Quotes & Sayings About Basketball Playoffs

When players are used to winning, they put out a little more. Basketball 3rd winningest coach (regular season and playoffs) in NBA history; won 1,037 times in 20 years; — Red Auerbach

There's nothing less than that. I don't care about just going to the playoffs; I've been to the playoffs before. — Allen Iverson

Playing in the playoffs is the best basketball in the world, and if you can learn under that pressure, succeed under that pressure, it gives you more confidence the next year. — Tony Parker

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

Famed basketball coach Phil Jackson, a meditator himself, arranged to have his players - first the Chicago Bulls, and then the L.A. Lakers - learn meditation as a way to improve their focus and teamwork. Jackson finds that mindfulness assists players in paying attention to what's happening on the court moment by moment. Such precise training in attention has paid off during tense playoffs; Jackson has led more teams to championships than any coach in NBA history. Meditation — Sharon Salzberg

What I've talked about the entire series and throughout this playoffs is about intensity and effort, desire and will of our players. — Bill Laimbeer

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

If I continue to just get to the playoffs every year, I guess you could say I arrived, but right now I'm just trying to find my way. — Kevin Durant

Everything can happen in the playoffs. — Red Auerbach

Westbrook: 10 triple-doubles and carrying that team, injury-prone, into the playoffs. LeBron being the best player in the world. But I think right now I would go with James Harden because of what he's done. He's stepped up his game defensively. He's not a great defender but he's competing on the defensive end. — Mark Jackson

Tim Duncan's foot issue, I think, is a major factor in this year's playoffs. That's not the kind of injury that gets better over time playing NBA basketball. — Bill Walton

I don't have much of an attention span for TV - I nod off during the basketball playoffs - but when I watch 'Game of Thrones' on On Demand, I'm glued to the set. It's mystical and addictive. Tyrion Lannister, that's my man. — Steve Harvey

I watch a lot of NBA basketball, especially with the playoffs. — Coby Bell