Rick Pitino Basketball Quotations

The only way to get people to like working hard is to motivate them. Today, people must understand why they're working hard. Every individual in an organization is motivated by something different.

Excellence is the unlimited ability to improve the quality of what you have to offer.

Basketball has consumed me since the age of 7 or 8. I don't know what I would do without it.

He knew I enjoyed the relationships of college basketball. All along, he was the wise one.

I don't think anyone in Louisville knew how tough the Big East and Villanova was before tonight; now they all know. Villanova was just a better basketball team.

We hang in there with some pretty good basketball teams. (But) there is no substitute for experience. Young teams don't win against good teams.

With seven new players, we're never going to have an experienced lineup. This is who we are. We're a very young and inexperienced basketball team. But they're willing to play hard.

True motivation is not getting people to play to their potential. It's getting people to play beyond their potential

Set higher standards for your own performance than anyone else around you, and your only competition will be with yourself

It's better to have a good player with the basketball in late game situations than to have plays.

Long term success is a direct result of what you achieve everyday. Goals provide your daily routine

Inferior guards play on the sidelines and great guards play in the middle. Isiah, Magic, Chris Paul, all get to the middle

Success is determined by your daily choices and habits

If you are not willing to work hard and establish discipline in your life, then all your dreams are merely pipe dreams.

Failure is good. It's fertilizer. Everything I've learned about coaching I've learned from making mistakes.

The basic premise of my system is to fatigue your opponents with constant pressure defensively and constant movement offensively.

The key to coaching is not what you do, but the way you do it. The intangibles, the motivational parts of the game are the most important facets of it.

At Boston University, I motivated negatively, and I found that although it can work at first, by the end of the year everyone is dying for the year to end and you have lost them. The last two years at BU, I motivated positively and got much better results.

The more you lose, the more positive you have to become. When you're winning, you can ride players harder because their self-esteem is high. If you are losing and you try to be tough, you're asking for dissension.

Self-esteem is directly linked to deserving success. You must deserve victory to feel good about yourself.

When it comes to team dynamics - on a basketball court or in a corporate setting - maintaining a positive atmosphere is crucial.

Those who work the hardest are the last to surrender.

Dreamers are not content with being mediocre.

Learning what not to do is sometimes more important than learning what to do.