Basketball Opponent Quotes & Sayings

So what does all this mean if you desperately want to persuade someone who doesn't want to be persuaded?

The first step is to appreciate that your opponent's opinion is likely based less on fact and logic than on ideology and herd thinking. If you were to suggest this to his face, he would of course deny it. He is operating from a set of biases he cannot even see. As the behavioral sage Daniel Kahneman has written: "We can be blind to the obvious, and we are also blind to our blindness." Few of us are immune to this blind spot. That goes for you, and that goes for the two of us as well. And so, as the basketball legend-cum-philosopher Kareem Abdul-Jabbar once put it, "It's easier to jump out of a plane - hopefully with a parachute - than it is to change your mind about an opinion. — Steven D. Levitt

I believe that good defense embodies seven cardinal principle: reduce the number of your opponent's shots; force your opponent into low percentage shots; control everything within 18 feet; eliminate second shots; no easy baskets; point the ball on all long shots; and prevent the ball from going into the pivot man. — Adolph Rupp

My philosophy of defense is to keep the pressure on an opponent until you get to his emotions — John Wooden

Offensively, you do what you do best and you do it again and again. Defensively, you attack your opponent's strength. — Vince Lombardi

When you go out on the court whether it be for the championship or just a scrimmage, have confidence that your abilities and what you've learned in your drills are better than your opponent's. This does not mean you should disregard your opponent. Before taking the court for any game, you should do a lot of thinking about what you have to do to beat your opponent and what he must or can do to beat you. — Bob Pettit

Play against the Game, not your opponent. — Bud Wilkinson

I take my sport damned seriously. Basketball is my life. There are other people who go into important games as if they were any other game. I'm a brooder and I spend a lot of time thinking about my opponent, about the things he can do and about what I have to do to win. I don't think I'll ever be able to change that. — Dirk Nowitzki

If I cover my head with my hands, it means deny the ball to the opponent's ball handler. — Don Meyer

In evaluating the way in which ball possessions are gained during the course of a game, we find that 60 to 80 percent of the possessions are gained by rebounding and after an opponent's score. Twenty percent come from opponents's error, and only 5 percent of the possessions come from steals and interceptions. A study of the way ball possessions are gained makes it seem highly impractical to base pressure defense on interceptions and steals. — Ralph Miller

I never think that there's something I can't do, whether it's beating my opponent one on one or practicing another hour because something about my game is just not right. — Magic Johnson

It's fun to play defense. It's fun to watch the opponent sweat on offense, start complaining to the officials, and eventually be taken out of the game because he's making so many offensive mistakes — Maury John

If every university president said, 'The revenue producing sports: basketball, football - potentially revenue producing at most universities - maybe in a few cases women's basketball, if every one of them had a monitor that reported directly to the university president and no 'student-athlete' ever gets into this college or university who could not plausibly be admitted if we did not have a football or basketball team, end of problem. It won't happen because it's like unilaterally disarming. You know your opponent won't do it and then you'll get crushed in every game, but it's a simple thing. — Bob Costas

I realize now that there's a strength in dunking that I can use to my advantage. When you dunk all the time it isn't as demoralizing to the opponent, but when you dunk at a key moment in the game you can use it to change the momentum. — Kobe Bryant

The best part of basketball, for those people on the inside, is the bus going to the airport after you've won a game on an opponent's floor. It's been a very tough battle. And preferably, in the playoffs. And that feeling that you have, together as a group, having gone to an opponent's floor and won a very good victory, is as about as high as you can get. — Phil Jackson

The pleasure of sport was so often the chance to indulge the cessation of time itself
the pitcher dawdling on the mound, the skier poised at the top of a mountain trail, the basketball player with the rough skin of the ball against his palm preparing for a foul shot, the tennis player at set point over his opponent
all of them savoring a moment before committing themselves to action. — George Plimpton

Why don't they allow professional wrestling at the Olympics? They allow pro basketball players and hockey players. Olympic pro wrestling would be awesome. The team from Mexico could wear those Mr. X masks. The French wrestler could hit his opponent with a baguette. Or perhaps just surrender. — Craig Ferguson

Work harder than your opponent. — Kevin Durant