Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I have as many good friends in the media as anybody in sports has. It's just that I probably have a hell of a lot more enemies than anybody else.
I love Evan Turner. I think he's a great teammate. I think he's a hard worker. I think he loves basketball. I don't think you can overvalue that.
Good coaching may be defined as the development of character, personality and habits of players, plus the teaching of fundamentals and team play.
The unwritten rule in college basketball is the black assistant goes and gets the black players. Don't worry about the X's and O's. Just recruit.
Sometimes, you have a hunch and then you find numbers that substantiate that, it makes either the staff or the players say, 'OK, let's fix that.'
When you get into the playoffs, there become a lot of different storylines. But it's all about putting together a team that competes for a title.
I am sure that no man can derive more pleasure from money or power than I do from seeing a pair of basketball goals in some out of the way place.
If you coach, and coach every day, you should be getting better if you're self-evaluating and you've got people around you telling you the truth.
I'm going to continue to see my friends who coach in the NBA and see my former players who play in the NBA. I'm going to continue to go to games.
I wasn't real quick, and I wasn't real strong. Some guys will just take off and it's like, whoa. So I beat them with my mind and my fundamentals.
I don't know if I practiced more than anybody, but I sure practiced enough. I still wonder if somebody - somewhere - was practicing more than me.
I've said all along it's a humbling experience being at UCLA. Extremely proud, extremely blessed to be at an institution with all this tradition.
I just can't recruit where there's grass around. You gotta have a concrete lawn before I feel comfortable enough to go in and talk to you parents.
We truly love Butler University and Indianapolis and are very thankful to have had the opportunity to celebrate so many wonderful things together.
I would never recruit a player who yells at his teammates, disrespected his high school coach, or scores 33 points a game and his team goes 10-10.
For professional athletes, I always think about it in these terms: the most difficult diva of women's soccer would be the easiest NBA player ever.
I love listening to Coach Belichick's press conferences: even though they may not be what the media wants, they're great coaching, teaching tools.
A lot of coaches get involved in a lot of different things - car dealerships and restaurants and all kinds of things. I've never really done that.
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.
I won 1,098 games, and eight national championships, and coached in four different decades. But what I see are not the numbers. I see their faces.
The two places that I had most imprinted in my mind and in my memory were UCLA and Indiana. To play at one and coach at the other is unbelievable.
There's no doubt what the goal in Boston is. There is no grey, it is black and white. You're going to try to win the whole thing every single year.
Basketball has given me so many opportunities, and it's something that's opened the world to me and allowed me to travel really all over the world.
This league does teach you that it's inevitable that there's constant change, and you always have to continue to embrace change, adapt with change.
Just as an athlete must exercise his body to be a winner, a leader must exercise his position of authority. If he doesn't, he loses that authority.
Phil Jackson was a brilliant basketball coach, not just because of the offense that he employed, but it was so many other things that went into it.
A particular shot or way of moving the ball can be a player's personal signature, but efficiency of performance is what wins the game for the team.
So when I hear a guy after a game-winning home run say or gesture that God was on his side, I think to myself, 'He's saying God screwed the pitcher.
The unified message in this fight against systemic racism and racial inequality is something that our entire Association is united to fight against.
You must be sure that you give back something that's beneficial to the game. Any of the teaching you do must be for the benefit of the men who play.
It's hard to change a roster around. You've got to hit your draft picks right, you've gotta hit free agency right, and a team's got to fit together.
Mark Fox is always criticized recruiting: he can't keep the Georgia kids home. What that means - he's not cheating and paying. That's what it means.
I can't tell you what an honor it is, to even be mentioned in the same breath with Arthur Ashe. This is something I certainly will treasure forever.
Can I say this in a humble way - I don't need the money. If I stop coaching today at Kentucky, my toes are up, and I'm eating Cheetos, and I'm fine.
Strength is not nearly as important as desire. I don't think you can teach anyone desire. I think it's a gift. I don't know why I have it, but I do.
Guys like Larry Bird -- he played so hard, he wants everybody else to play hard. That's not unreasonable. Any coach would want that and demand that.
The true warrior understands and seizes that moment by giving an effort so intense and so intuitive that it could only be called one from the heart.
Coaching and teaching are two different things. The coaching never turned me on that much, but I always enjoyed the teaching, the practice sessions.
I certainly would not call myself creative. There are other coaches who are innovative and everything else. I wouldn't be that guy, that's for sure.
We took the handcheck out of the game to give guys like Steph Curry more freedom. Why didn't we say, 'Just get in the weight room and get stronger?'
Christmas to me, obviously, basketball is very important to me, but there are some days of the year where it's got to take a back seat to something.
This is like the town council just hired a new marshal to clean up the town, I guarantee you, if I stay here long enough, they'll get rid of me, too.
A few mistakes don't worry me; what worries me is when you make the mistakes and then forget your role on the team and start to worry about your ego.
People think I have courage. The courage in my family are my wife Pam, my three daughters, here, Nicole, Jamie, LeeAnn, my mom, who's right here too.
I'm just trying to be the best I can be. I try to surround myself with people who are strong in areas I'm weak. Which is why I have such a big staff.
There are people with a lot more talent than I have who have been weeded out of the league because they couldn't put their egos aside to fill a role.
As far as playing, I didn't care who guarded me - red, yellow, black. I just didn't want a white guy guarding me, because it's disrespect to my game.
Holding people presumed to be innocent in jail pre-trial simply because they cannot afford to pay their bail extracts huge human and financial costs.
I'm a Christian first. I'm a family guy second. As much as I like coaching, as much as I like basketball, it's third, fourth, or fifth down the line.
To be as good as it can be, a team has to buy into what you as the coach are doing. They have to feel you're a part of them and they're a part of you.