Basketball, unlike football with its prescribed routes, is an improvisational game, similar to jazz. If someone drops a note, someone else must step into the vacuum and drive the beat that sustains the team.
Phil JacksonRead
In basketball - as in life - true joy comes from being fully present in each and every moment, not just when things are going your way.
Interpretation
True joy is found in being present during both good and bad times.
Phil Jackson's quote emphasizes the importance of mindfulness and being fully engaged in every moment of life, whether in basketball or any other aspect. It suggests that true happiness and fulfillment come from appreciating the entire journey, rather than just the high points or successes.
In practice
This quote can be used in a motivational speech about resilience in sports.
Basketball, unlike football with its prescribed routes, is an improvisational game, similar to jazz. If someone drops a note, someone else must step into the vacuum and drive the beat that sustains the team.
My father was a man who didn't consider himself learned. He was a man who liked to be a farmer. He enjoyed his dairy farm and felt the calling. So there was a dedication. I was dedicated as a child to the service of God, and so there was this continual centering of a greater purpose than your own.
Wisdom is always an overmatch for strength.
My first act after being named head coach of the Bulls was to formulate a vision for the team. I had to take into account not only what I wanted to achieve, but how I was going to get there.
The best part of basketball, for those people on the inside, is the bus going to the airport after you've won a game on an opponent's floor. It's been a very tough battle. And preferably, in the playoffs. And that feeling that you have, together as a group, having gone to an opponent's floor and won a very good victory, is as about as high as you can get.
My father was the superintendent of the churches in the state of Montana. He was content in his beliefs. He befit the term 'true Christian.' He would turn the other cheek. He was truly a man of peace.
Life is short, break the rules.
But even so, every now and then I would feel a violent stab of loneliness. The very water I drink, the very air I breathe, would feel like long, sharp needles. The pages of a book in my hands would take on the threatening metallic gleam of razor blades. I could hear the roots of loneliness creeping through me when the world was hushed at four o'clock in the morning.
They say time is money, but that's not true. Time is life. And if I want the fullest life, I need to find fullest time... the busyness of your life leaving little room for the source of your life... God gives us time. And who has time for God? Which makes no sense.
And he had a nice home in Ohio with wife, daughter, Christmas tree, two cars, garage, lawn, lawnmower, but he couldn't enjoy any of it because he really wasn't free. It was sadly true.
I lost relatives to AIDS. A couple of my closest cousins, favorite cousins. I lost friends to AIDS, high school friends who never even made it to their 21st birthdays in the '80s. When it's that close to you, you can't - you know, you can't really deny it, and you can't run from it.
I don't think it's the most important thing in life to fit it. I think it's the most important thing in life to dance to the beat of your own drum and to look like you're having more fun than the people who look cool like they fit in.
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