Basketball quotes
3.4K quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
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Browse quotes that often appear alongside basketball — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
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"Embrace what makes up you. Some stereotypes are true - I love chicken, but that's a stereotype, I love f**king basketball, but that's a stereotype, too. But who cares? Embrace it. Be who you are, and don't be ashamed of what that is."
"I treated it like every day was my last day with a basketball."
"Basketball came to me and for some reason it gave me an opportunity to live a life that I didn't dream possible. But it did let me live my dreams."
"Great players never look in the mirror and think I'm a great basketball player. You ask yourself, Am I the best player I can be?"
"There is no such thing as a perfect basketball player, and I don't believe there is only one greatest player either."
"Heart is what separates the good from the great."
"I would tell players to relax and never think about what's at stake. Just think about the basketball game. If you start to think about who is going to win the championship, you've lost your focus."
"It's easier for me to get ready for a game on the road because you're expected to lose when you play away from home. That's a challenge to right there and that perks my competitive juices."
"Basketball also helps you learn to move your feet by playing defense and guarding guys, and that all carries over to playing football with staying square and having good footwork."
"Once I grew from 6'1' to about 6'6', by that time I was going into 12th grade, and that's when I started wanting to play basketball, because, pretty much basketball players always got the girl."
"Sacrifice. Work. Self-discipline. I teach these things, and my boys don't forget them when they leave."
"But there's one thing about quitters you have to guard against - they are contagious. If one boy goes, the chances are he'll take somebody with him, and you don't want that. So when they would start acting that way, I used to pack them up and get them out, or embarrass them, or do something to turn them around."
"I'm no innovator. If anything I'm a stealer, or borrower. I've stolen or borrowed from more people than you can shake a stick at."
"I tell young players who want to be coaches, who think they can put up with all the headaches and heartaches, can you live without it? If you can live without it, don't get in it."
"We can't have two standards, one set for the dedicated young men who want to do something ambitious and one set for those who don't."
"The key statistic is still to get to the foul line."
"It's going to be crazy. All eight teams here are good teams. Hopefully the atmosphere will be great because it's going to be great basketball."
"I like low-maintenance girls, but at the same time, classy. She needs to take care of herself. But also be a girl who isn't afraid to get sweaty and play basketball, so it's cool if she's a tomboy."
"We couldn't sustain it. And they got a lot of kids that can shoot. We just couldn't close out well enough."
"What's more important than who's going to be the first black manager is who's going to be the first black sports editor of the New York Times."
