Quotes on Basketball

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.

To a father, when a child dies, the future dies; to a child when a parent dies, the past dies.

To be great we need to win games we aren't supposed to win.

From nobody to upstart. From upstart to contender. From contender to winner. From winner to champion. From champion to Dynasty.

I tell young players who want to be coaches, who think they can put up with all the headaches and heartaches, can you live without it? If you can live without it, don't get in it.

The biggest mistake coaches make is taking borderline cases and trying to save them. I'm not talking about grades now, I'm talking about character. I want to know before a boy enrolls about his home life, and what his parents want him to be.

Every time you compete, try harder to improve on your last performance. Give nothing short of your very best effort.

Do not think a man has done his full duty when he has performed the work assigned him. A man will never rise if he does only this. Promotion comes from exceptional work.

I can do something else besides stuff a ball through a hoop. My biggest resource is my mind.

Winning is important to me, but what brings me real joy is the experience of being fully engaged in whatever I'm doing.

You have to be able to center yourself, to let all of your emotions go... Don't ever forget that you play with your soul as well as your body.

You manage things, you lead people. We went overboard on management and forgot about leadership. It might help if we ran the MBAs out of Washington.

The key to successful leadership today is influence, not authority.

My choosing Islam was not a political statement; it was a spiritual statement.

One man can be a crucial ingredient on a team, but one man cannot make a team.

If we can take young people who excel at the highest levels, put them on the same kind of pedestal as the all-state basketball player and the all-state football player, and begin to get the same kind of recognition, it will have a profound effect, and we are finding that it does.

I've tried to handle winning well, so that maybe we'll win again, but I've also tried to handle failure well. If those serve as good examples for teachers and kids, then I hope that would be a contribution I have made to sport. Not just basketball, but to sport.

I always won in my imagination. I always hit the game-winning shot, or I hit the free throw. Or if I missed, there was a lane violation, and I was given another one.

In high school, in sport, I had a coach who told me I was much better than I thought I was, and would make me do more in a positive sense. He was the first person who taught me not to be afraid of failure.

The thing I loved the most - and still love the most about teaching - is that you can connect with an individual or a group, and see that individual or group exceed their limits.

I have always maintained that in basketball the importance of the mental to the physical is about four to one.