Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
You can't imagine the number of people in professional sports who have come up to me and said, "God, you treat those assholes like I'd like to treat them." And my question is, "Then why don't you?".
The NBA is all about winning, but at this level (college basketball) winning doesn't make you happy. You can win, and play lousy, and in my program, feel lousy. To me it's about: How good can we be.
We have a very intelligent team. I've had clubs that when you tell a guy to go back door, he leaves the gym. Or you tell the team you're going to have a closed practice and eight guys don't show up.
We have to get a lot tougher. If you get involved in a street fight, you can't lay down in the street and act like you're dead because they will kill you for sure. You might as well get up and fight.
I think the beautiful part about Yao is that his main legacy won't be about the game. His legacy will be about helping people. His legacy will be taking on important world causes to better his world.
The national championship for Syracuse in 2003 will always be the high-water mark for me. That was my alma mater, my team, my players, our fans. That remains the top experience of my basketball life.
You coach at a have-not school, and you have to have a competitiveness and a resolve and resiliency about you that's different, or you'll never make it. You've got to find a way to do more with less.
My coach told me, "Larry, no matter how much you work at it, there's always someone out there who's working just a little harder - if you take 150 practice shots, he's taking 200." And that drove me.
If there was a payment to the bank due, and we needed shoes, she'd get the shoes, and then deal with them guys at the bank. I don't mean she wouldn't pay the bank, but the children always came first.
Winning is fun... Sure. But winning is not the point. Wanting to win is the point. Not giving up is the point. Never letting up is the point. Never being satisfied with what you've done is the point.
An acrobatic dunk will make it onto Sports Center. A simple, unspectacular bounce pass in the rhythm of the offense will not. System basketball has been replaced by players who want to be the system.
Everybody has an opportunity in America. I don't care if guys whine and complain about this or that. You know, no country affords its inhabitants the opportunities that the U.S.A. gives to its people.
In all the research you do as a coach, studying other coaches and championship-type situations, you find that all those teams combined talent with great defense. You've got to stop other teams to win.
A competitor continually sets new goals. He feels the need to keep raising the bar. If the fist goal is to make the team, and he achieves it, he immediately resets the goal to: I want to be a starter.
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.
When we're playing a good scoring center, we tell our team that it is not our defensive man's job to stop the center. It's the responsibility of our perimeter people to stop the ball from going inside.
The difference between mediocre, good and great is you're able to have the enthusiasm for prep, to work to prepare to win the same in January that you do in August, when everybody says they're excited.
I could probably go through our losses in a lot more detail than our wins, all through my career. But you have to be able to move on to what's next, and I'm very process-oriented and next-day oriented.
When I was coaching, the one thought that I would try to get across to my players was that everything I do each day, everything I say, I must first think what effect it will have on everyone concerned.
There was great comraderie among players and coaches. We enjoyed the time we were together... road trips were fun. I don't know that there was one moment that stood out among all the good times we had.
Starting out as a junior varsity coach in high school you pick up things along the way and put them all together. Something has gotta come out of it. It's basically stuff I picked up from other people.
He practiced against Kobe all of last year, so obviously it was sweet revenge for him. We deserved that. We didn't know who he was, we gave him up to Charlotte, we had no idea how good a player he was.
My mother's families were Mennonites or Anabaptists that came to Minnesota from Russia. They were actually moving around Europe doing diking and lowland reclamation work, and they moved into Minnesota.
As someone who's very competitive, I'm someone who abhors losing more than I enjoy winning. In that regard, it hasn't been a great two months, but I think our players' attitude remains pretty resolute.
Coach John Wooden used seven players at UCLA. Coach Denny Crum used to say, 'The more moving parts you have, the greater the chance you have for a breakdown.' I think there's a lot of veracity to that.
When I first started coaching, one of the worst things that I think I heard was 'It will be O.K.' I would wonder, 'How the hell is it going to be O.K.?' The worst word in the English language is 'hope.'
Anything that we all can do to get a little bit better or think a little bit differently or use the lens of someone else in another industry to help in your own management, I think, is really important.
Black, white and brown people have to work together to find new answers. The only way we can stop the systemic problems that people of color have faced all our lives is through honesty and transparency.
It's hard enough to coach in this league when you're doing what you believe in. But when you have to try to coach something you may not be sold on, it becomes even more of a challenge. It's really hard.
A lot of coaches want guys to be loose for games. I never wanted them to be loose. I wanted their hands sweating, their knees shaking, their eyes bulging. I wanted them to act like we were going to war.
The difference between Namath and me is that when you make the money he makes, they say you're ruggedly handsome. When you make the money I make, they say you have a big nose. (On resembling Joe Namath)
The greatest strength any human being an have is to recognize his or her own weaknesses. When you identify your weaknesses, you can begin to remedy them - or at least figure out how to work around them.
I remember standing on a medal podium at the 1976 Montreal Olympics, imbued with a sense that if you won enough basketball games, there was no such thing as poor, backward, country, female, or inferior.
I have no problem with anyone storming the court. But storm the court after the opposing team has gone to the locker room. Once the opposing team is out of the area, put them all (the fans) on the court.
Get past all the emotions that come along with the experience and get to the important stuff. Recognize what it is that you want, put a game plan together and take those steps to making a quality choice.
You remember when you were a kid growing up, and believed in Santa Claus? There's not much difference between Santa Claus and me today, you know. We're two overweight lovable guys that kids really enjoy.
Let the D-League be for players who have been in the NBA, who are on the fringe, and that want to fight like heck to get in the NBA. They should have a living wage, not $17,000 to $25,000. A living wage.
And I have been very blessed, having coached some of the greatest that have ever played the game. But if I had to start a team today, the greatest player and the one guy I would take would be Larry Bird.
You have to be careful as a news organization that you don't fall into voluntary censorship, that you worry about offending your 'league partner.' I never worried about that. I worry about fans listening.
We talked about it. An assistant coach suggested fouling, but I rejected it because I was afraid we'd foul them shooting and get beat that way. Hindsight couldn't have been worse than what happened to us.
I knew I was going to have to work my way back to coaching in the States, and I had a job offer here before I went to Japan, but I thought it was the right thing to get away. I had some friends over there.
I mean we just simply can't stand for the systemic racism, social injustice and police brutality against the black community anymore. And it's really about standing up for what's right versus what's wrong.
Time is very precious to me. I don't know how much I have left and I have some things that I would like to say. Hopefully, at the end, I will have said something that will be important to other people too.
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.
When I was young, I was dedicated to become a minister - my brothers and I were formally brought in front of the congregation in a dedication ceremony, where we were dedicated to the future service of God.
I've always found that in a team of 15 people, it's a little different than in a team of 40 or 50 people. If I name two or three people captains, inevitably you're disempowering more than you're empowering.
I think there are much bigger differences between players in this league than between coaches. There is a big gap between LeBron James and the small forward for whoever. Far bigger than between two coaches.
For a college basketball player or coach, to reach the Final Four is la-la land. You’ve achieved, you’ve got your stamp of approval. My first team to do that was in 1986. Then we did it in ’88, ’89 and ’90.
When a milestone is conquered, the subtle erosion called entitlement begins its consuming grind. The team regards its greatness as a trait and a right. Half hearted effort becomes habit and saps a champion.
From my standpoint, I would make it very difficult on the NBA to even have any association with college basketball. I think it's ludicrous the way they take kids away that are certainly not prepared to play.