Basketball Coaching Quotes

Offense is spacing and spacing is offense. ~ Chuck Daly

If it comes down to you or the program that decision was made long ago. ~ Don Meyer

Courage gives a leader the ability to stand straight and not sway, no matter which way the wind blows. ~ Mike Krzyzewski

Morale and attitude are the fundamentals to success. ~ Bud Wilkinson

If you get tough mentally, you can get tough physically and overcome fatigue. ~ Pat Riley

Everyone wants to win, but not everyone is willing to prepare to win. ~ Bobby Knight

Criticize on defense and encourage on offense. ~ John Brady

We travel in Duke stuff ... They can have a hat, but it must be a Duke hat. ~ Mike Krzyzewski

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 worst day coaching is better than the best day doing anything else ~ Don Meyer

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

The strength of my Princeton teams has always been attitude, intelligence and discipline. ~ Pete Carril

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

Be quick without hurrying. ~ John Wooden

Your contribution as a coach is defending and rebounding. ~ Dick Motta

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

Probably the most important aspect of individual defensive play is the 'close-out.' This approach to the ball should be made in a 'step-drag action' with advanced foot moving forward first and then the back foot in a boxer's type shuffling of the feet. ~ Tex Winter

Use different basketball offensive alignments to cause confusion for the other team. ~ Hubie Brown

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

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

Quickness more than anything else should determine your amount of pressure on the ball. ~ Don Meyer

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

And the trouble with me is that my ego just can't accept a loss. I suppose that if I were more perfectly adjusted, I would toss off defeat, but my name is on this ball club. Thirty-six men publicly reflect me and reflect on me, and it's a matter of my pride. ~ Vince Lombardi

We feel that the 2-2-1 press is a very effective means of controlling tempo and providing us with opportunities to capitalize on the mistakes of our opponents. At the same time we feel it is a very safe press because we work very hard at the necessary rotations. ~ Jim Calhoun

The best teams are team in any sport that lose themselves in the team. The individuals lose their identity. And their identities come about as a result of being in the team first. ~ Mike Krzyzewski

Shared suffering: one guy messes up and everyone runs. One guy does well and everyone benefits. ~ Don Meyer

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

Players who are late say that their time is more important than the team. ~ Don Meyer

When you're a coach you've got to go up the ladder, you've got to be ready to travel. That's the nature of coaching ~ Kareem Abdul-Jabbar

I think the most important thing about screaming in our music is the urgency of it. ~ Lacey Sturm

Bad shooters are always open ~ Pete Carril

I never let our players get satisfied, I never let our Coaches get satisfied, I was never satisfied. We can always do it better. ~ John Wooden

Conditioning is essential to success in basketball. ~ John Wooden

We teach offense 5-0/5-5 (whole method) and defense by part (1-1/3-3). ~ Dick Bennett

Self-esteem is directly linked to deserving success. You must deserve victory to feel good about yourself. ~ Rick Pitino

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

Hearing improves with PRAISE! ~ Mark Gottfried

The ability to rebound is in inverse proportion to the distance your house is from the nearest railroad tracks. ~ Don Meyer

The first shot does not beat you. ~ Chuck Daly

Only praise behavior that you want to be repeated. Never use false praise. ~ Dean Smith

Leadership starts at the top. ~ Morgan Wootten

When it comes to celebrating, act like you've been there before. ~ Terry Bowden

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

Writing a manual forces you to place your thoughts and ideas down on paper. ~ Tara VanDerveer

Do passing drills that come from your offense. ~ John Wooden

Coaches can talk and talk and talk about something, but if you get it on tape and show it to them, it is so much more effective. ~ Larry Bird

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

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

You have to remember that coaching wasn't sophisticated back then - you didn't have the camps, clinics and all the technical advances that are available today - so from that standpoint, playing with a cast on my arm was a fortunate event in my life. ~ Bob Cousy

It doesn't matter where you coach, it matters why you coach. ~ Don Meyer

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

Basketball is sharing. ~ Phil Jackson

The key to the fast break is every one running hard for their teammates. ~ Paul Westhead

You can't play any defense if the other team is on the foul line. ~ Mike Krzyzewski

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

All really successful coaches have a system. ~ Jim Valvano

Players will never do more than you demand. ~ Jimmy Tillette

Put your two best players away from the ball and bring it back to them. ~ Don Meyer

Why do you play a game? I play a game to see how good we can be. ~ Mike Krzyzewski

We put a premium on knowing what the other team does. Then we try to take them out of it. ~ P. J. Carlesimo

Perhaps the toughest call for a coach is weighing what is best for an individual against what is best for the team. Keeping a player on the roster just because I liked him personally, or even because of his great contributions to the team in the past, when I felt some one else could do more for the team would be a disservice to the team's goals. ~ Tom Landry

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

That was just my own personal program: I didn't want to get too high over the good moments because I didn't want to be saddened and depressed when things didn't go as I had planned. ~ Julius Erving

Each time I step on the basketball court, I never know what will happen. I live for the moment. I play for the moment. ~ Michael Jordan

In 10 years, I'm gonna be all over. I'll still be doing mad music, I'll be doing a couple movies, maybe some TV. Hopefully coaching some of my son's sports teams and be in heavy daddy mode. ~ Shwayze

Martyrs of a sort they were, these children, along with the town drunk, in his basketball sneakers and buttonless overcoat, draining blackberry brandy from a paper bag as he sat on his bench in Kazmierczak Square, risking nightly death by exposure; martyrs too of a sort were the men and women hastening to adulterous trysts, risking disgrace and divorce for their fix of motel love - all sacrificing the outer world to the inner, proclaiming with this priority that everything solid-seeming and substantial is in fact a dream, of less account than a merciful rush of feeling. ~ John Updike

Apparently I need shoes with a 'swoosh' on the side if I'm to continue playing basketball. ~ Lucius Vladescu ~ Beth Fantaskey

Players who are committed to the team first will find a way to help when things are going bad, they will do whatever it takes. Kids that are more into themselves will not do that. They will take care of themselves and get more individual when things are tough. ~ Dick Bennett

I don't know how tall I am or how much I weigh. Because I don't want anybody to know my identity. I'm like a superhero. Call me Basketball Man. ~ LeBron James

I'll show you just how cruel a sport basketball is. ~ Atsushi

Actually, Magic and the Lakers beat Philadelphia for Magic's first NBA Championship. ~ Oscar Robertson

It is among the commonplaces of education that we often first cut off the living root and then try to replace its natural functions by artificial means. Thus we suppress the child's curiosity and then when he lacks a natural interest in learning he is offered special coaching for his scholastic coaching for his scholastic difficulties. ~ Alice Duer Miller

I was very fortunate when I was little - I played basketball. You really absolutely learn how to be a team player, how to win a game, to accomplish things, not just for yourself. ~ Weili Dai

I don't believe in statistics. There are too many factors that can't be measured. You can't measure a ballplayer's heart. ~ Red Auerbach

The Lakers were able to maintain a certain level of talent and success, and so were the Celtics. It became part of people's sports lore. ~ Kareem Abdul-Jabbar

I started playing basketball when I was about three years old. After that, everything else just came naturally. I had older cousins that used to let me hang with them, so I got my toughness from them. ~ Brandon Jennings

I always believe I can beat the best, achieve the best. I always see myself in the top position. ~ Serena Williams

We don't do things we aren't good at by nature. I wouldn't play basketball because I'm only 5' 1. Find what you enjoy - whether it's racing, flying a helicopter, being a doctor, or stitching clothes together. Once you've done that, you have the passion you need. ~ Danica Patrick

It's stressful to keep doing audition after audition after audition. You finish one and go to the next one, and you have to learn lines. For me, I have to work on my accent, so I was getting accent coaching and acting coaching. I wanted to make good impressions. ~ Luke Mitchell

Getting fired is not shameful. It just means you need to find a better fit. ~ John Tarnoff

Sometimes I do wonder what college would have been like. But I made my decision. ~ Kobe Bryant

There have been times when I have failed. But there have never been times when I thought I would fail ~ Michael Jordan

I don't discuss basketball. I dictate basketball. I'm not interested in philosophy classes. ~ Al McGuire

In America, we have three major sports - baseball, football and basketball. They get the most coverage. Then there's things like golf which mop up most of what is left. But track and field? We are way at the bottom of the totem pole. ~ Maurice Greene

I don't think we surprise people. We try to out-execute them. ~ Mike Krzyzewski

I had a lot of coaching for the movie and no, I have never sung professionally before. ~ Christopher Atkins

Covering politics like sports has created a self-reinforcing incentive structure that is not dissimilar to the one the ESPN'S SportsCenter has on the fundamentals of basketball. There is a long-running concern from basketball purists that the fundamentals of the game – passing, defense, and footwork – are eroding. The theory goes that players want to be like the stars they see on SportsCenter. You don't get on SportsCenter by doing the nitty-gritty work of winning basketball games. The more extreme the play, the more dramatic the showboating and celebrating, the more likely to be a feature in a coveted highlight segment. The reward system benefits the opposite behavior most basketball coaches would like to see in their players. This is the SportsCenter effect. ~ Dan Pfeiffer

We told Stanley Roberts to go on a water diet, and Lake Superior disappeared. Pat Williams When Xavier McDaniel plays against Orlando Wooldridge, it's a coach's dream - X vs O. ~ Mychal Thompson

I have to tell you, I'm proudest of my life off the court. There will always be great basketball players who bounce that little round ball, but my proudest moments are affecting people's lives, effecting change, being a role model in the community. ~ Magic Johnson

My homies that are around me never give me that 'star pass.' I've hung out with some stars who are playing basketball and everyone let's them score all the baskets. Shooting pool, they let them make all the shots. My homies don't let me get away with that. ~ Jamie Foxx

I've always been taught that basketball is a team game and greater than the sum of its parts. ~ Len Elmore

I get scared of a lot of attention. I get scared of the spotlight. And I'm not talking about on the basketball court. ~ Jeremy Lin

The problem with many athletes is they take themselves seriously and their sport lightly. ~ Michael Waltrip

If everything had already been done, there would be nothing left for young people to accomplish. There are always going to be people who run faster, jump higher, dive deeper, and come up drier. ~ Darrell Royal

In his sophomore year Wilbanks tried out for the high school basketball team and made it. On the first day of practice his coach had him play one-on-one while the team observed. When he missed an easy shot, he became angry and stomped and whined. The coach walked over to him and said, "You pull a stunt like that again and you'll never play for my team." For the next three years he never lost control again. Years later, as he reflected back on this incident, he realized that the coach had taught him a life-changing principle that day: anger can be controlled. ~ Lynn G. Robbins

You do not want to make this guy mad. You see him sitting there all cool and calm, but underneath, he's thinking, he's plotting. I'm telling you, it's not normal. He's like Michael from 'The Godfather.' - Kevin Johnson on David Stern ~ R.E. Graswich

I never thought in my wildest dreams that I would have my very own school - no way. And I had no idea I'd be coaching girls. It's wild. ~ Liang Chow

One player's selfish attitude can poison a locker room and make it hard, if not impossible, to establish team work ~ Dean Smith

My mother taught me to always be strong and always work hard. She's been working hard her whole life for me and my brother. I'm a lot like her in that I work hard for what I want. She taught me that. ~ Kevin Durant