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A reporter started off: "I know a lot of this is kind of speculation." Popovich interupting: "You're going to ask me anyway." Reporter: "And you're going to shoot it down." Popovich replied: "Next question."
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.
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.
I have a basic philosophy that I've tried to follow during my coaching career. Whether you're winning or losing, it's important to always be yourself. You can't change because of the circumstances around you.
I never really thought that I was going to get out of coaching ever. In my fifth year, I thought I might get out. You have those thoughts in any job. But I never really, really thought I was going to get out.
My grandfather Urey was my hero. He worked three jobs. He had a dry cleaner's factory job in the day and a dry cleaner's factory job at night and when that was done with that, he mopped floors in a restaurant.
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.
Last year they came in and won the game; that's how I would define it. Revenge is never on our mind. What's on our mind is playing defense, rebounding, taking care of the ball, and running our transition game.
One of the worst things anybody can do is assume. I think fools assume. If people have really got it together, they never assume anything. They believe, they work hard, and they prepare- but they don't assume.
Therefore, as a player, as a coach, even though we might have lost in a season or not won a championship, it was like a self-fulfilling prophecy that I'm going to win some time. I've never felt myself a loser.
Jaylen's a high achiever. You can be a high achiever in every which way. He's a guy that - we've talked about several times - is gonna do bigger things off the court than on it, and he's a special player on it.
Little old University of Houston jumping up, swinging with the big boys, and that's something to take pride in. I'm happy for our fans, I'm happy for our alumni, but more importantly, I'm happy for our players.
Basketball was always a game to me. One of the greatest things in life for me was to be able to play what I loved dearly and get paid for it. So it was always a game to me and that's how I perceived everything.
I can say that hands down from being in this business 32 years; we're going to be much better than we were last year just because there's eight new players that now have experience and Palacios will be healthy.
It's been an unbelievable thing for me to walk Bruin Walk and walk past Coach Wooden's statue, a guy that when I was in elementary school, it's Coach Wooden winning his final championship, his 10th in 12 years.
I don't believe the old statement, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." If that were the case, then Cadillacs and Jaguars and Mercedes would never make a change. I've always looked for ways to make things better.
And I would be the first to admit that probably, in a lot of press conferences over the time that I have been in coaching, indulging my own sense of humor at press conferences has not been greatly to my benefit.
During my 11-year coaching tenure, Saint Joseph's won or tied for the Big Five championship seven times, went to 10 postseason tournaments - including seven NCAA appearances - and reached the Final Four in 1961.
I always say to my guys, 'The most important day of your life is today. This very minute is the most important of you life. You must win this minute. You must win this day. And tomorrow will take care of itself.
It is not about sexuality that is important to most people who care, it is what we do for our community and our family, our friends and just human compassion for others that matter in the world we live in daily.
My philosophy is that you can't motivate players with speeches, you have motivated players that you draft. That's where they come in and those are the guys that are competitive. You cannot teach competitiveness.
I think I do regret leaving Kentucky because I took over a team with 15 wins banking everything on the Tim Duncan lottery, and once we didn't get Tim Duncan, I realized that leaving Kentucky was not a good move.
Exacerbating the problem of mass incarceration is that, even after someone is released from prison, the stigma of a misdemeanor or felony conviction makes finding gainful employment difficult, if not impossible.
In my formative years, when I was a little kid, I'd get out of elementary school, and because my mother worked as a nurse, I'd have to find a way to get a ride to the high school and watch my dad's team practice.
Teamwork is really a form of trust. It's what happens when you surrender the mistaken idea that you can go it alone and realize that you won't achieve your individual goals without the support of your colleagues.
I meant what I said about how electing Donald Trump will set our country back. I stand by that. However, I do wish that I wouldn't have made the blanket statement about not respecting anybody who voted for Trump.
Butch, you come from DeWitt Clinton. There are five thousand brothers in that school. You're the best there. You've been all-city two years in a row. How bad can you be? You come with me and we'll make nice music.
That's another thing, we made up games. We didn't have equipment. When it snowed, we would play slow motion tackle football. We would play hockey, but we wouldn't skate. We just made things up. I loved doing that.
When you learn to keep fighting in the face of potential failure, it gives you a larger skill set to do what you want to do in life. It gives you vision. But you can't acquire it if you're afraid of keeping score.
Have you ever walked along a shoreline, only to have your footprints washed away? That's what Alzheimer's is like. The waves erase the marks we leave behind, all the sand castles. Some days are better than others.
My philosophy is that you don't motivate players with speeches; you have motivated players that you draft. That's where they come in, and those are the guys that are competitive. You can not teach competitiveness.
The more you lose, the more positive you have to become. When you're winning, you can ride players harder because their self-esteem is high. If you are losing and you try to be tough, you're asking for dissension.
I think the biggest statement we can make as men, not as black men, as men, is to stick together and show how strong we are as a group. Not splinter. Not walk. It's easy to protest. The protest will be in our play.
I really find comfort in watching film and obtaining knowledge and I use statistics and computer generated stuff to help me get those stats. That was probably a result of my father's influence on me at a young age.
In Phil's case, I was personally thrilled he came back, because I think it's huge for the league. When you think about what he's done and how many championships he's won, there's always drama when he comes back in.
In order to be a winner, you have to look for ways of getting things done and not for reasons why things can’t be done. People who live with excuses have things that can’t be done hovering around them all the time.
I remember teaching a clinic to other coaches, and a guy raised his hand and asked if I had any advice when it came to coaching women. I leveled him with a death-ray stare, and said, 'Go home and coach basketball.'
You want every senior go out like the seniors did last year having the best year of their career. But that's not reality. It's not going to work that way for everybody. But I think Moe's attitude has been fantastic.
Racism was a big part of our community. I'm not going to revisit history, and I'm not going to call out those communities, but the communities we grew up around, we were treated like second- or third-class citizens.
Leadership is diving for a loose ball, getting the crowd involved, getting other players involved. It's being able to take it as well as dish it out. That's the only way you're going to get respect from the players.
I'm still not a great reader, but my wife is and my daughters are, and I envy them. I think I got into a bad habit of trying to do something all the time, instead of trying to sit down and take my time a little bit.
A freshman has only about 25% of his degree completed. They go off to play professional basketball, and to assume they will come back and get the degree done five, six, seven years later, I don't see that happening.
Jabari Parker is one of the best, if not the best, I've seen on tape. He's so hard to guard. You've got to guard from 23 feet. He can shoot it, or he can go one-on-one from there. He can post. He's so fast and long.
I'd probably be better off without trying to satisfy me, with my sense of humor. There are things that I have said that are funny to me, but they weren't to somebody in the press. So that hasn't worked to my benefit.
I think that there’s too much sugar in the world and not enough salt. Kids want to be challenged. Humans want to aspire to something. You don’t win in life and you don’t win in athletics with softness or selfishness.
Accountability is essential to personal growth, as well as team growth. How can you improve if you're never wrong? If you don't admit a mistake and take responsibility for it, you're bound to make the same one again.
Some guys smoke. Some guys drink. Some guys chase women. I'm a big barbecue-sauce guy. ... I'm like that guy on the Odd Couple, and it's not the neat guy. I go into my room and find pieces of pizza under the laundry.
I think what we focus on is every game is a different challenge, and you have to find ways to put yourself in position to win, and you have to have a resourcefulness, and it's not always going to go according to play.
As long as I'm at Kentucky, you've got to be able to take the shots, or don't stay at Kentucky. To be the coach at Kentucky and get what I get, you can't be a 35-year-old coach whose never been fired. I've been fired.
It's not just about winning or losing, but to learn about teamwork, learn about sportsmanship, learn about discipline. The value of working together for a common goal. Have the emphasis on fundamentals, not just games.