John Calipari Quotes

It's not just about working hard, it's about working together. You have to care more about the team than you do about yourself

A successful person never loses...they either win or learn!

You've gotta learn to love the grind. Because life IS the grind.

If I walk in a home and a kid disrespects a woman, his mother or grandmother, then I am out... I wont recruit them

I need people who look at adversity as a challenge and failure as a learning opportunity.

It's not about how far you fall, but how high you rebound.

Practice gotta be harder than the games and it never is unless you want it to be as a player. The coach can't drive that

I'm playing the guys who are going to fight. If you're not into this, I'm going to someone else

You understand, you do not invent stuff on this team. Guys that invent stuff will not play for me. Make the easy play

The best teams I've had had a little bit of swagger.

When you're trying to build or change a culture, what do you do? I always say to take players from state championship teams because they only know one thing -- winning.

What type of teammates do you want to play with? Be that teammate yourself

You better educate yourself. You don't stand in the front of the line unless you're up there because you know everything that's involved.

What do you do to help us win when you're not scoring baskets?

I'm a teacher, a motivator. That's what I do. And I'm a protector on top of that.

A great defensive effort. The one thing we have to do is make it hard for people to beat us. We're not worried about winning and losing, we just have to make the game hard

You have to lose yourself in the team and you have to lose yourself in the game

Nothing is given to you. You're going to have to work for it.

The biggest day in the history of Kentucky's program.

The hardest thing for a basketball player to do is dribble two really hard dribbles. You are flying, and then pull up and shoot a ball from 15, 17 feet. It's the hardest thing in the game.

You don't have pressure on yourself to have to go nuts.

The guys that make game winners are the guys that are not afraid to miss them.

You can be the seventh scorer or the first scorer, just be your best version.

Be more concerned with everybody else than yourself.

If my team won a national title and no one got drafted, I'd be disappointed.

You do things other people cannot do, so just stay in the moment as you improve the other areas.

The best players I've coached make really hard things look easy. Like you may say, well, that was easy, and then, well, go try it. You think it's so easy, go ahead and do it.

I would enjoy the fact that I had a team that won a national title, but I would be disappointed that none of the kids got drafted because that's not how it's supposed to work.

I know who I am. I don't see myself as this whoever they see me as.

I know I'm not a saint, but I'm not the guy I'm made out to be by others.

We're not moving fast enough with where things are going.

You want perfection, go to a bowling alley!

When you're trying to make somebody the best version of themselves, you have to keep defining that over a period of time because sometimes it changes.

We can't have one group that oversees everything and then they define what amateurism is.

If I ever tell the same story twice, just laugh and roll with it because, when you get older, you start doing that kind of stuff.

All the teams you have have different personalities, and you kind of want it.

That's America, competition.

Everything all of us do is stolen from somebody.

Generational poverty, most of us don't know what that means.

When your best players are really good guys, it's the best.