I also wanted my basketball players to know that I really cared about them. Forget basketball; as a person, I cared, I cared about their family.
I've been very fortunate and privileged as a player and manager - I've been successful and picked up a lot of knowledge and experience.
Rooney has those things that you cannot teach players - the positions he takes up just behind the front men is a European trait.
What I'm not in the habit of doing, and I'm not going to do, is go around cap in hand pleading with players to play for their country.
You look at the assistant coaches under [Pat Riley] that played and they have become prosperous within this game. It triples all the way down from the assistant players to the coaches. Patrick Ewing went into coaching as well as myself.
We hated to see Coach Riley go. Coach Riley is a very smart individual and he knows his coaching style. He also knows how long to stay with it and move on. He is a very demanding individual. When you coach at that level like that it tends to whirl the players.
At that time we didn't have much movement within our team. [ Pit Riley] pushed us as much as he could from a mental stand point. He knew it was time to leave and for us as players we knew it was time to part ways.
Pit Riley had a lasting effect on us as players and the coaching staff.
[Being a coach] is totally different, but I have a new level of respect for coaching that I didn't as a player. So much is expected of you and from your team. Everything falls on your shoulders.
As a player you can have a bad game and come back for the next game. As a coach you really can't do that. You have to dissect games night in and night out and figure what you did wrong.
It is important to us to understand and discuss a "vision" with both leagues and then sponsor the league that best matches our views and direction on growing the sport. To do that, there must be a tie back to our grass roots efforts. In short, our marketing plan for new players has to ultimately point to a league and its players.
I often think about my Music Man guitars being 100 million percent tailored to my needs as a player and how lucky I am.
I think it's a good way to sort of build your career and even when I was a young kid, I did the same thing, I looked at these guitar players, like ...I was a big fan of Steve Vai, and Al DiMeola, and said "What do those guys do?" and I found out that they went to Berkelee College of music, so I was like "Well, I'm going to go to Berkelee College of Music", and you try to, like, learn from those things, so... It's important.
You might pick up some influences from another type of music that you wouldn't normally think of, but, you know, maybe as a guitar player, it will come out in your improvisational style, maybe as a song writer it might come out in your note choices, or in your melodic choices, and it just helps to making your music that much more original and unique.
I wanted to be a soccer player. I knew that couldn't happen.
The main line of the Yugoslav Attack has become just too vast for most players to study in depth, and anyone intending to venture into such tricky waters needs to have an intimate knowledge of all the hidden reefs.
He's a gritty hockey player, he's got good vision, he's an intelligent player.
A coach can't be concerned with the poor ballplayer. If the player can't make it, he's got to be out right away. It's a very tough aspect of coaching, and in this aspect I was weak. Also, some guys get fat on coaching, they get healthy and strong, but other guys get ulcers.
He (Honus Wagner) was the nearest thing to a perfect player no matter where his manager chose to play him.
If I had to pick the greatest team player in baseball today-and I have some of the greats on my own club-I would have to pick Pie Traynor.
Major league baseball players and owners should meet immediately to enact the standards that apply to the minor leagues, and if they don't, I will have to introduce legislation that says professional sports will have minimum standards for testing. I'll give them until January, and then I'll introduce legislation.
I wanted to be a blues guitar player. And a singer. And a songwriter. Not a shock jock.
I always make it a point to pick songs on which players really shine.
I attempt to create a world that hypnotizes me as I make it. I hope others can get lost in it in the same way, but to be honest, I don't care that much. It isn't like a basketball player is out on the court hoping that people like the game of basketball as the game goes on. If people don't see it, they don't see it. It is a fragile thing and most people recognize that and respect it. Even if for whatever reason, they don't like the painting.
I don't know if tennis players feel like that but when you have a great opponent - although I didn't feel like he [ Ben Mendelsohn ] was an opponent - you just know your game is going to jack up and it's just going to raise the bar. I couldn't wait for that elevation.
