Basketball Quotes

Right up until the time I retired at age 37, I felt like there were still things that I could do better.

The crowd gives us so much energy and we are able to really feed off of it. Hitting those shots and having the crowd go crazy helps boost our confidence. We love our fans.

It's better to stay too long than to leave too soon.

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

Any American boy can be a basketball star if he grows up, up, up.

I play a lot of basketball.

Bill Russell was my favorite player of all-time.

I don't need too much. Glamour and all that stuff don't excite me. I am just glad I have the game of basketball in my life.

I really cherish everything that basketball brings; and I think, for me, it's been a great ride and I'm not done yet.

The most important quality I look for in a player is accountability. You've got to be accountable for who you are. It's too easy to blame things on someone else.

When I watch kids play basketball, they don't know how to think the game. They know what it should look like, but they don't know why.

Not only is Rip Hamilton an outstanding basketball player, he is also known for giving back to his community.

But as a coach I wanted to keep things from being too complicated.

Our offense is like the pythagorean theorem: There is no answer!

Drink deeply from good books.

Me shooting 40% at the foul line is just God's way to say nobody's perfect.

You'd like to see your team reasonably happy, but that's not your job. Gain their respect and get them to accept their roles

Race wasn't an issue. My family was French, but Yorkville was a melting pot of races and cultures.

Push yourself to keep improving or you'll stay as close to the bottom as you are to the top

It's not what you teach, it's what you emphasize.

The NBA (National Basketball Association) is never just a business. It's always business. It's always personal. All good businesses are personal. The best businesses are very personal.

I won the city scoring championship as a senior.

It's important to keep trying to do what you think is right no matter how hard it is or how often you fail. Never stop trying

The only reason I went to college was to play basketball. I injured my knee and couldn't play.

Even though we want huge individual egos, our collective ego is unbelievable.

I said it before we arrived in Athens, that we wanted to prove to the world that our bronze medal in Sweden was not a fluke, and we have achieved this.

Kobe enjoys that situation. Stepping up and making the big basket or being involved in a key play.

I don't trust what this life has given me.

I don't want to be bulky and stiff.

Stand up for your players. Show them you care on and off the court.

He who believes in nobody knows that he himself is not to be trusted.

I never had a set of rules. Every situation is different.

I've never been afraid to fail.

Basketball, more than any other sport, is a team game...about the thousands of small, unselfish acts, the sacrifices on the part of the players that result in team building.

Praise behaviour that you want repeated

Evaluate wins and losses objectively, focusing more on effort and execution than on the outcome of the game

My players on defense must have a hand-up on every shot. If not, they run sprints.

Proper prior planning prevents pitiful poor performance.

It doesn't matter if you win as long as you give everything in your heart

I never looked at the consequences of missing a big shot... when you think about the consequences you always think of a negative result.

Politicians refuse to modernize schools, they cut out midnight basketball, but build all these new jails. First class jails, second class schools. This is zero tolerance.

In the original script, my character was a basketball player rather than a boxer. I didn't think I could pull that off. I'm a little short to be a basketball player!

I don't hate anyone, at least not for more than 48 minutes, barring overtime.

I know I'm never as good or bad as one single performance. I've never believed in my critics or my worshippers, and I've always been able to leave the game at the arena.

Offense is spacing and spacing is offense.

Whenever my body heals and the pain and all the swelling goes away is when I'll be ready.

Champions have no off-season.

The thing I like about my body is that it's strong. I can move furniture around my apartment. I can ride my horse... I can play basketball. It's a well functioning machine.

For years the league has thought I've been on drugs. I would have burned out a long time ago if that was true.

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