Bill Russell Quotes - Page 2

The magic to a great meeting is all of the work that's done beforehand.

We learn to make a shell for ourselves when we are young and then spend the rest of our lives hoping for someone to reach inside and touch us. Just touch us—anything more than that would be too much for us to bear.

After I played him for the first time, I said 'Let's see. He's four or five inches taller. He's 40 or 50 pounds heavier. His vertical leap is at least as good as mine. He can get up and down the floor as well as I can. And he's smart. The real problem with all this is I have to show up.

If Shakespeare can compare all of life to a stage, maybe it's not odd to believe that part of the play can take place on a basketball court.

A rebounder, or a shot-blocker for that matter, is always at a disadvantage if he tells himself the only way he can succeed is by out jumping the guy next to him. Sometimes he will have to, but most of the time he will not. Most of my rebounds came from positioning, where I was able to get the ball while in heavy traffic.

The most important thing to me is the friends that I've made.

My father once told me that anyone who worked for three dollars an hour owed it to himself to put in four dollars' worth of work.

What's more important than who's going to be the first black manager is who's going to be the first black sports editor of the New York Times.

We overreached our decision power. Sometimes our decisions have to fit the reality of the outside world.

Durability is part of what makes a great athlete.

Don't knock the ball in the stands, keep it in your hands!

I think what has happened to our basketball team, we've been badly distracted. They're not reading too many positive things in the paper.

We couldn't sustain it. And they got a lot of kids that can shoot. We just couldn't close out well enough.

The last five or six days, I've been running. The last two days, I've been running pretty hard. Everybody's got to be someplace.

People say it was the greatest individual rivalry they've ever seen. I agree with that. Let me assure you that if either Wilt's or Russ' coach had ever told one of them he couldn't guard the other guy, he would have lost that player forever.

The morale and the camaraderie that we had for one another earlier in the year is starting to come under duress because of all the losses. Some of the guys are feeling the pressure now from the last year when they were not successful.

I think that David Stern is probably the greatest commissioner that any sport has ever had in the history of this country.