Coach Quotes

We love reading coach quotes. I am sure you can tell by our daily words of wisdom in the Hoop Coach newsletter. Below you will find some of our favorite coach quotes that we have saved over the years. If you have any suggestions please drop them in the comments.

  • “Basketball is a game of sacrificing yourself for the next guy, being a team that takes good shots, and taking the right shots” – David Blatt
  • “The best teams play for each other, not with each other” – Jeff Van Gundy
  • “I want to practice to the point where it’s almost uncomfortable how fast you shoot, so that in the game things kind of slow down.” – Stephen Curry
  • “Be the best version of yourself in anything that you do. You don’t have to live anybody else’s story.” – Stephen Curry
  • “Play like you’re in first. Train like you’re in second.” – Stephen Curry
  • “I’ve never been afraid of big moments. I get butterflies… I get nervous and anxious, but I think those are all good signs that I’m ready for the moment.” – Stephen Curry
  • Your mark is what you do on a day when you don’t want to do it. How good are you on a day  when you just don’t have it? Can you push yourself that day? That’s a mark of your character. – Bob Hurley, Sr.
  • “I was taught to play the game from a total team concept. To be able to do everything reasonably well and some things extraordinarily well. If I’m not shooting well, I’ll try to be an asset in other ways – like defense, passing, rebounding, and hustle” – Rick Barry
  • “Good defensive play is as much a matter of hustle, desire and pride as it is anything else.” — Tex Winter
  • “If you only ever give 90% in training then you will only ever give 90% when it matters.” – Michael Owen
  • “Systems win! Believe in your system, and then sell it to your players.” – Billy Donovan
  • “You have a choice to make when you’re not playing. Either you’re invested and a great teammate, or your not” – Brad Stevens
  • “Discipline helps you finish a job, and finishing is what separates excellent work from average work.” Pat Summitt
  • “There’s always something in the game you wish you would have done different. That’s why players improve, because they learn from what they did before. They might have been guessing before, but now they know.” – Gordie Howe
  • “Don’t ever have a rule that you won’t enforce with your best player” – Doug Collins
  • “Practice shared suffering. If one guy messes up, everyone runs. If one guy does well, everyone benefits” – Don Meyer
  • “We believe in people executing their role and caring about the team more than anything individually” –Gregg Popovich
  • “Failure is good. It’s fertilizer. Everything I’ve learned about coaching, I’ve learned from making mistakes” – Rick Pitino
  • “Do your best when no one is looking. If you do that, then you can be successful in anything that you put your mind to” – Bob Cousy
  • Tom Izzo“Today’s society wants to skip the process.  I hate that. ” – Tom Izzo
  • “We are in the trophy generation.Give them a trophy for 23rd place. That makes the parents happy” – Tom Izzo
  • “Winning is overemphasized. The only time it is really important is in surgery and war” – Al McGuire
  • “The difference between a good defensive team and a bad defensive team is as little as three possessions” – Brad Stevens
  • “I would never recruit a player who yells at his teammates, disrespected his high school coach, or scores 33 points a game and his team goes 10-10″ – Dean Smith
  • “Do you want to choose winning over standing out? It’s a choice every player on every championship team has to do” – Doc Rivers
  • “You should always want your coach to be critical. It gives you an opportunity to learn and to overcome adversity” – Steve Nash
  • “A guy who gives you less than what he has to give is, one, telling you what he thinks of you, and two, telling you what he thinks of himself” – Pete Carril
  • “Admit to and make yourself accountable for mistakes. How can you improve if you’re never wrong?” – Pat Summitt
  • “The highest level of achievement is attained by the teams with the best conditioned players” – Dr. Jack Ramsay
  • “I’ve got a theory that if you give 100 percent all of the time, somehow things will work out in the end” – Larry Bird
  • “My goal is to win the next game one possession at a time. That’s it. I don’t have any other goals” – Brad Stevens
  • “Good players want to be coached… Great players want to be told the truth” – Doc Rivers
  • “True motivation is not getting people to play to their potential. It’s getting people to play beyond their potential” – Rick Pitino
  • “The only important statistic is the final score” – Bill Russell
  • “A quick way for any player to make himself better is to think about what he himself doesn’t like to play against”– Bob Knight
  • “Working hard is one thing, but working hard with purpose is what separates the good from the great” – Thad Matta
  • “When you’re a coach you’ve got to go up the ladder, you’ve got to be ready to travel. That’s the nature of coaching” – Kareem Abdul-Jabbar
  • “Recognize and reward players who put the team first, not just the gifted ones” – Don Meyer
  • “I hate casual shooting. Every shot is preceded by working to get open and catch and shoot under game like conditions” – Bob Knight
  • “The greatest sin a coach can commit is to allow kids to slide by. This goes for the classroom as well as the court” – Hubie Brown
  • “I can’t make every decision for you. I don’t have 14 timeouts. You guys got to get together and talk” – Gregg Popovich
  • “Sometimes the best recruits are the ones you don’t get” – Don Meyer
  • “I’m looking for activity. I put players in and take them out based on effort and defense, not making or missing shots” – Doc Rivers
  • “The idea is not to block every shot. The idea is to make your opponent believe that you might block every shot” – Bill Russell
  • “We’re building a culture of accountability, trust, and togetherness. Entitlement will not be tolerated” – Brad Stevens
  • Non-coach quote => “The successful warrior is the average man, with laserlike focus.” Bruce Lee
  • “We have the mentality of the hunter. We want to be the most enthusiastic team in the country. That’s what we can control”  – Shaka Smart
  • “I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.” Thomas Edison
  • “If you defend, rebound and limit turnovers, you’re going to put yourself in a position where you can win games” –Stan Van Gundy
  • “Today I will do what others won’t, so tomorrow I can accomplish what others can’t.” – Jerry Rice
  • “You build your program from the ideas of great coaches” – Don Meyer 
  • “Great effort springs naturally from great attitude.” – Pat Riley
  • We are not going to play them; they are going to play us. – Hank Iba
  • “The best teams have chemistry. They communicate with each other and they sacrifice personal glory for the common goal.” – Dave DeBusschere
  • “The two hardest things to handle in life are failure and success.” – John Wooden
  • “Other people go to an office. I get to coach. I know I’ve been blessed.” – Jim Valvano
  • “It’s a profession in which, the longer you stay, the closer you are to being fired.” – Al McGuire
  • What to do with a mistake – recognize it, admit it, learn from it, forget it. – Dean Smith
  • Our goal is not to win. It’s to play together and play hard. Then, winning takes care of itself. – Mike Krzyzewski
  • When a gifted team dedicates itself to unselfish trust and combines instinct with boldness and effort–it is ready to climb. – Pat Riley
  • There are 86,400 seconds in a day. It’s up to you to decide what to do with them – Jim Valvano
  • “I always mean what I say, but I don’t always say what I’m thinking.” – Dean Smith
  • “Mental toughness is to physical as four is to one.” – Bob Knight
  • “Success is walking from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm.” – Winston Churchill
  • “I try to see each new season as a new challenge because I have a new team to work with, new opponents to encounter, and often new ideas and theories to try.” – Coach K
  • “Everyone wants to win, but not everyone is willing to prepare to win.” – Bobby Knight
  • “Good teams become great ones when the members trust each other enough to surrender the Me for the We.” —Phil Jackson
  • A basketball team is like the five fingers on your hand, if you can get them all together, you have a fist. That’s how I want you to play!” – Mike Krzyzewski
  • “I think that to stop an offense, you must go to the heart of that offense. If it is a particular move, a screen, the break, an outstanding scorer, whatever it is that they like to do and rely on, you have to work in your plans on taking that completely or as much as possible away from them.” — Bobby Knight
  • “Basketball is a sport that involves the subtle interweaving of players at full speed to the point where they are thinking and moving as one.” — Phil Jackson
  • “No one is bigger than the team. You’re going to be on time, you’re going play hard, you’re going to know your job and you’re going to know when to pass and shoot. If you can’t do those four things you’re not getting time here and we don’t care who you are.” – Hubie Brown
  • “The more things we can get kids to do correctly off the court, the more they will do correctly on the court.” – Mike Jarvis
  • “Confidence is what happens when you’ve done the hard work that entitles you to succeed.” – Pat Summitt
  • “Offense is spacing and spacing is offense.” — Chuck Daly
  • “As a coach, I feel if you can get your players to play hard and together on the defensive end, they will automatically be unselfish at the offensive end.” — Larry Brown
  • “I don’t try to get players emotionally up for a game; it creates too many peaks and valleys… I strive for even keel; they will get up for the big games.” — Denny Crum
  • “Your program must have an overriding purpose which is clearly visible and which teaches lessons beyond winning.” – Don Meyer
  • “Good teams become great ones when the members trust each other enough to surrender the Me for the We.” – Phil Jackson
  • “I love practice. It is when a coach exercises the most control over the improvement of his or her team.” – Mike Krzyzewski
  • “A Coach must never forget that he is a leader and not merely a person with authority.” – John Wooden
  • “A basketball team is like the five fingers on your hand. If you can get them all together, you have a fist. That’s how I want you to play.” -Mike Krzyzewski
  • “One man can be a crucial ingredient on a team, but one man cannot make a team.” – Kareem Abdul-Jabbar
  • “Leadership, like coaching, is fighting for the hearts and souls of men and getting them to believe in you.” – Eddie Robinson
  • “The idea is not to block every shot. The idea is to make your opponent believe that you might block every shot.” – Bill Russell
  • “Hearing improves with PRAISE!” — Mark Gottfried
  • “With pain, there’s growth … We’ve been through a lot of pain this year, but there’s also been a lot of growth.” – Charlotte Smith – (Former WNBA Player and Current Elon Head Basketball Coach)
  • “If you don’t hold your team accountable then you will lose credibility and your team will be spoiled.” – John Brady
  • “Think of new ways to do old things. You must protect against boredom in a practice situation.” — George Raveling
  • “We try to stress the little things because little things lead to big things.”
    Steve Alford
    “Everybody on a championship team doesn’t get publicity, but everyone can say he’s a champion.” Magic Johnson
  • “So, yeah, I’m going to try to win the national championship next year. But I’m not going to kill myself doing it. I’m not going to kill my players either. You really start to realize there’s a lot more to what we’re trying to do then winning games” – Geno Auriemma 
  • “Champions play as they practice. Create a consistency of excellence in all your habits.” — Mike Krzyzewski
  • “Be led by your dreams not by your problems.” – Roy Williams
  • “You need a teaching coach who understands the game of basketball, not just some guy coming on the court talking about Xs and Os.” – Oscar Robertson
  • “We lost, and that’s the main thing that went wrong,” – Mike Krzyzewski
  • “You can’t get much done in life if you only work on the days when you feel good.” – Jerry West
  • “Be more concerned with your character than your reputation, because your character is what you really are, while your reputation is merely what others think you are.” –John Wooden
  • “I’m just a blue-collar guy that goes to work, … In any job I’ve ever had, I’ve never thought about a time when I would leave. I just go to work.” – John Chaney | Temple
  • “The strength of the team is each individual member. The strength of each member is the team.”  ― Phil Jackson
  • “I’ve missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. 26 times, I’ve been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.” – Michael Jordan
  • “Don’t try to imitate other coaches. Be your own person with your own style and do your own thing.” – Hubie Brown
  • “I can accept failure, everyone fails at something. But I can’t accept not trying.” – Michael Jordan
  • “Don’t measure yourself by what you have accomplished, but by what you should have accomplished with your ability.” John Wooden
  • “It’s not so important who starts the game but who finishes it.” – John Wooden
  • “The best teams have chemistry. They communicate with each other and they sacrifice personal glory for the common goal.” – Dave DeBusschere
  • The key is not the will to win. Everybody has that. It is the will to prepare to win that is important.” – Bob Knight
  • Basketball is like war in that offensive weapons are developed first, and it always takes a while for the defense to catch up.” – Red Auerbach
  • “If you are afraid of failure you don’t deserve to be successful!” – Charles Barkley
  • “The difference between the impossible and the possible lies in determination” – Tommy Lasorda
  • “The invention of basketball was not an accident. It was developed to meet a need. Those boys simply would not play “Drop the Handkerchief.” – James Naismith
  • We can have no progress without change, whether it be basketball or anything else.” – John Wooden
  • “Excellence is the gradual result of always striving to do better.” – Pat Riley
  • “These young guys are playing checkers. I’m out there playing chess. “- Kobe Bryant
  • “You have to expect things of yourself before you can do them.” – Michael Jordan
  • “Making shots counts, but not as much as the people who make them.” – Coach K
  • “My father gave me the greatest gift anyone could give another person, he believed in me.” – Jim Valvano
  • “If you don’t have time to do it right, when will you have the time to do it over?” – John Wooden
  • “A winner is someone who recognizes his God- given talents, works his tail off to develop them into skills, and uses these skills to accomplish his goals.” – Larry Bird

Humorous Coach Quotes

  • One score makes happy ONE player, one assist makes happy TWO.” – Toni Kukoc
  • “I’m still waiting for perfection. In the meantime, I’ll settle for persistence” – Bo Ryan
  • I love practice. If it were up to me, we’d not play any games, we’d just practice.” – Bob Hurley, Sr.
  • “Bad shooters are always open” – Pete Carril
  • “Most of my learning and philosophy regarding coaching basketball was developed after great frustration.” – Dick Bennett
  • Everybody pulls for David, nobody roots for Goliath.” – Wilt Chamberlain
  • “The more your players have to think on the basketball court, the slower their feet get.” – Jerry Tarkanian
  • “I’ve always had an ass-to-the-brain theory. When a player’s ass gets put on the bench, a message goes straight to the brain saying, Get me off of here.” – Bob Knight

Football Players and Coach Quotes

  • “I’ve learned that something constructive comes from every defeat.” – Tom Landry
  • “Mental Toughness is doing the right thing for the team when it’s not the best thing for you” – Bill Belichick
  • “If you aren’t going all the way, why go at all?” – Joe Namath
  • “One man practicing sportsmanship is far better than 50 preaching it.” – Knute Rockne
  • “It’s not the will to win that matters—everyone has that. It’s the will to prepare to win that matters.” – Bear Bryant
  • “It’s not whether you get knocked down; it’s whether you get back up.” – Vince Lombardi
  • “Victory is in having done your best. If you’ve done your best, you’ve won.”  – Bill Bowerman – USA Track Coach 1972
  • “Individual commitment to a group effort–that is what makes a team work, a company work, a society work, a civilization work.” – Vince Lombardi
  • A life of frustration is inevitable for any coach whose main enjoyment is winning. – Chuck Noll
  • “Talent sets the floor, character sets the ceiling” – Bill Belichick
  • “Ability is what you’re capable of doing. Motivation determines what you do. Attitude determines how well you do it.” – Lou Holtz
  • “You are never a loser until you quit trying.” – Mike Ditka
  • Leadership is a matter of having people look at you and gain confidence, seeing how you react. If you’re in control, they’re in control.” – Tom Landry

Other Coach Quotes From Smart Folks That Don’t Coach

  • “We cannot solve problems with the kind of thinking we employed when we came up with them.” — Albert Einstein
  • “Learn as if you will live forever, live like you will die tomorrow.” — Mahatma Gandhi
  • “Stay away from those people who try to disparage your ambitions. Small minds will always do that, but great minds will give you a feeling that you can become great too.” — Mark Twain
  • “A genuine leader is not a searcher for consensus but a molder of consensus.”-Martin Luther King, Jr.
  • “The best way to predict the future is to invent it.” –Alan Kay
  • “Energy and persistence conquer all things.” – Benjamin Franklin
  • “Leadership and learning are indispensable to each other.” – John F. Kennedy
  • “If you set your goals ridiculously high and it’s a failure, you will fail above everyone else’s success.” – James Cameron
  • “Try not to become a person of success, but rather try to become a person of value.” – Albert Einstein
  • “If everyone is moving forward together, then success takes care of itself.” – Henry Ford
  • “Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent.” – Calvin Coolidge
  • “If you wish to be out front, then act as if you were behind.” – Lao Tzu
  • The coach doesn’t have to play the sport as well as you do. They have to watch you and get you to be your best. – Eric Schmidt – (exec chairman Google)
  • “Mental will is a muscle that needs exercise, just like muscles of the body.”- Lynn Jennings
  • “Coming together is a beginning. Keeping together is progress. Working together is success.” – Henry Ford
  • Trust because you are willing to accept the risk, not because it’s safe or certain.” – Anonymous
  • “What you lack in talent can be made up with desire, hustle and giving 110% all the time” – Don Zimmer