A Basketball Quotes & Sayings

Our guys took Shop and Advanced Shop. Shop is when you make a chair. Advanced Shop is when you paint it. — Al McGuire

Any American boy can be a basketball star if he grows up, up, up. — Bill Vaughan

The truth of basketball is done in competition and fundamentals and team, but there's a lot of other junk that goes around the game. — George Karl

What you are as a person is far more important than what you are as a basketball player. — John Wooden

Any time a little midget does something like this, you gotta give him a 10!. — Charles Barkley

I played football; I was a running back, and I took a hit, and I had a hairline fracture in my leg which no one spotted, and I was playing basketball all winter and it got worse. And then I was long jumping, about 20 feet, and I landed one time and there was this big crack, and all the bones were jutting out of my leg. — Nick McDonell

Baseball is green and safe. It has neither the street intimidation of basketball nor the controlled Armageddon of football ... Baseball is a green dream that happens on summer nights in safe places in unsafe cities. — Luke Salisbury

Michael Jordan was a cultural icon that everybody on the playground wanted to be. The Bulls dynasty was a huge part of my childhood and it was the peak of my basketball interest as a kid. — Macklemore

You don't have to be best friends as basketball players but I do believe in chemistry. I think it makes everything different if a team is really together and they're all on that same page. They might not like each other, per se, but if you're on the same page and the chemistry is there, you can play great basketball. You can go back to teams like Detroit, the Bad Boys. Those guys had great chemistry, that's why they won. — Dwight Howard

I'm not really worried about my numbers now as a 36-year-old. I'm not trying to be the first, experimental case of a 36-year-older trying to maintain his numbers, especially when I'm on a team like this. Can I do the same stuff I could do when I was Amare's age? Of course not. I'm not going to even try. However, I feel that I'm the baddest 36-year-old out there. — Shaquille O'Neal

A person really doesn't become whole, until he becomes a part of something that's bigger than himself. — Jim Valvano

I want to be a politician. I think I understand how the system works, I think a lot of politicians are corrupt, and it's about time we put some people in there who are going to look out for the majority of the people instead of the rich people. — Charles Barkley

It's hard to put it in perspective right now. I'm starting to feel a little emotional about what's going to happen Friday night. Getting your number put in the rafters is always something that as a kid ... you dream of seeing happen to you. — Scottie Pippen

Every time I think about changing a diaper, I run a little bit harder and a little bit faster to make sure I can afford a nanny until my daughter's old enough to take care of that herself. — Charles Barkley

I hate it. It looks like a stickup at 7-Eleven. Five guys standing there with their hands in the air. — Norm Sloan

My father was a basketball player, so I loved basketball because he did. It was a direct transference. But, more than that, basketball, in the United States at least, plays the same function that soccer does everyone else in the world. It's the sport of poverty. It's the sport born of poverty. It's the cheapest sport. — Sherman Alexie

I'm a firm believer in quiet confidence. By that I mean knowing inwardly that you are good, and not exhibiting a boastful attitude outwardly. If an athlete doesn't believe in himself, no one else will. — Dick Van Arsdale

We would love to have Gary down here. He's still tenacious on defense, and I know he still wants [a title]. And I'm the only guy in the world who can get him one. — Shaquille O'Neal

So you're dealing with a coach, and you're dealing with a guy who's actually experienced NBA basketball from a player's perspective and actually goes about it that way. — Kevin Garnett

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

I am aware that most people only see me as Shaq ... the guy on the court. But there is another side to who I am, Shaquille O'Neal. And Shaquille O'Neal wants to explore every part of life. He wants the opportunity to pursue all of his desires. That includes being a part of the music industry as an MC. Music is and will always be a part of who I am. — Shaquille O'Neal

I'm not sure that an athlete is prepared to be a role model. He has a lot of attention paid to him that he shouldn't have, and then the athletes tend to think of themselves as better than they are. — Bobby Knight

I've always been a quitter. I quit the Boy Scouts, the glee club, the marching band. Gave up my paper route, turned my back on the church, stuffed the basketball team. I dropped out of college, sidestepped the army with a 4-F on the grounds of mental instability, went back to school, made a go of it, entered a Ph.D. program in nineteenth-century British literature, sat in the front row, took notes assiduously, bought a pair of horn-rims, and quit on the eve of my comprehensive exams. I got married, separated, divorced. Quit smoking, quit jogging, quit eating red meat. I quit jobs: digging graves, pumping gas, selling insurance, showing pornographic films in an art theater in Boston. When I was nineteen I made frantic love to a pinch-faced, sack-bosomed girl I'd known from high school. She got pregnant. I quit town. — T.C. Boyle

Celebration is big for me. From my younger days, when I used to win mementos while playing basketball, I have always believed in sharing my success. It has to be there. It lifts the energy levels of the entire side if you are positive and vocal when a wicket falls. — Suresh Raina

You know, God gave me a gift to do other things besides play the game of basketball. — LeBron James

I wanted to emulate my parents - Mum captained India in basketball, and Dad won a bronze in hockey in 1972 Olympics. My focus has always been to achieve excellence whether in the field of tennis, in the corporate field, in the art of acting or in motivating youngsters. — Leander Paes

The NBA is a big family, and I think of all these rookies as my brothers. I still believe I am blue collar among the All-Stars. — Yao Ming

I know a lot of people did a lot of heavy lifting to make me successful and I do everything in my power not to screw it up. — Charles Barkley

As a child, I was very active. I was a gymnast, I played touch football, netball and basketball. When I was 16 years old, I started yoga. I started working out at an early age. — Miranda Kerr

I wanted to have a career in sports when I was young, but I had to give up the idea. I'm only six feet tall, so I couldn't play basketball. I'm only 190 pounds, so I couldn't play football, and I have 20/20 vision, so I couldn't be a referee. — Jay Leno

Only a handful of professional football athletes have had a signature shoe, unlike in basketball where there have been a number of guys. — Keyshawn Johnson

Somebody asked me about this the other day. A young Shaq and a young Penny, the young Shaq's going to take over. A medium Shaq and a young Kobe, the medium Shaq is going to take over. Now you've got an older Shaq and a young Dwyane; you step aside, you let him do his thing and you just do what's asked of you. — Shaquille O'Neal

Everyone who loves pro basketball assumes it's a little fixed. We all think the annual draft lottery is probably rigged, we all accept that the league aggressively wants big market teams to advance deep into the playoffs, and we all concede that certain marquee players are going to get preferential treatment for no valid reason. The outcomes of games aren't predeteremined or scripted but there are definitely dark forces who play with our reality. There are faceless puppet masters who pull strings and manipulate the purity of justice. It's not necessarily a full-on conspiracy, but it's certainly not fair. And that's why the NBA remains the only game that matters: Pro basketball is exactly like life. — Chuck Klosterman

I don't know a lot of show runners. I mean I met a lot of them in picket lines. I'm not part of a, like, secret society or pickup basketball game. As far as I'm concerned, pick-up basketball games are secret societies. They confuse me. I've never been a networker or I've never been very social. — Joss Whedon

I want to go down as a winner. — Kevin Durant

The only thing I pay attention to with free throws is what a guy does in the final four minutes of a game. If you can improve players' self-esteem and confidence, get them to relax, teach visualization and routine, they will shoot as well, or better, with the pressure on. — John Calipari

It's not like being a professional basketball player where you're in a big house. Maybe three, four or five guys make a couple million bucks a year, but that's it. The rest of them have second jobs. — Frank Grillo

The doors had a peephole, and periodically an Iranian guard would look through and choose who he would let in. It was a bit like waiting to be picked for a sports team at school. You stand there trying to look as useful as possible to the two kids lucky enough to have been chosen as captains. If they were picking you for footy you tried to look as tough as possible. For basketball, you tried to look as tall as possible. For cricket, as long-suffering and patient as possible. That day, every time the guard looked through the peephole, I tried to look as un-Great Satan-like as I could. — Peter Moore

Given a full summer to practice basketball, and especially my jump shot, I know that I could play in the NBA and do well. — Tony Gonzalez

There was a possibility I could have been out of the NBA. It's taught me something that was a little deeper than basketball. I'm talking about life decisions. — Lamar Odom

I went to an ACC school, Wake Forest, I'm a big college basketball fan, and it was just a natural interest for me. — Lee Norris

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 just said to myself, 'Damn, I'm a great player.' — Shaquille O'Neal

See, my hope and dream is that people have a good time watching basketball. It's not church. It's not serious. — Charles Barkley

[The NBA] used to be a small band of basketball groupies. Now there are a lot more corporate-type people working in the league. — Jerry West

Imagine Michael Jackson trying to play basketball or Michael Jordan trying to become a musician. They might not have been so successful if they would have chosen to do so. Regardless — Harshajyoti Das

I think I started learning lessons about being a good person long before I ever knew what basketball was. And that starts in the home, it starts with the parental influence. — Julius Erving

Basketball is what got me out of the projects. It got my momma the house she never had, the car she never had. Nobody is going to get the best of me. You might score more points than me, but you're going to know you were in a dogfight. — Kenyon Martin

Dressed in a white labcoat over jeans and a pink buttoned blouse, Liza was in her late fifties, and was tall enough that she was very tired of answering whether or not she'd played basketball in school. It was fortunate her clients were, for the most part, dead - as that was the only type of person who didn't seem to bother her. — Brandon Sanderson

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

After Michael Jordan had scored a play-off record 69 points - I'll always remember this as the night Michael and I combined to score 70 points. — Stacey King

In my 20s, I could just power through stuff and be fine, but now, in your 40s? It's kind of like Kobe Bryant. He plays basketball a little bit differently than he did when he first started out. — Daniel Wu

I've got a basketball signed by all the greats from Julius Irving to Oscar Robinson. It was at an All Star game I got them all to sign it. So that ain't going nowhere. I'm going to die with that in my casket. — Ice Cube

There are different eras and generations, but basketball is still the same. Old school or new school, the fundamentals of the game- passing, dribbling,and shooting- never change. The styles and forms may change,but from 1946 to 2006, there's been a right way and a wrong way to practice and perform these skills and that remains the same. — Walt Frazier

Finally, the last point that can kill your spark is Isolation. As you grow older you will realize you are unique. When you are little, all kids want Ice cream and Spiderman. As you grow older to college, you still are a lot like your friends. But ten years later and you realize you are unique. What you want, what you believe in, what makes you feel, may be different from even the people closest to you. This can create conflict as your goals may not match with others. And you may drop some of them. Basketball captains in college invariably stop playing basketball by the time they have their second child. They give up something that meant so much to them. They do it for their family. But in doing that, the spark dies. Never, ever make that compromise. Love yourself first, and then others. — Chetan Bhagat

To me, the big thing in being a successful team is repetition of what you're doing, either by word of mouth, blackboard, or specifically by work on the field. You repeat, repeat, repeat as a unit. — Vince Lombardi

It gave me a shock. A sudden shock of indescribable pain, like when you're a kid, and you're hit on the nose with a basketball on a cold morning, and you cannot believe how much it hurts, and your friends all laugh and you want your mother so bad. — Liane Moriarty

If every basketball player worked as hard as I did, I'd be out of a job — Steve Nash

As all of us with any involvement in sports knows, no two umpires or no two referees have the same strike zone or call the same kind of a basketball game. — Herb Kohl

I'm a big competitor. — Kevin Durant

Every little kid that steps on the court or the field has aspirations to go pro. I think being a pro basketball player is the best job. The thing I had to realize was that I can't do every dream that I have. — Brian McKnight

I don't think you can explain why all these other sports and college basketball have a fair representation of African American coaches, but college football doesn't. You can dig and scramble and scratch, but at the end of the day I think it's just pure, old-fashioned racism. — Frank Deford

Radical Edwards's profile? He's a seven-foot tall ex-basketball pro hindu guru drag-queen alien.
-Jet Black, from the Cowboy Bebop anime script — Keiko Nobumoto

There are times when my passion for basketball led me into confrontations that I could have handled a lot better. I've always been too confrontational, especially when I know I'm right. — Bobby Knight

Once you've done the mental work, there comes a point you have to throw yourself into the action and put your heart on the line. That means not only being brave, but being compassionate towards yourself, your teammates and your opponents. — Phil Jackson

On the other hand, she never looked as -big- as she did at that moment.
"What?" Rose demanded, glaring up at him.
The warning signal flashed bright red in Kane's head. Telling a woman she was as big as a beach ball wouldn't win any points. How did one describe how she looked? A basketball? Volleyball? He studied her furious little face. Yeah. He was in big trouble no matter what he said. Description was out of the question. He needed diplomacy, something that flew out of the window when he was near her and she said the words like contractions. — Christine Feehan

I like to describe my life as a black hole with a little light out there. — Dennis Rodman

Among other things, neuroplasticity means that emotions such as happiness and compassion can be cultivated in much the same way that a person can learn through repetition to play golf and basketball or master a musical instrument, and that such practice changes the activity and physical aspects of specific brain areas. — Andrew Weil

I'm just a seasonal guy. Basketball, football, baseball, boxing, golf. Give it to me all the time. — Jerry Ferrara

The players have no real self-esteem when it comes to putting the best image out there in a real competitive fashion. — Oscar Robertson

I tried golf for a while, but I wasn't very good at it, so I didn't play a lot of golf. I enjoy all sports, not just football. I like basketball, baseball, and I got into the World Cup. So really, sports in general are my life, and football specifically. — John Madden

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. — Chris Brown

It is foolish to expect a young man to follow your advice and to ignore your example. — Don Meyer

You have to be wired a certain way to be a professional basketball player, and the way my body grew, something happened genetically that allowed me to become a lot more explosive. — Jeremy Lin

A fierce hatred of embarrassment ruled a surprising amount of the life of Moses Malone, the Hall of Fame basketball center. — Joseph Bottum

It's a luxury to play. I get to play basketball for a living. I'm a lucky guy and I'm thankful for everything I have and what I get to do. I realize how many people would give their left foot to just play one game in the NBA. This is the NBA! — Chris Bosh

The liturgy is the place where we wait for Jesus to show up. We don't have to do much. The liturgy is not an act of will. It is not a series of activities designed to attain a spiritual mental state. We do not have to apply will pressure. To be sure, like basketball or football, it is something that requires a lot of practice
its rhythms do not come naturally except to those who have been rehearsing them for years. On some Sundays the soul will indeed battle to even pay attention. In the normal course of worship, we do not have to conjure up feelings or a devotional mood; we are not required to perform the liturgy flawlessly. Such anxious effort ... blind us to what is really going on.
We do have to show up, and we cannot leave early. But if we will dwell there, remain in place, wait patiently, Jesus will show up. — Mark Galli

You want to do Olympics just like you do a pro football game or a basketball game? Be my guest. Watch it all fade away. — Dick Ebersol

I enjoy listening to classical music and heavy metal. I play basketball and try to go diving at least once a year. I don't really have hobbies in the traditional sense ... I engage in too many activities already through the actions of my characters. — Alan Dean Foster

Basketball Rule #10

A loss is inevitable,
like snow in winter.
True champions
learn
to dance
through
the storm. — Kwame Alexander

For example, Michael Jordan earns $100million a year but continues to play basketball and remains a modest human being. — Franz Beckenbauer

One thing you can't beat in this world is time. I learnt that the hard way. You can't play basketball forever. You can't play football forever. You can't bodybuild forever. I mean you CAN do it, but not at a high level against younger guys who have more time and have not reached their peaks yet. There's only so much the body can do and once you're done, you can't go back in time. — Ronnie Coleman

My parents were kind of over protective people. Me and my sister had to play in the backyard all the time. They bought us bikes for Christmas but wouldn't let us ride in the street, we had to ride in the backyard. Another Christmas, my dad got me a basketball hoop and put it in the middle of the lawn! You can't dribble on grass. — Jimmy Fallon

I'm not chasing championships. Championship's chasing us. I'm not doing that. I want my players to be better people once they leave campus because this is a life lesson. This is more than basketball. This is life lessons that we're trying to teach. — Kevin Ollie

Attitude lies somewhere between emotion and logic. It's that curious mix of optimism and determination that enables you to maintain a positive outlook and to continue plodding in the face of the most adverse circumstances. — Pat Summitt

Basketball Without Borders is a leadership camp that takes basketball to different places around the world, to Africa, Europe, America and Asia. It's a camp that brings players from different parts of the continent to one city that's been assigned as the host city. We've been going to a different city every year. — Dikembe Mutombo

I tried out for my basketball team every year and I never made it. You had to buy the shoes before you knew if you were on the team because it took a few weeks for them to ship. I bought the shoes every year, never once made the team, had a ton of high school basketball shoes. — Adam DeVine

I hate the gym, so I try to diversify my workouts with swimming and basketball. Indoors, it's less boring than running. I do find that diet is key. I eat lots of lean protein, no soda, no fast food or fried foods, and a lot of water. But I love food and often cook. — Mike Colter

When I was teaching basketball, I urged my players to try their hardest to improve on that very day, to make that practice a masterpiece.
Too often we get distracted by what is outside our control. You can't do anything about yesterday. The door to the past has been shut and the key thrown away. You can do nothing about tomorrow. It is yet to come. However, tomorrow is in large part determined by what you do today. So make today a masterpiece. You have control over that.
This rule is even more important in life than basketball. You have to apply yourself each day to become a little better. By applying yourself to the task of becoming a little better each and every day over a period of time, you will become a lot better. Only then will you will be able to approach being the best you can be. It begins by trying to make each day count and knowing you can never make up for a lost day. — John Wooden

Both of us played basketball, and I played tennis and my knees are done. Now if you ask us head-to-head who wins at golf, I'm asking for a couple of strokes. — Michael Wilbon

A lot of players know how to play the game, but they really don't know how to play the game, if you know what I mean. They can put the ball in the hoop, but I see things before they even happen. You know how a guy can make his team so much better? That's one thing I learned from watching Jordan. — LeBron James

People will think there are no other great ballplayers. Look at Garnett. Look at Duncan, Shaq, Kobe. Look at the players with Sacramento. The have a really good basketball team. — Oscar Robertson

I grew up playing sports, football, basketball, baseball, everything, and acting was such a different environment and different world for me. — Cam Gigandet

As you keep shooting the ball, you become a better basketball player. — Raekwon

I really do miss playing basketball. I don't play a lot of pick-up games. But I do like using basketball as a form of cross training. — Jackie Joyner-Kersee

Like life, basketball is messy and unpredictable. It has its way with you, no matter how hard you try to control it. The trick is to experience each moment with a clear mind and open heart. When you do that, the game - and life - will take care of itself. — Phil Jackson

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

And from the first time I picked up a basketball at age eight - I had a lot of difficulty when I first picked up a basketball, because I was a scrub - there were things that I liked about it. — Julius Erving

When a player keeps a calm demeanor on the court, it's easier for his ability to shine. The best response to an opposing player's physical or psychological tactics is to keep cool and come right back at him with the force of your game, not your fists. Revenge is always sweeter if your team wins the game. — Walt Frazier

Going in, you want to play a perfect season and play throughout the whole entire season, but injuries are a part of basketball. — Kyrie Irving