Basketball Quotations | Page 4

If we all make a concerted effort and try to improve the life of someone else, then this world would be a better place to live in.

I have to tell you, I'm proudest of my life off the court. There will always be great basketball players who bounce that little round ball, but my proudest moments are affecting people's lives, effecting change, being a role model in the community.

Guys who might not be superstars but because of their hustle, because of the little things they do, these are the guys who can really mean the difference between winning and losing.

Charles and I go back since college. None of us thought this would happen, we just wanted to play basketball. This is the highest honor that can ever be paid, and it's mind-blowing.

I play basketball to win a championship. That championship is everything to me. And thats what gets people to buy in to your brand - being a winner.

To all the positions, I just bring the determination to win. Me being an unselfish player, I think that can carry on to my teammates. When you have one of the best players on the court being unselfish, I think that transfers to the other players.

If you meet the Buddha in the lane, feed him the ball.

Hard work does pay, and you just have to continue to work, and you got two guys, when you're talking about Gary and myself, we have a God-given talent, but we worked at it and we're happy to be where we are today.

When I look at the system here and look at my position - not just as a basketball player, but when I look around me at the values of the people and the culture and compare them with the values of where I came from - I feel so blessed to be from Africa.

I tried to make a point of doing things outside the box, of not having basketball consume me.

It's like all guys want to do is make a dunk, grab their shirt and yell out and scream - they could be down 30 points but that's what they do. Okay, so you made a dunk. Get back down the floor on defense!

To have long term success as a coach or in any position of leadership, you have to be obsessed in some way.

The basketball coach cut me within two days, so I was back in the pool. I was the first one in the wall after the first 25 yards, but the last one out because I didn't have a flip turn.

To me, teamwork is the beauty of our sport, where you have five acting as one. You become selfless.

It's hard when your father's the coach. Sometimes you don't know where one leaves off and the other begins.

I never worry about the problem. I worry about the solution.

I think I started learning lessons about being a good person long before I ever knew what basketball was. And that starts in the home, it starts with the parental influence.

I've got a theory that if you give 100% all of the time, somehow things will work out in the end.

I love basketball players for what they do for their size - so graceful.

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.

The main thing to do is relax and let your talent do the work.

When I travel around the globe, I try as hard as I can to represent the NBA and the game of basketball to the best of my abilities. I get to go around the world and not only share the game but also my philanthropic work. Building a hospital in the Congo is one of the proudest achievements of my life.

I won the city scoring championship as a senior.

I have always maintained that in basketball the importance of the mental to the physical is about four to one.

There's a lot of blood, sweat, and guts between dreams and success.

I gave everything I had to basketball. The passion is still there but the desire to play is not. It was a great ride.

Asthma research is a lot better and new medicines are always coming out to help young people.

I'm not gonna be bad at anything, and I want to actually be the best at anything I'm doing. So if I'm playing basketball, if I'm taking the SATs, like, there's a competitive spirit behind it. With production, it's the same thing.

Love is the force that ignites the spirit and binds teams together.

Handball, swimming, running, jumping, basketball, and boxing were as much a part of me as breathing.

For 'Iron Man' I had to improv with Robert Downey Jr., which is like going up against LeBron in basketball. At one point he stopped and said, 'Can we give a round of applause to Olivia, because she's rocking it right now.'

When you go into a game on offense, you make a couple moves and see what the defender is going to do. Then you pretty much can figure out what he is going to do against you - whether he carries his hands low or high, whether he is bumping or pushing, those type of things.

Five guys on the court working together can achieve more than five talented individuals who come and go as individuals.

There can only be one state of mind as you approach any profound test; total concentration, a spirit of togetherness, and strength.

I would love to have a conversation with you when we're working, and if I'm at a basketball game, I'll probably talk to everyone there. That's different. But on the outside world, if I don't know you and you don't know me, I probably cannot sit there and have a conversation.

To see a player dunk in women's college basketball is just amazing. It's great to see that the game has reached that level now

That's what I do now: I lead and I teach. If we win basketball games from doing that, then that's great, but I lead and teach. Those are the two things I concentrate on.

I'll do whatever it takes to win games, whether it's sitting on a bench waving a towel, handing a cup of water to a teammate, or hitting the game-winning shot.

There is no answer to the Pythagorean theorem. Well, there is an answer, but by the time you figure it out, I got 40 points, 10 rebounds and then we're planning for the parade.

I always try to keep a pretty conservative demeanor on the court.

As far as playing, I didn't care who guarded me - red, yellow, black. I just didn't want a white guy guarding me, because it's disrespect to my game.

Basketball is always a piece of my life, but never the centerpiece.

As you get older, stuff starts to wear down. I can't play four basketball games a week anymore. It takes me three days to recover from one. I'm a little older, a little scrappier. So now I do yoga instead. And whatever else happens in the day, I'm set up in the best way possible. I feel great. I'm so flexible.

It's not to hurt anyone, but basketball can be rough.

Everybody is improving but I am improving slowly, which seemingly widens our distance.

We're all fascinated by the numbers, as we were about the 100 points.

I just got one last thing, I urge all of you, all of you, to enjoy your life, the precious moments you have. To spend each day with some laughter and some thought, to get you're emotions going.

Sometimes, things may not go your way, but the effort should be there every single night.

These are my new shoes. They're good shoes. They won't make you rich like me, they won't make you rebound like me, they definitely won't make you handsome like me. They'll only make you have shoes like me. That's it.

You can love me or you can hate me.

Race wasn't an issue. My family was French, but Yorkville was a melting pot of races and cultures.

You don't play against opponents, you play against the game of basketball.

I always dreamt of being a basketball player. A dream that only I believed in.

I don't want to just go to the playoffs, I don't want to go to the playoffs and win the first round, second round, and not win the whole thing because it's bittersweet.

You have to be able to accept failure to get better.

I've got to play free agency out, and I've got to look at all of my options.

You have to be wired a certain way to be a professional basketball player, and the way my body grew, something happened genetically that allowed me to become a lot more explosive.

Winners do what losers don't want to do.

Yoga's hard for me, but I know you can really feel the difference when you do it consistently. I'd rather be playing basketball.

I love fashion as much as I love basketball! It is a great joy for me to express myself through designing my own collection.

When I step on that basketball court, I'm thinking about basketball, I'm thinking about winning - but there's so much that goes into thought about how I'm going to open this game up to others. It's so much more than just basketball.

You see what happens in college and high school games today - a three-point shot or a dunk. I think that's the reason that you see a lot of that in the pros today.

I saw Islam as the correct way to live, and I chose to try to live that way.

I am a businessman. This is what I do each and every day. I love it. I love coming to work. I never have a bad day.

In high school, in sport, I had a coach who told me I was much better than I thought I was, and would make me do more in a positive sense. He was the first person who taught me not to be afraid of failure.

I have a certain taste, and I might be like, 'I like this,' when other people are like, 'I can't wear that.' And in basketball, I might be able to do things other guys might not.

I couldn't have come close without my teammates' help because the Knicks didn't want me to make 100.

How do you go from where you are to where you wanna be? And I think you have to have an enthusiasm for life. You have to have a dream, a goal. And you have to be willing to work for it.

Somebody hits me, I'm going to hit him back. Even if it does look like he hasn't eaten in a while.

After spending more than 17 years playing for the NBA, in the summertime, I always came back to community service and different basketball clinics.

I couldn't care less if the guy I'm guarding has HIV. I'm going to slam him anyway.

I always mean what I say, but I don't always say what I'm thinking.

I played team sport as a kid and loved it. I played basketball and football throughout high school into college in the intramurals and I loved it. There was nothing like a team.

The NBA wasn't a big deal at that time, so it wasn't really in my career plans.

My first motion capture game was with Sony - 'NBA: The Life.' It was very ahead of its time. Brandon Akiaten, he was the writer and director. He had a real vision of what this game was meant to be; it was a basketball game where I was the Jerry Maguire sports agent type guy. And it was great!

When I was growing up, skateboarding was big and basketball was big.

I've always thought if it's not broke, why fix it?

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.

I wanted to be a football player. Football is a sport that I love, but the more I started playing basketball, the more I started dreaming of playing in the NBA.

The weird thing about rap is that you don't get compared in the same way that athletes do, even though it's probably the most competitive sport in music. In basketball, they look at a player and say: 'This guy was the best in his prime at this sport.' But in rap it's not until you're dead or retired that people think about it like that.

Life is about growth. People are not perfect when they're 21 years old.

I don't feel like basketball is the only way to make a living.

Michael was a rare breed. There's no question about that. He did things that a lot of players could never do, and still to this day players can't do those things, so the honors that he's had are definitely deserved.

There are many really good teams in our conference this season. Miami, Indiana and Detroit will be our fiercest opponents this year. But we just have to focus on our game and be patient with the realistic hope that we'll be on top after all is said and done.

Basketball is in my blood. It is my obligation to try.

When you play against different people from all walks of life you can't do the same thing against every player defensively or offensively. You have to change up the way you go at a player.

I think that the good and the great are only separated by the willingness to sacrifice.

All kids need is a little help, a little hope and somebody who believes in them.

It was okay for Wayne Gretzky's dad, for instance, to give him a hockey stick, or Joe Montana's dad to give him a football, or Larry Bird's dad to give him a basketball, but it wasn't okay for Gloria Connors to give her son a tennis racquet.

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.

For all my friends in the media who like quotes, mark this quote down. From this day on I'd like to be known as 'The Big Aristotle' because Aristotle once said, 'Excellence is not a singular act; it's a habit. You are what you repeatedly do.'

When it gets down to it, basketball is basketball.

The playoffs are the playoffs. You just play who is put in front of you.

It was a challenge to my teammates to help me.

I will thank God for the day and the moment I have.

We can have no progress without change, whether it be basketball or anything else.

I'm hungrier than those other guys out there. Every rebound is a personal challenge.

I enjoy basketball. I enjoy coaching basketball. It's the out-of-season stuff I didn't handle well.

If human beings are perceived as potentials rather than problems, as possessing strengths instead of weaknesses, as unlimited rather that dull and unresponsive, then they thrive and grow to their capabilities.

There were riots in just about every game we played with Syracuse.