Bill Russell Quotes about Basketball

The most important measure of how good a game I played was how much better I’d made my teammates play.

Commitment separates those who live their dreams from those who live their lives regretting the opportunities they have squandered.

Concentration and mental toughness are the margins of victory.

I hope I epitomize the American dream. For I came against long odds, from the ghetto to the very top of my profession. I was not immediately good at basketball. It did not come easy. It came as the result of a lot of hard work and self-sacrifice. The rewards, where they worth it? One thousand times over.

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

Create unselfishness as the most important team attribute.

The only important statistic is the final score.

What distinguishes a great player is his presence. When he goes on to the court, his presence dominates the atmosphere.

Most people have a harder time letting themselves love than finding someone to love them.

Heart in champions has to do with the depth of our motivation and how well your mind and body react to pressure - that is, being able to do what you do best under maximum pain and stress.

Remember that basketball is a game of habits. If you make the other guy deviate from his habits, you've got him

You got to have the killer instinct. If you do not have it, forget about basketball and go into social psychology or something. If you sometimes wonder if you've got it, you ain't got it. No pussycats, please.

On females officiating in the NBA -Incompetence should not be confined to one sex.

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.

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

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.

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.