"The coach should be the absolute boss, but he still should maintain an open mind." -- Red Auerbach "They said you have to use your five best players but I found you win with the five who fit together the best." --Red Auerbach "What does this program/ team need this week?" -- Dick Bennett "What you specifically teach is what your players will do best." -- Dick Bennett "Practice to beat the best." -- Dick Bennett "We teach offense 5-0/ 5-5 (whole method) and defense by part (1-1/ 3-3)." -- Dick Bennett "What we do at LSU is to develop players and make them better." -- John Brady "You get what you tolerate!" -- John Brady "If you don't hold your team accountable then you will lose credibility and your team will be spoiled." -- John Brady "If you want team play, you must stress defense. Defense makes players unselfish." -- John Brady "Criticize on defense and encourage on offense." -- John Brady "We stop practice every time we see one of our players not blocking out." -- Jim Calhoun "Always acknowledge hustle plays in practice." -- Lou Campanelli "We put a premium on knowing what the other team does. Then we try to take them out of it." -- PJ Carlesimo "Coaching is preparation." -- Pete Carril "A lot of guys go through their whole careers and don't win a championship, but are still great coaches." -- Chuck Daly "Offense is spacing and spacing is offense." -- Chuck Daly "Defense can't guard two things in a row." -- Chuck Daly "Defense doesn't break down on the help, it breaks down on the recovery." -- Chuck Daly "The first shot does not beat you." -- Chuck Daly "False Hustle = cheap fouls, lunging, reaching, etc." -- Billy Donovan "Systems win! Believe in your system, and then sell it to your players." -- Billy Donovan "Have a vision. Sell your program. Your team is going to reflect you." -- Mark Gottfried "Hearing improves with PRAISE!" -- Mark Gottfried "Your ability to communicate to your young people will determine your success." -- Jim Harrick "Praise your kids. Inspire and motivate your players with praise. Ten years from now it won't matter what your record was. Will your kids love you or hate you?" -- Jim Harrick "Treat each player as your own son/daughter if you can...the parents have invested in you." -- Hank Iba "Basketball is sharing." -- Phil Jackson "The more things we can get kids to do correctly off the court, the more they will do correctly on the court." -- Mike Jarvis "Everyone wants to win, but not everyone is willing to prepare to win." -- Bob Knight
"A great way to test the conditioning of your team is the two-mile run." -- Bob Knight "Practice structure determines success." -- Bob Knight "Coach now the way you want to coach 10 years from now." -- Jerry Krause "Prepare for every game like you just lost your last game." -- Lon Kruger "If what you have done yesterday still looks big to you. You haven't done much today." -- Mike Krzyzewski "Good sound habits are more important than rules - use concepts." -- Mike Krzyzewski "Play and practice like you are trying to make the team." -- Mike Krzyzewski "Players' attention spans get less and less as they progress." -- Mike Krzyzewski "A team equals a fist, not five fingers." -- Mike Krzyzewski "There's a misconception about teamwork. Teamwork is the ability to have different thoughts about things; it's the ability to argue and stand up and say loud and strong what you feel. But in the end, it's also the ability to adjust to what is the best for the team." -- Tom Landry "Perhaps the toughest call for a coach is weighing what is best for an individual against what is best for the team. Keeping a player on the roster just because I liked him personally, or even because or his great contributions to the team in the past, when I felt some one else could do more for the team would be a disservice to the team's goals." -- Tom Landry "Contary to the opinion of many people, leaders are not born. Leaders are made, and they are made by effort and hard work." -- Vince Lombardi "I hold it more important to hold the players confidence than their affection." -- Vince Lombardi "Individual commitment to a group effort - that's what makes a team work, a company work, a society work, a civilization work." -- Vince Lombardi Offensively, you do what you do best and you do it again and again. Defensively, you attack your opponent's strength." -Vince Lombardi "To me, the big thing in being a successful team is repetition of what you're doing, either by word of mouth, blackboard, or specifically by work on the field. You repeat, repeat, repeat as a unit." -- Vince Lombardi "You better have great practices." -- Al McGuire "Building relationships is the key for being happy as a coach. Players must want to play for you. If they are comfortable with you, they will work hard for you." -- Mike McConathy "You must have a passion to coach." -- Rick Majerus "Administrators are like pigs; don't wrestle with a pig because you both get dirty and the pig likes it." -- Don Meyer "Your program must have an overriding purpose which is clearly visible and which teaches lessons beyond winning." -Don Meyer "When you watch the game, be a student of the game." -- Don Meyer "The team is an extension of the coach." -- Don Meyer "Players must do what you want them to do in pressure situations." -- Don Meyer "When the legs go, the heart and the head follow quickly behind." -- Don Meyer
"The ability to rebound is in inverse proportion to the distance your house is from the nearest railroad tracks." -- Don Meyer "Successful programs consist of people working hard, working together, while never worrying about who gets the credit." -- Don Meyer "If it comes down to you or the program that decision was made long ago." -- Don Meyer "Every day you teach attitude." -- Don Meyer "To be a team, you must be a family." -- Don Meyer "Shout praise and whisper criticism." -- Don Meyer "Recognize and reward players who put the team first, not just the gifted ones." -- Don Meyer "Discipline and demand without being demeaning." -- Don Meyer "Simplify the game as much as possible. When you add, you must subtract." -- Don Meyer "Study people who can teach you how to deal with people." -- Don Meyer "Shared suffering makes a team a team." -- Don Meyer "Shared suffering: one guy messes up and everyone runs. One guy does well and everyone benefits." -- Don Meyer "Players who are late say that their time is more important than the team." -- Don Meyer "It is not what you teach, but what you emphasize." -- Don Meyer "Parents would rather have their son get all-state than his team win the state championship." -- Don Meyer "Don't be in a hurry to change during the season." -- Don Meyer "Good shooters take the shots; best shooters take most of the shots." -- Don Meyer "Let your players know that you love them." -- Don Meyer "You build your program from the ideas of great coaches." -- Don Meyer "Pick battles big enough to fight and small enough to win." -- Don Meyer Your contribution as a coach is defending and rebounding." -- Dick Motta "Work hard, stay focused and surround yourself with good people." Tom Osborne "Have a spiritual basis which guides you in life. Have a philosophy of life to live by." -- Tom Osborne "Know how to win and how to lose and be able to handle adversity." -- Tom Osborne "Deserve Victory." -- Rick Pitino "Those who work the hardest are the last to surrender." -- Rick Pitino "Excellence is the unlimited ability to improve the quality of what you have to offer." -- Rick Pitino "If you get tough mentally, you can get tough physically and overcome fatigue." -- Pat Riley "It's what you get from games you lose that is extremely important." -- Pat Riley "No rebounds - no rings." -- Pat Riley
"Great teamwork is the only way we create the breakthroughs that define our careers." -- Pat Riley "Great effort springs naturally from great attitude." -- Pat Riley "In all the research you do as a coach, studying other coaches and championship-type situations, you find that all those teams combined talent with great defense. You've got to stop other teams to win." -- Pat Riley "The secret of winning is working more as a team, less as individuals." -- Knute Rockne "If a Coach is determined to stay in the coaching profession, he will develop from year to year. This much is true, no coach has a monopoly on the knowledge of basketball. There are no secrets in the game. The only secrets, if there are any, are good teaching of sound fundamentals, intelligent handling of men, a sound system of play, and the ability to instill in the boys a desire to win." -- Adolph Rupp "Our offensive philosophy is to simply find a way to get the ball into the hands of our team's best player." -- Kelvin Sampson "Know what you want to emphasize, then do it daily." -- Larry Shyatt "What to do with a mistake--recognize it, admit it, learn from it, forget it." -- Dean Smith "The most important thing is team morale." -- Dean Smith "Only praise behavior that you want to be repeated. Never use false praise." -- Dean Smith "Always have your players go and pick-up the guy who draws the charge." -- Dean Smith "Everyone on the bench stands for the man coming out of the game." -- Dean Smith "You should sub a player out when you see a player not going full-speed or playing selfish basketball." -- Dean Smith "Rebounding wins championships, you need to emphasize it and work with kids on it." -- Pat Summitt "If it doesn't bother you, it won't bother them." -- Pat Summitt "If you want to be in the game you better shoot 75% from the line." -- Pat Summitt "The more your players have to think on the basketball court, the slower their feet get." -- Jerry Tarkanian "Players will never do more than you demand." -- Jimmy Tillette "Other people go to the office. I get to coach. I know I've been blessed." -- Jim Valvano "All really successful coaches have a system." -- Jim Valvano "Writing a manual forces you to place your thoughts and ideas down on paper." -- Tara Vanderveer "The big time is not a place; it's the state of your heart. It's not something you get; it's something you become." -- Frosty Westering "The key to the fast break is every one running hard for their teammates." -- Paul Westhead "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." -- Lenny Wilkins "I learned early that if I wanted to achieve anything in life, I'd have to do it myself. I learned that I had to be accountable." -- Lenny Wilkens "Play against the Game, not your opponent." -- Bud Wilkinson "I continually stress to my players that all I expect from them at practice and in the games is their maximum effort." --
John Wooden "Be quick without hurrying." -- John Wooden "Good players can take coaching; great players can take coaching and learn." -- John Wooden "The better conditioned team will probably win in the long run." -- John Wooden "Conditioning is essential to success in basketball." -- John Wooden "I do not want players who do not have a keen desire to win and do not play hard and aggressively to accomplish that objective." -- John Wooden "We may not be the best conditioned team in the country, but our players think they are." -- John Wooden "Leadership starts at the top." -- Morgan Wooten