Don Meyer Quotes

Successful programs consist of people working hard, working together, while never worrying about who gets the credit.

Complacency is the forerunner of mediocrity. You can never work too hard on attitudes, effort and technique.

You build your program from the ideas of great coaches.

Recognize and reward players who put the team first, not just the gifted ones.

When you watch the game, be a student of the game.

Positioning, anticipation and technique create quickness. Therefore, you can always get quicker

Discover your gift, develop your gift and then give it away every day.

It is foolish to expect a young man to follow your advice and to ignore your example.

Tough minded enough to do the necessary things--this is the epitome of what a team is.

Coach like the coach you want to be ten years from now.

Your program must have an overriding purpose which is clearly visible and which teaches lessons beyond winning.

Players who are late say that their time is more important than the team.

Shout praise and whisper criticism.

Be what ya is, 'cause if ya be what you ain't, ya ain't what ya is.

Winning a postseason game is like winning five regular season games. There is just no feeling like it. Everything is magnified. Every free throw, turnover, shot and play.

If you are a good team, your offense is born on the defensive end.

Defense involves three things: courage, energy, intelligence.

You aren't going to win championships unless you make layups and free throws.

It doesn't cost nothing to be nice to people

There is nothing more important than rebounding... don't just give it lip service.

To be a team, you must be a family.

You can pick captains, but you can't pick leaders. Whoever controls the locker room controls the team

Discipline and demand without being demeaning.

To those who much has been given, much is expected.

Plays are not as important as players, and players are not as important as teammates

If it comes down to you or the program that decision was made long ago.

If a farmer and his family can get up at 5:30 every morning to milk cows, surly we can get up at that time to practice basketball.

Proper prior planning prevents pitiful poor performance.

You never realize the value of coaching until your children play for a coach

Good shooters take the shots; best shooters take most of the shots.

Have character, don't be one.

Simplify the game as much as possible. When you add, you must subtract.

Parents would rather have their son get all-state than his team win the state championship.

We had 10 turnovers tonight. Each one gets worse as you go. It is like prior arrests: the 10th one may not have been that bad, but when you have had nine prior ones, it looks pretty bad.

You have to clean out the pig barn every week because you know your pigs are in there doing their jobs every day.

To win it all, winners have to be obsessive about the fundamentals and doing the little things right.

It doesn't matter where you coach, it matters why you coach.

Only run special plays for special players; find plays that fit your players.

When you get to be my age, you don't buy green bananas because you may not be around to eat them.

The team is an extension of the coach.

There's only one thing we can control, and that is how hard we play.

We can always do it better.

A coach who is not teaching leads to the worst thing in a program -- players not learning.

As a coach, you're just trying to figure out how to keep a team on edge. You've got to find that edge.

Play off your great player... great teams have a go-to player and they play off of him.

It is not what you teach, but what you emphasize.

Make the practices like games and the games like practices.

I have learned that peace is not the absence of trial, trouble, or torment but the presence of calm in the midst of them

Quickness more than anything else should determine your amount of pressure on the ball.

Administrators are like pigs; don't wrestle with a pig because you both get dirty and the pig likes it.