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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"My whole thing was, just being me. Now, you look around the NBA and all of them have tattoos, guys wearing cornrows. Now you see the police officers with the cornrows. I took a beating for those types of things."
"I'm not playing for other people; if I start thinking in those terms I would put too much pressure on myself. I play basketball because that is what I love to do."
"A successful person realizes his personal responsibility for self-motivation. He starts with himself because he possesses the key to his own ignition switch."
"To be successful you have to be selfish, or else you never achieve. And once you get to your highest level, then you have to be unselfish. Stay reachable. Stay in touch. Don't isolate."
"If you make every game a life and death proposition, you're going to have problems. For one thing, you'll be dead a lot."
"What distinguishes a great player is his presence. When he goes on to the court, his presence dominates the atmosphere."
"I will prepare and some day my chance will come."
"There are plenty of teams in every sport that have great players and never win titles. Most of the time, those players aren't willing to sacrifice for the greater good of the team. The funny thing is, in the end, their unwillingness to sacrifice only makes individual goals more difficult to achieve. One thing I believe to the fullest is that if you think and achieve as a team, the individual accolades will take care of themselves. Talent wins games, but teamwork and intelligence win championships."
"The key is to maintain an evenness. Try to play one possession at a time, regardless of what happened on the last possession"
"At times our own light goes out and is rekindled by a spark from another person. Each of us has cause to think with deep gratitude of those who have lighted the flame within us."
"They say I couldn't play football, I was too small. They say I couldn't play basketball, I wasn't tall. They say I couldn't play baseball at all and now everyday of my life, I ball."
"My whole thing is, if you love me, then love me. If you don't, then believe what you hear and run with that."
"When you work on getting better at something, don't do it half speed"
"I don't have the physical talent those guys have. My hard work has made me very good."
"You have a choice to make when you're not playing. Either you're invested and a great teammate, or your not"
"Most people have a harder time letting themselves love than finding someone to love them."
"A leader's job is to develop committed followers. Bad leaders destroy their followers' sense of commitment."
"I don't want to just go to the playoffs, I don't want to go to the playoffs and win the first round, second round, and not win the whole thing because it's bittersweet."
"I've always considered myself a crunch-time player. I just love having the ball in my hands. Everyone in the arena knows the ball is supposed to be in your hands and you still make it. It's the odds. I love the odds."
"The old lessons (work, self-discipline, sacrifice, teamwork, fighting to achieve) aren't being taught by many people other than football coaches these days. The football coach has a captive audience and can teach these lessons because the communication lines between himself and his players are more wide open than between kids and parents. We better teach these lessons or else the country's future population will be made up of a majority of crooks, drug addicts, or people on relief."
