Good basketball quotes are not hard to come by. But we’ve made it even easier for you with this group. Basketball coaches, players, and superstars all made their contributions.
Look through and see if you find any quotation that might inspire and motivate your team. Or, if you’re looking for your own amusement, check out the funny basketball quotations down low. Time for the tip-off – you’re on your way!
55 Good Basketball Quotes
- I think everyone should go to college and get a degree and then spend six months as a bartender and six months as a cab driver. Then they would really be educated.
Al McGuire - I know that the hard work got me here. And the day I stop working hard, this can all go away.
Kevin Durant - I play to win, whether during practice or a real game. And I will not let anything get in the way of me and my competitive enthusiasm to win.
Michael Jordan - 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 don’t know if I practiced more than anybody, but I sure practiced enough. I still wonder if somebody – somewhere – was practicing more than me.
Larry Bird - You can’t be afraid to fail. It’s the only way you succeed…you’re not gonna succeed all the time, and I know that.
LeBron James - I don’t believe in statistics. There are too many factors that can’t be measured. You can’t measure a ballplayer’s heart.
Red Auerbach - Ask not what your teammates can do for you. Ask what you can do for your teammates.
Magic Johnson - Discipline and demand without being demeaning.
Don Meyer - Don’t let what you cannot do interfere with what you can do.
John Wooden
See Seven Tips To Building Players’ Trust.
Great Basketball Quotations
- Anytime you get an award as a coach, you’ve got to be the ultimate fool to think it wasn’t your assistant coaches and all the players responsible for the award.
Don Meyer - I can get better. I haven’t reached my ceiling yet on how well I can shoot the basketball.
Steph Curry - You have to expect things of yourself before you can do them.
Michael Jordan - I’m a firm believer in that you play the way you practice.
Larry Bird - It’s not what you tell your players that counts, it’s what they hear.
Red Auerbach - Shout praise and whisper criticism.
Don Meyer - Leaders have to search for the heart on a team, because the person who has it can bring out the best in everybody else.
Mike Krzyzewski - The main ingredient of stardom is the rest of the team.
John Wooden - I always laugh when people ask me about rebounding techniques. I’ve got a technique. It’s called just go get the damn ball.
Charles Barkley - Every day you teach attitude.
Don Meyer - What I tell people is be the best version of yourself in anything that you do. You don’t have to live anybody else’s story.
Steph Curry - Things turn out best for the people who make the best of the way things turn out.
John Wooden - Chemistry is important. If you like your teammates, it’s going to be easier to play with them on the court.
Kevin Durant - Push yourself again and again. Don’t give an inch until the final buzzer sounds.
Larry Bird - I’ve always believed that if you put in the work, the results will come. I don’t do things half-heartedly. Because I know if I do, then I can expect half-hearted results.
Michael Jordan
Inspirational Basketball Quotations
- They said you have to use your five best players but I found you win with the five who fit together the best.
Red Auerbach - I’m looking for players who make their teammates better. You do that with enthusiasm and passion.
Mike Krzyzewski - I think I’ll stick to what I’m used to, my principles, and that is team Number 1 and individual Number 2.
Yao Ming - You build your program from the ideas of great coaches.
Don Meyer - It’s the little details that are vital. Little things make big things happen.
John Wooden - Systems win! Believe in your system, and then sell it to your players.
Billy Donovan - You got to believe in yourself. Hell, I believe I’m the best-looking guy in the world and I might be right.
Charles Barkley - I’m not saying that they were Einsteins; they were marginal students. But every ballplayer whoever touched me has moved up his station in life. And the players moved up my station.
Al McGuire - Sports teach you how to be quick. Injuries teach you how to slow down.
Yao Ming - With a versatile player, there’s no spot on the court you can’t pass him the ball. You can do anything.
Kevin Durant
Cool Basketball Sayings
- It’s not so important who starts the game but who finishes it.
John Wooden - Leadership is diving for a loose ball, getting the crowd involved, getting other players involved. It’s being able to take it as well as dish it out. That’s the only way you’re going to get respect from the players.
Larry Bird - The truth is that many people set rules to keep from making decisions.
Mike Krzyzewski - Don’t give up. Don’t ever give up.
Jim Valvano - Everybody pulls for David, nobody roots for Goliath.
Wilt Chamberlain
Motivational Basketball Quotes
- Every sound in the gym is so fantastic. The screams of the fans, the whistle of the ref, the teammates calling to each other, the sounds of the ball touching the wooden floor, the sneakers touching the floor, and the sounds of the fight, the muscle, and the sweat. Oh, and the last one—when the ball goes through the net. Don’t laugh at my sensitivity and romanticism – those sounds really attract me.
Yao Ming - If they think we’ve got an edge, we’ve got an edge.
Red Auerbach - The two ingredients in success in basketball are playing hard and playing intelligently.
Pete Carill - Criticize on defense and encourage on offense.
John Brady - 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 - My father gave me the greatest gift anyone could give another person, he believed in me.
Jim Valvano - I was always in the gym. People would look at me crazy because I spent so much time there. But that’s what it was about. I’m glad I did it.
Kevin Durant - I never looked at the consequences of missing a big shot. When you think about the consequences you always think of a negative result.
Michael Jordan - One man can be a crucial ingredient on a team, but one man cannot make a team.
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar - Every time I rise up, I have confidence that I’m going to make it.
Steph Curry
Inspiring Quotations
- Winning takes talent, to repeat takes character.
John Wooden - Not only is there more to life than basketball, there’s a lot more to basketball than basketball.
Phil Jackson - Prepare for every game like you just lost your last game.
Lon Kruger - With accomplishments comes confidence and with confidence comes belief. It has to be in that order.
Mike Krzyzewski - One day of practice is like one day of clean living. It doesn’t do you any good.
Abe Lemmons
20 Funny Basketball Quotes
- Winning is only important in war and surgery.
Al McGuire - Any American boy can be a basketball star if he grows up, up, up.
Bill Vaughn - When I’m losing, they call me nuts. When I’m winning, they call me eccentric.
Al McGuire - We are in the business of kicking butt and business is very, very good.
Charles Barkley - We’re shooting 100 percent – 60 percent from the field and 40 percent from the free-throw line.
Norm Stewart - I had my moment on the stage. The trick in life is to know when to leave.
Al McGuire - A team should be an extension of a coach’s personality. My teams are arrogant and obnoxious.
Al McGuire - When I went to Catholic high school in Philadelphia, we just had one coach for football and basketball. He took all of us who turned out and had us run through a forest. The ones who ran into the trees were on the football team.
George Raveling - Basketball is like photography, if you don’t focus, all you have is the negative.
Dan Frisby - I hate it. It looks like a stickup at 7-Eleven. Five guys standing there with their hands in the air.
Norm Sloan, talking about zone defense
Basketball Quotes Funny
- This year, we plan to run and shoot. Next season, we hope to run and score.
Billy Tubbs - Fans never fall asleep at our games because they’re afraid they might get hit by a pass.
George Raveling - Winning is like deodorant – it comes up, and a lot of things don’t stink.
Doc Rivers - I haven’t been able to slam-dunk the basketball for the past five years. Or, for the thirty-eight years before that, either.
Dave Barry - There are really only two plays: Romeo and Juliet, and put the darn ball in the basket.
Abe Lemmons - We’re shooting 100 percent – 60 percent from the field and 40 percent from the free-throw line.
Norm Stewart - The secret is to have eight great players and four others who will cheer like crazy.
Jerry Tarkanian - I remember sitting down with the Rockets and saying, ‘Yeah. I’m going to retire.’ They said, ‘Well, we’ll give you $9 million.’ And I said, ‘You got a pen on you?’
Charles Barkley - We rush for the stars as we crawl toward our graves.
Al McGuire - I asked a ref if he could give me a technical foul for thinking bad things about him. He said, of course not. I said, well, I think you stink. And he gave me a technical. You can’t trust em.
Jim Valvano
By Mike O’Halloran
Mike has authored four books on youth basketball coaching.
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