Losing Basketball Championship Quotes

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

You have to lose yourself in the team and you have to lose yourself in the game ~ John Calipari

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

I'm not promising a championship. I know how hard that is to deliver. We're not ready right now. ~ LeBron James

Do you want to choose winning over standing out? It's a choice every player on every championship team has to do ~ Doc Rivers

I don't just try to score. The challenge is elevating my teammates to be able to win a championship. ~ Kobe Bryant

Bill Russell is one of the great names in basketball, an all-American ... and the only athlete to ever win an NCAA Championship, an Olympic Gold Medal, and a professional championship all in the same year-1956 ... But Bill Russell had this one problem: He threw up before every game. ~ John Eliot

There's always the motivation of wanting to win. Everybody has that. But a champion needs, in his attitude, a motivation above and beyond winning. ~ Pat Riley

I can see Sue and I leading this team to many more championships ... We're going to take this and learn from it. We worked too hard for this. ~ Lauren Jackson

We would have two less championships here if it was not for Manu Ginobili. In my eyes, he's the stud of the world. ~ Gregg Popovich

People want national championship banners. People want to talk about Indiana being competitive. How do we get there? We don't get there with milk and cookies. ~ Bobby Knight

Don't worry about losing. Think about winning. ~ Mike Krzyzewski

The only thing even in this world is the number of hours in a day. The difference in winning or losing is what you do with those hours. ~ Woody Hayes

Basketball can serve as a kind of metaphor for ultimate cooperation. It is a sport where success, as symbolized by the championship, requires that the dictates of community prevail over selfish impulses. ~ Bill Bradley

I failed, I think, seven [or] eight times before I finally got my first [championship]. It was just, you know, just about me growing up. Now that I'm an old, old veteran-age 29-I do things a lot differently. I don't go to the gentlemen's clubs anymore. I had to slow that down. ~ Shaquille O'Neal

A lot of guys go through their whole careers and don't win a championship, but are still great coaches. ~ Chuck Daly

How competitive can you be without losing your discipline? ~ Doc Rivers

Eddie Robinson is about one word: winning and losing. ~ Paul Collier

Championship teams are built on being prepared, playing unselfishly and being held accountable ~ Jason Kidd

When you go out on the court whether it be for the championship or just a scrimmage, have confidence that your abilities and what you've learned in your drills are better than your opponent's. This does not mean you should disregard your opponent. Before taking the court for any game, you should do a lot of thinking about what you have to do to beat your opponent and what he must or can do to beat you. ~ Bob Pettit

You don't win championships by just being normal, by just being average. ~ Bill Walton

If I would have listened to other people back in 2000 telling me I should have stopped playing basketball because of a kidney disease, I wouldn't have won a world championship. ~ Alonzo Mourning

I probably should've listened to Michael a year ago when he said that Charles will never win a championship because he doesn't show any dedication. ~ Scottie Pippen

In 1948, I began coaching basketball at UCLA. Each hour of practice we worked very hard. Each day we worked very hard. Each week we worked very hard. Each season we worked very hard. Four fourteen years we worked very hard and didn't win a national championship. However, a national championship was won in the fifteenth year. Another in the sixteenth. And eight more in the following ten years. ~ John Wooden

There's been injuries to where my perseverance may have gotten overlooked-just my hard work and what I bring to a franchise and to a team may have gotten overlooked. But it's a matter of staying professional and playing the game of basketball and ultimately doing whatever it takes to win a championship for your teammates. ~ Amar'e Stoudemire

A lot of people talk about the Fab Five, and they were wonderful, one of the best teams you'll ever see in college basketball. But the '89 team is the best one to ever play at Michigan in my opinion because they won the national championship. Winning a championship is winning a championship. ~ Trey Burke

You aren't going to win championships unless you make layups and free throws. ~ Don Meyer

I try to do the right thing at the right time. They may just be little things, but usually they make the difference between winning and losing. ~ Kareem Abdul-Jabbar

If basketball was going to enable Bradley to make friends, to prove that a banker's son is as good as the next fellow, to prove that he could do without being the greatest-end-ever at Missouri, to prove that he was not chicken, and to live up to his mother's championship standards, and if he was going to have some moments left over to savor his delight in the game, he obviously needed considerable practice, so he borrowed keys to the gym and set a schedule for himself that he adhereded to for four full years - in the school year, three and a half hours every day after school, nine to five on Saturday, one-thirty to five on Sunday, and, in the summer, about three hours a day. ~ John McPhee

They played exquisite basketball in this series and in particular these last three games. They are the better team. There is no other way to say it. They played great basketball, and we couldn't respond to it. ~ Erik Spoelstra

Offense sells tickets, defense wins games, rebounding wins championships. ~ Pat Summitt

Winning games, titles and championships isn't all it's cracked up to be, but getting there, the journey, is a lot more than it's cracked up to be. ~ John Wooden

The ideal way to win a championship is step by step. ~ Phil Jackson

I took the game seriously. It was my profession. My teammates also took losing hard. We would all sit in the locker room after losing a big game and talk about how we could have done something differently to change the outcome ~ Walt Frazier

I would tell players to relax and never think about what's at stake. Just think about the basketball game. If you start to think about who is going to win the championship, you've lost your focus. ~ Michael Jordan

Personally I just want to win a championship. ~ Allen Iverson

For me, it always goes back to something I learned in basketball. There's winning and there's losing, and in life you have to know they both will happen. But what's never been acceptable to me is quitting. ~ Magic Johnson

If you go 72-11 and don't win (the championship), it doesn't mean anything. Actually it does. It means you've cheated and played an extra regular-season game. ~ Shaquille O'Neal

Losing is only temporary and not encompassing. You must simply study it, learn from it, and try hard not to lose the same way again. Then you must have the self-control to forget about it. ~ John Wooden

You can love, and fear, and forbid things to be what they are, and overact. Let it end here then, let the quest end. Is the world any the worse for losing the unicorns, and would it be any better if they were running free again? One good woman more in the world is worth every single unicorn gone. Let it end. Marry the prince and live happily ever after. The ~ Peter S. Beagle