Pat Riley Quotes & Sayings

When you're playing against a stacked deck, compete even harder. — Pat Riley

Look for your choices, pick the best one, then go with it. — Pat Riley

Coaches who let a championship team back off from becoming a dynasty are cowards. — Pat Riley

The key to success is to learn to do something right and then do it right every time. — Pat Riley

When a gifted team dedicates itself to unselfish trust and combines instinct with boldness and effort, its ready to climb. — Pat Riley

It's what you get from games you lose that is extremely important. — Pat Riley

Great players and great teams want to be driven. They want to be pushed to the edge. They don't want to be cheated. Ordinary players and average teams want it to be easy — Pat Riley

Excellence happens when you try each day to both do and be, a little better than you were yesterday! — Pat Riley

Don't let other people tell you what you want. — Pat Riley

There are only two options regarding commitment; you're either in or you're out. — Pat Riley

Management must speak with one voice. When it doesn't management itself becomes a peripheral opponent to the team's mission. — Pat Riley

"Shouda, coulda, and woulda" won't get it done. — Pat Riley

Great effort springs naturally from great attitude. — Pat Riley

After a glorious victory in a grand war, the hardest battle to fight is the first little skirmish of the next campaign. — Pat Riley

If you get tough mentally, you can get tough physically and overcome fatigue. — Pat Riley

Any team can be a miracle team. The catch is that you have got to go out and work for your miracles. Effort is what ultimately separates great teams from ordinary teams. — Pat Riley

If you have a positive attitude and constantly strive to give your best effort, eventually you will overcome your immediate problems and find you are ready for greater challenges. — Pat Riley

Discipline is not a nasty word. — Pat Riley

Show the world how much you'll fight for the winners circle. — Pat Riley

All of us have at least one great voice deep inside. People are products of their environment. A lucky few are born into situations in which positive messages abound. Others grow up hearing messages of fear and failure, which they must block out so the positive can be heard. But the positive and courageous voice will always emerge, somewhere, sometime, for all of us. Listen for it, and your breakthroughs will come. — Pat Riley

When a great team loses through complacency, it will constantly search for new and more intricate explanations to explain away defeat. — Pat Riley

When a milestone is conquered, the subtle erosion called entitlement begins its consuming grind. The team regards its greatness as a trait and a right. Half hearted effort becomes habit and saps a champion. — Pat Riley

Giving yourself permission to lose guarantees a loss. — Pat Riley

Being ready isn't enough; you have to be prepared for a promotion or any other significant change. — Pat Riley

The key to teamwork is to learn a role, accept a role, and strive to become excellent playing it. — Pat Riley

The true warrior understands and seizes that moment by giving an effort so intense and so intuitive that it could only be called one from the heart. — Pat Riley

Your either in or out. There's no in between. — Pat Riley

Teamwork requires that everyone's efforts flow in a single direction. Feelings of significance happen when a team's energy takes on a life of its own. — Pat Riley

Until you change the way that you look at things,Those things will never change. — Pat Riley

Basketball is a game of conditioning and fatigue. That's why I believe in practicing a team to train when it's exhausted. — Pat Riley

The most DIFFICULT thing for individuals to do when they become part of a team is to sacrifice, it is much EASIER to be selfish. — Pat Riley

We measure areas of performance that are often ignored: jumping in pursuit of every rebound even if you don't get it, swatting at every pass, diving for loose balls, letting someone smash into you in order to draw the foul. These 'effort' statistics are also stored on computer. Effort is what ultimately separates journeyman players from impact players. Knowing how well a player executes all these little things is the key to unlocking career-best performances. — Pat Riley

Am I a control freak? No. Do I believe in organization? You bet. In discipline? In being on time and making sure everything at the hotel is ready and right? Definitely. I don't control players. I try to control the environment around the players so they can flourish. — Pat Riley

In every contest, there comes a moment that separates winning from losing. The true warrior understands and seizes that moment. — Pat Riley

When you leave it to chance, then all of a sudden you don't have any more luck. — Pat Riley

Commitment to the team - there is no such thing as in-between, you are either in our out. — Pat Riley

A particular shot or way of moving the ball can be a player's personal signature, but efficiency of performance is what wins the game for the team. — Pat Riley

There can only be one state of mind as you approach any profound test; total concentration, a spirit of togetherness, and strength. — Pat Riley

I've learned to keep things simple. Look at your choices, pick the best one, then go to work with all your heart. — Pat Riley

Shoulda, coulda, and woulda won't get it done. In attacking adversity, only a positive attitude, alertness, and regrouping to basics can launch a comeback. — Pat Riley

He's the greatest clutch player I've ever seen. The hell with Jerry West! — Pat Riley

You can never have enough talent. — Pat Riley

Each Warrior wants to leave the mark of his will, his signature, on important acts he touches. This is not the voice of ego but of the human spirit, rising up and declaring that it has something to contribute to the solution of the hardest problems, no matter how vexing! — Pat Riley

Never be ready to play yesterday. Being ready to play today is what's important — Pat Riley

It's a reality we have to understand. (O'Neal) has to be more diligent. We have to be more diligent protecting him. We need him in the game. — Pat Riley

You can only receive what you're willing to give. — Pat Riley

To have long term success as a coach or in any position of leadership, you have to be obsessed in some way. — Pat Riley

You have no choices about how you lose, but you do have a choice about how you come back and prepare to win again. — Pat Riley

I'd like my reputation to stay as it is and to be remembered for a wonderful decade. — Pat Riley

All I did from day-to-day is coach. That's what my job was, that's what my passion was, and the fact that now it's something I'm being considered for is just mind-blowing to me, that I would ever be in that kind of company. — Pat Riley

From nobody to upstart. From upstart to contender. From contender to winner. From winner to champion. From champion to Dynasty. — Pat Riley

There's always the motivation of wanting to win. Everybody has that. But a champion needs, in his attitude, a motivation above and beyond winning. — Pat Riley

We sometimes need adversity to fathom our true depths. — Pat Riley

There is no such thing as life in-between. — Pat Riley

Being a part of success is more important than being personally indispensable. — Pat Riley

The Ten Commandments were not a suggestion. — Pat Riley

In every adversity, there is a seed of equivalent benefit. — Pat Riley

Complacency is the last hurdle standing between any team and its potential greatness. — Pat Riley

People who create 20% of the results will begin believing they deserve 80% of the rewards. — Pat Riley

Great players crave instruction on their weaknesses. — Pat Riley

Basketball is a business. Pure and simple. If you want to have fun, go to the YMCA. — Pat Riley

When you face a fork in the road, step on the exhilarator! — Pat Riley

Great teamwork is the only way we create the breakthroughs that define our careers. — Pat Riley

The changes in your life aren't always what you hoped for. But they usually help you grow. — Pat Riley

You have to defeat a great players aura more than his game. — Pat Riley

Public life is regarded as the crown of a career, and to young men it is the worthiest ambition. Politics is still the greatest and the most honorable adventure. — Pat Riley

Whatever it takes to win. — Pat Riley

Excellence is the gradual result of always striving to do better. — 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

There's no such thing as coulda, shoulda, or woulda. If you shoulda and coulda, you woulda done it. — Pat Riley