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Basketball Quotes

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Basketball Quotes

“The harder you work, the harder it is to surrender.”

“Excellence is the gradual result of always striving to do better.”

“To have long term success as a coach or in any position of leadership, you have to be obsessed in some way.”

“The idea is not to block every shot. The idea is to make your opponent believe that you might block every shot.”

“Push yourself again and again. Don't give an inch until the final buzzer sounds.”

“If you make every game a life and death proposition, you're going to have problems. For one thing, you'll be dead a lot.”

“I asked a ref if he could give me a technical foul for thinking bad things about him. He said, of course not. I said, well, I think you stink. And he gave me a technical. You can't trust em.”

“Ability may get you to the top, but it takes character to keep you there.”

“Be more concerned with your character than your reputation, because your character is what you really are, while your reputation is merely what others think you are.”

“Talent is God given. Be humble. Fame is man-given. Be grateful. Conceit is self-given. Be careful.”

“If you're not making mistakes, then you're not doing anything. I'm positive that a doer makes mistakes.”

“It's the little details that are vital. Little things make big things happen.”

“You can't let praise or criticism get to you. It's a weakness to get caught up in either one.”

“A coach is someone who can give correction without causing resentment.”

“It's what you learn after you know it all that counts.”

“What you are as a person is far more important than what you are as a basketball player.”

“Don't measure yourself by what you have accomplished, but by what you should have accomplished with your ability.”

“Winning takes talent; to repeat takes character.”

“The main ingredient of stardom is the rest of the team.”

“Never mistake activity for achievement.”

“Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity.”

“Great teamwork is the only way we create the breakthroughs that define our careers.”

“The old lessons (work, self-discipline, sacrifice, teamwork, fighting to achieve) aren't being taught by many people other than football coaches these days. The football coach has a captive audience and can teach these lessons because the communication lines between himself and his players are more wide open than between kids and parents. We better teach these lessons or else the country's future population will be made up of a majority of crooks, drug addicts, or people on relief.”

“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.”

“If you want to coach you have three rules to follow to win. One, surround yourself with people who can't live without football. I've had a lot of them. Two, be able to recognize winners. They come in all forms. And, three, have a plan for everything. A plan for practice, a plan for the game. A plan for being ahead, and a plan for being behind 20-0 at half, with your quarterback hurt and the phones dead, with it raining cats and dogs and no rain gear because the equipment man left it at home.”

“I concluded some time ago that a major part of success of a team, or of an individual, has a great deal to do with the intangible qualities possessed. The real key is in how a person see himself (humility), how he feels about what he does (passion), how he works with others (unity), how he makes others better (servanthood), and how he deals with frustration and success, truly learning from each situations (thankfulness). I believe those concepts are the essence of a good player, team, coach, or individual in any capacity in life.”

“Perhaps the toughest call for a coach is weighing what is best for an individual against what is best for the team. Keeping a player on the roster just because I liked him personally, or even because of his great contributions to the team in the past, when I felt some one else could do more for the team would be a disservice to the team's goals.”