Basketball Teams Quotes & Sayings

I think what you mostly do when you find you really are alone is to panic. You rush to the opposite extreme and pack yourself into groups - clubs, teams, societies, types. You suddenly start dressing exactly like the others. It's a way of being invisible. The way you sew the patches on the holes in your blue jeans becomes incredibly important. If you do it wrong you're not with it. That's a peculiar phrase, you know? With it. With what? With them. With the others. All together. Safety in numbers. I'm not me. I'm a basketball letter. I'm a popular kid. I'm my friend's friend. I'm a black leather growth on a Honda. I'm a member. I'm a teenager. You can't see me, all you can see is us. We're safe. And if We see You standing alone by yourself, if you're lucky we'll ignore you. If you're not lucky, we might throw rocks. Because we don't like people standing there with the wrong kind of patches on their jeans reminding us that we're each alone and none of us is safe. — Ursula K. Le Guin

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

The best teams play for each other, not with each other — Jeff Van Gundy

The two top teams with nice weather and nice people were Dallas and Miami. Of course, the Lakers wouldn't want to trade me in the same conference, so Miami was perfect. — Shaquille O'Neal

You just gotta be who you are, and I think it's time to get rid of this whole National Basketball Association. Call it the TBA, the Thug Basketball Association, and stop calling them teams. Call 'em gangs. — Rush Limbaugh

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

A team should be an extension of a coach's personality. My teams are arrogant and obnoxious. — Al McGuire

In every game, there's three teams out there. There's the two basketball teams and the team of officials. If the two teams are evenly matched, it can come down to number of possessions. If one out-of-bounds call goes the wrong way, that can be the difference. — Tom Heinsohn

Involvement in my kids' sports teams is something I have made time for over the years. I've also been able to coach all three of them in baseball and basketball, something that has strengthened our bonds and given me indescribable joy. I wouldn't trade it for anything. — Thomas Perez

Winning teams at the NBA level, the college level, and the high school level all play team basketball. Championship teams have five players on the same page at all times. — Hubie Brown

Well-coached teams are never surprised; they can adapt to anything they see. — Jack Ramsay

Now the Gang of McCrook was a miserable mob,
for whom robbing you blind was an everyday job.

They were known for their violence and criminal feats,
for a seedy selection of sinful deceits
from robbery, arson, and pyramid schemes,
to snatching the mascots from basketball teams.

They had once robbed a pet shop of all of its cash,
and they never - not ever - recycled their trash! — Robert Paul Weston

Teams that play together beat those with superior players who play more as individuals. — Jack Ramsay

Our titles would not have been possible without the unselfishness displayed by all our teams, the team wins, not the individuals — John Wooden

Men own basketball teams. Every year cheerleaders' outfits get tighter and briefer, and players' shorts get baggier and longer. — Rita Rudner

Hornergy' is Zen's term for the indomitable athletic edge powered by sexual restraint. The basketball, baseball and football teams haven't had a winning season in years. The table-tennis team, however, is undefeated. — Megan McCafferty

In recent generations, women's sports have been a blessing. Some of us can remember the bad old days in the '50s, when we would discover in casual schoolyard play that a girl could outrun most of us or hold her own in basketball or hit a softball - but there were no teams, no coaches, for girls. — George Vecsey

My dad was the one who really loved basketball, and he was the one that put the basketball in my hands, and my mom was 'Team Mom' of all my teams. I used to play for three or four teams at once and she would just spend her entire afternoon driving me from practice to practice to practice. — Jeremy Lin

The best teams are team in any sport that lose themselves in the team. The individuals lose their identity. And their identities come about as a result of being in the team first. — Mike Krzyzewski

Good teams become great ones when the members trust each other enough to surrender the Me for the We. — Phil Jackson

On good teams coaches hold players accountable, on great teams players hold players accountable — Joe Dumars

I was actually supposed to be a basketball player, not an actress. My parents had me playing basketball on competitive teams when I was in kindergarten. Even though my heart belongs to the arts, I'm a tomboy at heart, too. — Zendaya

It wasn't until late high school and early college that I gained enough size and skill to make me welcome on intramural basketball teams. — Paul D. Boyer

Basketball Rule #6
A great team
has a good scorer
with a teammate
who's on point
and ready
to assist. — Kwame Alexander

We love playing together and we love adversity. You know, back-to-back, the two best teams in the East. — Steve Nash

Teams want me to do something stupid. You want to get to the point where nothing affects you, where you control them. — Blake Griffin

Championship teams are built on being prepared, playing unselfishly and being held accountable — Jason Kidd

On a basketball court, five players were in the middle of an intense game. They wore assortment of jerseys from different American teams, and they all seemed keen to win - grunting and snarling at each other, stealing the ball and pushing.
Oh ... and the players were all baboons. — Rick Riordan

Play off your great player ... great teams have a go-to player and they play off of him. — Don Meyer

There's a tipping point that happens with soccer in which you just kinda get it. I was drawn to it because the best soccer teams play similarly to my favorite basketball teams - like the eighties Lakers or eighties Celtics - teams that emphasized teamwork over individualism and relied on passing as their biggest ongoing edge. — Bill Simmons

I am thrilled to be an Olympian, and I think that although we will be underdogs we can beat many teams and will be a surprise in Sydney. — Steve Nash

The highest level of achievement is attained by the teams with the best conditioned players — Jack Ramsay

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

The biggest thing that will define my legacy is how I've done it, and what I've done, and who I am. I'm a weird big guy. Doing rapping, doing movies. Do a lot of stuff. But always do things the right way. Went to the police academy to become a police officer. Get his master's in criminal justice, stayed out of trouble. Played for three different teams. Changed three different franchises around. This is a guy who they would have secret meetings about to change the rules. So, that's going to be my legacy: the most dominant player ever. — Shaquille O'Neal

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

I don't have a lot of experience running basketball teams.I'm just trying to get smart enough even to understand everything going on. As much of a fan as I am, I haven't played the game since ninth-grade. If you told me when I bought the team that there were 12 kinds of pick and rolls, I would've told you I have no frickin' clue about that. — Steve Ballmer

The strength of my Princeton teams has always been attitude, intelligence and discipline. — Pete Carril

You can't not be into basketball and grow up in Chicago or live in L.A., because people are so fanatical about the teams. You know what's going on with the games even if you don't watch. — Virginia Madsen

Basketball teams, after the perfunctory lay-up drill, fall into the crowded isolation and personal style of 10 city kids shooting at the same basket or playing one-on-one. — Ted Solotaroff

It's been kind of hard, I'm labeled as a jerk right now, you know what I mean? But I love it. I've been a jerk all my life. My momma loves this jerk. My kids love this jerk. I'm going to be a jerk in a good way, though. I'm going to be a jerk to the other teams and just go out there and play basketball. I can do that. — Stephen Jackson

The best teams have chemistry. They communicate with each other and they sacrifice personal glory for a common goal. — Dave DeBusschere

A lot of people talk about the Fab Five, and they were wonderful, one of the best teams you'll ever see in college basketball. But the '89 team is the best one to ever play at Michigan in my opinion because they won the national championship. Winning a championship is winning a championship. — Trey Burke

In developing teams, I don't believe in rules. I believe in standards. Rules don't promote teamwork, standards do — Mike Krzyzewski

One reason outfielders don't have stronger arms might be they don't practice as much as we did. Most teams today don't take outfield practice. Another reason is baseball has to compete with other sports now - basketball, football, soccer - for the better athletes that might have more skills and stronger arms. — Al Kaline

We play a different style than other teams. It's effective, but different. We run the floor, block shots and create turnovers. — Steve Nash

You learn from everybody. You learn from the players. You learn from great coaches. You learn from great teams — Tom Thibodeau

That's how we like to play basketball, is be physical down there in the paint and force teams to the perimeter. — Bill Laimbeer

Basketball's eras are defined by teams - Celtics, Lakers, Bulls - and baseball's epochs are defined by players - Ruth, Robinson, Mantle - but with football, it's the sideline strategists, the nutty professors and top coated Lears. — J.R. Moehringer

It's going to be crazy. All eight teams here are good teams. Hopefully the atmosphere will be great because it's going to be great basketball. — Chris Kraus

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

The courtside entertainment provided similar commercial thrills. Smaller businesses that couldn't afford their own teams bought the right to have company mascots wander the aisles, where they posed for photographs, danced as much as their cumbersome costumes allowed, and further blurred the line between professional basketball and a Lewis Carroll acid trip. — Rafe Bartholomew

Studies show that the fear of public humiliation is a potent force. During the 1988-89 basketball season, for example, two NCAA basketball teams played eleven games without any spectators, owing to a measles outbreak that led their schools to quarantine all students. Both teams played much better (higher free-throw percentages, for example) without any fans, even adoring home-team fans, to unnerve them. — Susan Cain