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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"If you're struggling with your shooting, then do other things on the basketball court. Get steals, get assists, get rebounds-do anything on the court to help the team win."
"You have to be able to accept failure to get better."
"These young guys are playing checkers. I'm out there playing chess."
"Service to others is the rent you pay for your room here on earth."
"My goal is to win the next game one possession at a time. That's it. I don't have any other goals"
"I made a lot of mistakes, a lot of things I'm not proud of. But it's only for other people to learn from."
"The idea is not to block every shot. The idea is to make your opponent believe that you might block every shot."
"Get the fundamentals down and the level of everything you do will rise"
"I'll do whatever it takes to win games, whether it's sitting on a bench waving a towel, handing a cup of water to a teammate, or hitting the game-winning shot."
"Obstacles cannot bend me. Every obstacle yields to effort."
"How good can we expect to be if our best player is not our best teammate"
"As athletes, we're used to reacting quickly. Here, it's 'come, stop, come, stop.' There's a lot of downtime. That's the toughest part of the day."
"I know fear is an obstacle for some people, but it is an illusion to me . . . Failure always made me try harder next time."
"Concentration and mental toughness are the margins of victory."
"True grit is making a decision and standing by it, doing what must be done."
"Durability is part of what makes a great athlete."
"Always turn a negative situation into a positive situation."
"You got to have the killer instinct. If you do not have it, forget about basketball and go into social psychology or something. If you sometimes wonder if you've got it, you ain't got it. No pussycats, please."
"Basketball is a beautiful game when the five players on the court play with one heartbeat."
"What to do with a mistake: recognize it, admit it, learn from it, forget it."
