad was a high school basketball coach, so I was raised as a coach's son and I was a baseball player back in Arkansas, and I lived in Texas, too, so I was just surrounded by sports. So that's what I was going to do: Pitch for the St Louis Cardinals. I had no idea I was going to be an actor. So I got my collar bone broken in the Kansas City Royals training camp. And once I got hurt I started doing other things for a while. ~ Billy Bob Thornton

Goals should be realistic, attainable, and shared among all members of the team ~ Mike Krzyzewski

Don't try to imitate other coaches. Be your own person with your own style and do your own thing. ~ Hubie Brown

So you're dealing with a coach, and you're dealing with a guy who's actually experienced NBA basketball from a player's perspective and actually goes about it that way. ~ Kevin Garnett

What is there about basketball that makes Larry Bird or Lenny Wilkens want to coach after their playing careers are done? ~ George Vecsey

The basketball coach cut me within two days, so I was back in the pool. I was the first one in the wall after the first 25 yards, but the last one out because I didn't have a flip turn. ~ Merlin Olsen

We win because we play together as a team. ~ John Havlicek

You have no choices about how you lose, but you do have a choice about how you come back and prepare to win again. ~ Pat Riley

He who controlleth the backboard, controlleth the game. ~ Adolph Rupp

As a parent, I have a job as a role model to my children, and by extension, to other young people. ~ Kareem Abdul-Jabbar

Your defense will save you on the nights that your offense isn't working. ~ Adolph Rupp

Confidence shared is better than confidence only in yourself. ~ Mike Krzyzewski

Famed basketball coach Phil Jackson, a meditator himself, arranged to have his players - first the Chicago Bulls, and then the L.A. Lakers - learn meditation as a way to improve their focus and teamwork. Jackson finds that mindfulness assists players in paying attention to what's happening on the court moment by moment. Such precise training in attention has paid off during tense playoffs; Jackson has led more teams to championships than any coach in NBA history. Meditation ~ Sharon Salzberg

Confrontation simply means meeting the truth head-on. ~ Mike Krzyzewski

The basic premise of my system is to fatigue your opponents with constant pressure defensively and constant movement offensively. ~ Rick Pitino

I was pretty hot-tempered all through school. I remember my high school basketball coach telling me: 'Boy, if you don't learn to control that temper, you're gonna kill somebody.' ~ Tony Dorsett

I'm not really a big X's and O's guy, but if you want to go there, I'm more of a space-the-floor type of coach: Five out, zero in, and that's the way we play basketball, screen and roll here and there, pocket passes everywhere; it's what it's about. ~ Kyrie Irving

I don't hire good coaches, I hire good people. If they turn out to be good coaches, too, that's a plus. ~ Geno Auriemma

Over coaching is the worst thing you can do to a player. ~ Dean Smith

John Wooden, the legendary basketball coach, says you aren't a failure until you start to blame. ~ Carol S. Dweck

Simplify the game as much as possible. When you add, you must subtract. ~ Don Meyer

The more your players have to think on the basketball court, the slower their feet get. ~ Jerry Tarkanian

Stand up for your players. Show them you care on and off the court. ~ Red Auerbach

So like any football or basketball coach, you always always believe you're going to win. ~ Colin Powell

True basketball coaches are great teachers and you do not humiliate, you do not physically go after, you do not push or shove, you do not berate, if you are a true coach. If you humiliate or curse them, that won't do it. Coaches like that are not coaches. ~ Morgan Wootten

Do your best when no one is looking. ~ Bob Cousy

I think God speaks something meaningful into our lives and it fills us up and helps us change the world regardless of ourselves and our shortcomings. His name for us is His beloved. He hopes that we'll believe Him like I came to believe what the coach said about me. He hopes we'll start to see ourselves as His beloved rather than think of all of the reasons that we aren't. ~ Bob Goff

Think like a head coach, but act like an assistant coach ~ Tommy Amaker

I started out as a football player. I liked to inflict pain. In basketball, it was the same thing. ~ Shaquille O'Neal

No matter how many good deeds we preform, they aren't the ticket to earning God's favor. God graces us in spite of what we do in this life, not because of. ~ Bill Courtney

It's not difficult to coach to just get 10 players right on your 18-yard box. ~ Brendan

We blacks look for leadership in men and women of such youth and inexperience, as well as poverty of education and character, that it is no wonder that we sometimes seem rudderless ... We see basketball players and pop singers as possible role models, when nothing could be further, in most cases, from their capacities. ~ Arthur Ashe

Chuck Daly was a man and a coach who everyone had great respect for, and to be recognized in his memory is very special. ~ Tom Heinsohn

To be a professional you have to act like one as well.. ~ Alcurtis Turner

We need good liturgies, and we need natural ones; we need a life neither patternless nor over patterned, if the city is to be built. And I think the root of it all is caring. Not that that will turn the trick all by itself, but that we can produce nothing good without it. True liturgies take things for what they really are, and offer them up in loving delight. Adam naming the animals is instituting the first of all the liturgies; speech, by which man the priest of creation picks up each of the world's pieces and by his wonder bears it into the dance. "By George," he says, "there's an elephant in my garden; isn't that something!" Adam has been at work a long time; civilization is the fruit of his priestly labors. Culture is the liturgy of nature as it is offered up by man. But culture can come only from caring enough about things to want them really to be themselves - to want the poem to scan perfectly, the song to be genuinely melodic, the basketball actually to drop through the middle of the hoop, the edge of the board to be utterly straight, the pastry to be really flaky. Few of us have very many great things to care about, but we all have plenty of small ones; and that's enough for the dance. It is precisely through the things we put on the table, and the liturgies we form around it, that the city is built, caring is more than half the work. ~ Robert Farrar Capon

I'm not supposed to know what's going on. But I can tell you this, I won't be standing around scratching my head like Coach Johnson in that Denorex commercial. ~ John Avery

Any time a little midget does something like this, you gotta give him a 10!. ~ Charles Barkley

Once you have gone first class, everything else is coach. ~ Jeffrey Fry

I'm not sure that an athlete is prepared to be a role model. He has a lot of attention paid to him that he shouldn't have, and then the athletes tend to think of themselves as better than they are. ~ Bobby Knight

As a basketball fan, I get sick and tired of people talking about numbers. To me, the world is getting too materialistic. ~ Shaquille O'Neal

I either run or try to play basketball every day. ~ Harold Ford, Jr.

Your ability to communicate to your young people will determine your success. ~ Jim Harrick

Some clubs want to win so much they'll do anything to get it. Our approach has been just the opposite. We've tried to do things the right way. And the right way is [abiding by] the rules and regulations ... I may not like all of them, but once they are [official], we play by them. ~ Don Shula

I shift the basketball from hand to hand, hating his tone, as though we're the only two levelheaded people on earth and everyone else is full of shit. ~ Ashley Herring Blake

Belief in yourself is what happens when you know you've done the thing things that entitle you to success. ~ Pat Summitt

I'm just a basketball player, you know? Just put me where you need me. ~ Lamar Odom

It's the attitude of the players, not their skills, that is the biggest factor in determining whether you win or lose. ~ Harry Sinden

You create shots for yourself by what you do without the ball more than what you do after you get it ~ Steve Alford

I don't know what being an Everest guide means. I am a coach, not a guide. ~ Anatoli Boukreev

Walking has been ridiculous in college basketball the past 15 years. ~ Bobby Knight

Confidence imparts a wonderful inspiration to the possessor. ~ John Milton

I also see how essential a comprehensive treatment plan is, a plan that incorporates education, understanding, empathy, structure, coaching, a plan for success and physical exercise as well as medication. I see how important the human connection is every step of the way: connection with parent or spouse; with teacher or supervisor; with friend or colleague; with doctor, with therapist, with coach, with the world "out there." In fact, I see the human connection as the single most powerful therapeutic force in the treatment of ADHD. ~ Edward M. Hallowell

One of the strong principles that I believe in is that you're always learning, whether you're a commissioner, a current general manager, a president or an owner, or somebody that's trying to become a general manger or a coach in the NFL. ~ Roger Goodell

When Batty got back home from walking the dogs, there were teenagers lounging all over the place, some left over from the basketball game, some arriving for the birthday dinner, some who fit into both categories. For once, she hardly cared, too delighted to see that Oliver's sleek car was no longer in the driveway. Hoping that he was gone forever, she rushed into the house and ended up in the kitchen, where dinner preparations were in full swing. Mr. Penderwick was chopping up vegetables for quesadillas, Rosalind was pulling a cake out of the oven, Jeffrey was shredding cheese, and Iantha was cooking up small, plain cheese quesadillas for Lydia, who was to be fed before the big dinner got rolling. Then there were the non-workers: Lydia in her high chair, wearing both her crown and her lamb bib, her new pink rabbit beside her; Jane sitting cross-legged on the floor, in everyone's way; Ben, strutting around, showing off his new Celtics T-shirt; and Asimov, sticking close to Jeffrey, hoping for falling cheese. ~ Jeanne Birdsall

To be successful you need to have good, happy Players. ~ Norm Sloan

Watching the Dallas Cowboys perform, it is not difficult to believe that coach Tom Landry flew fourengines bombers during World War II. He was in B17 Flying Fortresses out of England, they say. His cautious, conservative approach to every situation and the complexity of the plays he sends in do seem to reflect the philosophy of a pilot trained to doggedly press on according to plans laid down before takeoff. I sometimes wonder how the Cowboys would have fared all this years had Tom flown fighters in combat situations which dictated continuously changing tactics. ~ Len Morgan

It's not about being a head coach, I'd rather be a DC at Auburn and win championships. ~ Will Muschamp

Compete with yourself until the only one left to compete with is yourself. ~ Matshona Dhliwayo

A hook shot kisses the rim and hangs there, helplessly, but doesn't drop and for once our gangly starting center boxes out his man and times his jump perfectly, gathering the orange leather/from the air like a cherished possession. ~ Edward Hirsch

Live in the moment that you are in. ~ Al McGuire

A cupcake is just a muffin with clown puke topping. And once you've got through the clown puke there's nothing but a fistful of quotidian sponge nestling in a depressing, soggy 'cup' that feels like a pair of paper knickers a fat man has been sitting in throughout a long, hot coach journey between two disappointing market towns. ~ Charlie Brooker

Think of new ways to do old things. You must protect against boredom in a practice situation. ~ George Raveling

She played the game the way that it was meant to be played⎼as if her life depended on it. And she seemed driven by some need, or struggle, or fundamental resolve, that preceded the basketball and made it possible.. ~ Nina Revoyr

The courts don't remove children from their home because the child underperformed at school or required extra long walks or a game of basketball in order to blow off the steam all 5-year-olds have. It's because the parents were unfit, not the kids. ~ Angela Featherstone

I coach a few guys and they work very, very hard, but in our day we did it because we just loved it. ~ Linford Christie

Teamwork doesn't come naturally. It must be taught. ~ Pat Summitt

Every good rowing coach, in his own way, imparts to his men the kind of self-discipline required to achieve the ultimate from mind, heart, and body. Which is why most ex-oarsmen will tell you they learned more fundamentally important lessons in the racing shell than in the classroom. ~ Daniel James Brown

I lost $35,000 in less than a week at the Mirage in Las Vegas. ~ Dennis Rodman

In the next 15 or 20 years, I hope I'll be the richest man in the world. That's one of my goals. I want to be a billionaire. I want to get to a position where generation on generation don't have to worry about nothing. I don't want family members from my kids to my son's kids to never have to worry. And I can't do that now just playing basketball. ~ LeBron James

I coach church planters to look at the ethnic diversity of schools and neighborhoods they are near. This will be an indicator how ethnically diverse their congregation can become. ~ Derwin L. Gray

I was a baseball player at North Central High School in Spokane, Washington even though I was all-city in basketball, even when I signed a letter of intent to play quarterback at Washington State. ~ Ryne Sandberg

I'm a really smart player. If you tell me something, I get it quickly. If there is something wrong with my hitting, tell me what's wrong and I'll pick it up right away. That's the best thing I have going for me, my ability to listen to a coach and fix what I'm doing wrong. ~ Albert Pujols

You have to be able to separate business from the love of the game. There were a lot of decisions made business-wise that I wasn't happy with, and I took a lot of blame over the years. But you have to be able to separate that from the love you have for the game. ~ Kobe Bryant