Quotes & Sayings About Championship Basketball

I'm not promising a championship. I know how hard that is to deliver. We're not ready right now. — LeBron James

Our goal as a team is to keep playing as a group for as long as we can because you will never have that team again. It is like a dying limb, you have to prune it off and let another one grow in its place. That is the way you have to do it, but it still hurts losing these guys and that team because they and you have put so much effort into building a team. Even if you win that last game (and a national championship), it hurts badly because the players know they will never have that same special group of guys together on the same team again. Somebody always goes and somebody new always comes in. — Don Meyer

Parents would rather have their son get all-state than his team win the state championship. — Don Meyer

I play basketball to win a championship. That championship is everything to me. And that's what gets people to buy in to your brand - being a winner. — Chris Paul

People want national championship banners. People want to talk about Indiana being competitive. How do we get there? We don't get there with milk and cookies. — Bobby Knight

To go out there and play and have fun and hopefully win a championship. That's my goal. — Carmelo Anthony

Do you want to choose winning over standing out? It's a choice every player on every championship team has to do — Doc Rivers

One day to see that headline, not that someone won a basketball championship, but to see that a cure for cancer has been found, will be a great day for mankind. — Dick Vitale

There's been injuries to where my perseverance may have gotten overlooked-just my hard work and what I bring to a franchise and to a team may have gotten overlooked. But it's a matter of staying professional and playing the game of basketball and ultimately doing whatever it takes to win a championship for your teammates. — Amar'e Stoudemire

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

His ability to evoke Celtic pride was incredible. He would always talk about how all the old players called him up after an embarrasing performance and wanted to disassociate themselves from the Celtics. They wanted to mail in their championship rings, wanted their numbers removed from the rafters, and by this point there would be tears rolling down our cheeks and we'd want to kill. — Bill Walton

The first time I managed to pick up a basketball I knew I was destined to lead the UK to another National championship ... Even now, so many years later, I still believe Kentucky will go undefeated in March & win everything. — Hunter S. Thompson

The ideal way to win a championship is step by step. — Phil Jackson

Bill Russell is one of the great names in basketball, an all-American ... and the only athlete to ever win an NCAA Championship, an Olympic Gold Medal, and a professional championship all in the same year-1956 ... But Bill Russell had this one problem: He threw up before every game. — John Eliot

A lot of guys go through their whole careers and don't win a championship, but are still great coaches. — Chuck Daly

You aren't going to win championships unless you make layups and free throws. — Don Meyer

For us to be the team that got him that historic 10th championship is special for us. — Kobe Bryant

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

Actually, Magic and the Lakers beat Philadelphia for Magic's first NBA Championship. — Oscar Robertson

In 1948, I began coaching basketball at UCLA. Each hour of practice we worked very hard. Each day we worked very hard. Each week we worked very hard. Each season we worked very hard. Four fourteen years we worked very hard and didn't win a national championship. However, a national championship was won in the fifteenth year. Another in the sixteenth. And eight more in the following ten years. — John Wooden

I can see Sue and I leading this team to many more championships ... We're going to take this and learn from it. We worked too hard for this. — Lauren Jackson

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

I probably should've listened to Michael a year ago when he said that Charles will never win a championship because he doesn't show any dedication. — Scottie Pippen

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

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

I would tell players to relax and never think about what's at stake. Just think about the basketball game. If you start to think about who is going to win the championship, you've lost your focus. — Michael Jordan

If basketball was going to enable Bradley to make friends, to prove that a banker's son is as good as the next fellow, to prove that he could do without being the greatest-end-ever at Missouri, to prove that he was not chicken, and to live up to his mother's championship standards, and if he was going to have some moments left over to savor his delight in the game, he obviously needed considerable practice, so he borrowed keys to the gym and set a schedule for himself that he adhereded to for four full years - in the school year, three and a half hours every day after school, nine to five on Saturday, one-thirty to five on Sunday, and, in the summer, about three hours a day. — John McPhee

I don't just try to score. The challenge is elevating my teammates to be able to win a championship. — Kobe Bryant

If you have talent with teamwork, you've got a chance to be a championship team. — Mike Krzyzewski

If I would have listened to other people back in 2000 telling me I should have stopped playing basketball because of a kidney disease, I wouldn't have won a world championship. — Alonzo Mourning

Basketball can serve as a kind of metaphor for ultimate cooperation. It is a sport where success, as symbolized by the championship, requires that the dictates of community prevail over selfish impulses. — Bill Bradley

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

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