Basketball Quotes - Page 70

There's a tipping point that happens with soccer in which you just kinda get it. I was drawn to it because the best soccer teams play similarly to my favorite basketball teams - like the eighties Lakers or eighties Celtics - teams that emphasized teamwork over individualism and relied on passing as their biggest ongoing edge.

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

Negative thoughts are contagious and they get passed around like a disease. I inoculate myself against the fear of failure.

Going into a game against Lew Alcindor [later Kareem Abdul-Jabbar] is like going into a knife fight and finding there's no blade in your handle.

As a kid, I always idolized entrepreneurs. I thought they were cool people in the way that I thought basketball players were cool people. It's cool that some people get paid to dunk basketballs, but I'm not one of those people.

You have to learn what makes this or that Sammy run. For one it's a pat on the back, for another it's eating him out, for still another it's a fatherly talk, or something else. You're a fool if you think as I did as a young coach, that you can treat them all alike.

The idea of molding men means a lot to me.

There is no sin in not liking to play; it's a mistake for a boy to be there if he doesn't want to.

I always want my players to show class, knock'em down, pat on the back, and run back to the huddle.

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.

If people are well paid for reality television and cotton candy and dunking a basketball, why can't they be well paid for changing young minds?

People really don't care, in some ways, that you have a family. With a high profile job like I have, they just want you to win basketball games. You can do that and still keep your family together. I try the best I can to be at the basketball practices or tennis practices or recitals. In my first year at Dallas my (then 11-year old) son Avery Jr., said, "You know daddy, you're still the best coach in the NBA." I was like, "But I haven't won a playoff game yet." And he said, "That's okay. You're still my daddy." That makes you feel good.

I love being a pavement artist; seriously, I do. It's like when guys who would normally hate being freakishly tall discover basketball, or when girls with abnormally long fingers sit down at a piano. Blending in, going unseen, being a shadow in the sun is what I'm good at. Seeing the shadows, it turns out, is not my natural gift.

Personally I just want to win a championship.

I was the bridge between the Michael Jordan era and LeBron James era.

All love affairs end. Eventually the girl is gonna put curlers in her hair.

Dean Meminger was quicker than 11:15 Mass at a seaside resort.

I don't believe in looking past anybody - I wouldn't look past the Little Sisters of the Poor after they stayed up all night.

On how to make the game more exciting - Eliminate the referees, raise the basket four feet, double the size of the basketball, limit the height of the players to 5 feet 9 inches, bring back the centre jump, allow taxi drivers in for free and allow the players to carry guns.

I can see well enough on the 28-meter basketball court.

I think I am upsetting the coach.

Fortune cookies are a good idea. If the message is positive, it can make your day a little better.

It will take time to adapt, but I think I can handle it.

When I was young, we were taught not to dunk. We were taght not to stand out from the rest of the team. It's different now.