Top 153 Quotes & Sayings by Bobby Knight - Page 2

Offense is not equal opportunity

Everybody hears, but few listen.

Offense at Indiana is not equal opportunity. Those players who shoot best are going to shoot most. It is important that every player know his offensive limitations. It is also important that a player know who the best shooter is on the team. When a passer has the option of passing to two players, I expect him to get the ball to the best shooter. I continually stop practice and ask players who the best shooter is and I expect them to know. It is important that you get the ball to your best shooter.

When we're playing a good scoring center, we tell our team that it is not our defensive man's job to stop the center. It's the responsibility of our perimeter people to stop the ball from going inside.

BS is just what it stands for, an MS is More of the Same, and a PhD is Piled Higher and Deeper.

It has always been my thought that the most important single ingredient to success in athletics or life is discipline. I have many times felt that this word is the most ill-defined in all of our language. My definition isas follows: 1. Do what has to be done; 2. When it has to be done; 3. As well as it can be done; and 4. Do it it that way all the time.

A coach should never be afraid to ask questions of anyone he could learn from.

Don't fight the rabbits. If you fight the rabbits, the elephants are going to kill you.

I think that to stop an offense, you must go to the heart of that offense. If it is a particular move, a screen, the break, an outstanding scorer, whatever it is that they like to do and rely on, you have to work in your plans on taking that completely or as much as possible away from them.

I sit and wonder why no one uses the shot fake. The shot fake, when used correctly, can eliminate a defender

The red I wear is Indiana's red, not Moscow's red. Indiana was here long before communism.

Positive wish: 'The sun will come out tomorrow.' Negative reality: 'Yeah, and it will flash brand-new daylight on the same old mess unless something is done to clean it up.

If you're not careful, you can get a grossly over-inflated opinion about your popularity.

What is the best thing you can do in a close game? Drive to the basket and put pressure on the defense! Not jack up jump shots

I also believe that when something negative comes out about you in the media, that's only one person's opinion. These guys sometimes believe they've been ordained from on high to give the general opinion of the populace, and that just isn't the case.

Learn to do things right and then do them right every time.

The goal is to make practice more difficult, physically/mentally, than anything your players will face during a game.

I think the ability to motivate might be interpreted as the ability to lead, or to show people their goals or, perhaps more important, what their potential is - as a person as well as a player. You've got to show players that being part of a team will carry over to the experience of becoming part of society.

A great way to test the conditioning of your team is the two-mile run.

The biggest difficulty in getting to the top of the ladder is getting through the crowd at the bottom.

Practice structure determines success.

You can't imagine the number of people in professional sports who have come up to me and said, "God, you treat those assholes like I'd like to treat them." And my question is, "Then why don't you?".

Do what needs to be done, when it needs to be done the best way it can be done, and do it that way every time.

If the NBA were on channel 5 and a bunch of frogs making love were on channel 4, I'd watch the frogs, even if they were coming in fuzzy.

I've never felt my job was to win basketball games - rather, that the essence of my job as a coach was to do everything I could to give my players the background necessary to succeed in life.

When my time on earth is done and my activities here are past, I want them to bury me upside down, so my critics can kiss my ass.

Good planning avoids the need for fixing up a project that plowed ahead without thought... about potential pitfalls.

I've always had an a$$-to-the-brain theory. When a player's a$$ gets put on the bench, a message goes straight to the brain saying, Get me off of here.

I don't believe in luck, I believe in preparation.

If universities want to save a little money, they ought to make some cutbacks in administration and in faculty people who teach one class a week.

To be as good as it can be, a team has to buy into what you as the coach are doing. They have to feel you're a part of them and they're a part of you.

Passing is your best weapon against man to man. Dribble penetration is your best weapon against zone.

Al McGuire talked to me I don't know how many times about dealing with the press: "You've got to be a con man." I tried that for a day or so, but it never really worked for me.

We talk in coaching about "winners" - kids, and I've had a lot of them, who just will not allow themselves or their team to lose. Coaches call that a will to win. I don't. I think that puts the emphasis in the wrong place. Everybody has a will to win. What's far more important is having the will to prepare to win.

You play ball against yourself; your opponent is your potential.

You are never going to be driven anywhere worthwhile, but you sure as hell drive yourself to a lot of great places. It is up to you to drive yourself there.

Perform drills that force your players to think

The single most important aspect of coaching is running effective practices

Victory favors the team making the fewest mistakes.

Superiority and success doesn't favor good effort or self-esteem... The mentally precise and physically fit win, while the mediocre and obtuse take solace in hopeful cliches.

I, fortunately, have never worried about irritating people.

Son, my name isn't Knight to you, it's coach Knight or it's Mr. Knight. I don't call people by their last name and neither should you.

I'd probably be better off without trying to satisfy me, with my sense of humor. There are things that I have said that are funny to me, but they weren't to somebody in the press. So that hasn't worked to my benefit.

In order to achieve to achieve positive results, one must work for them, not hope for them

Everybody wants to be on a championship team, but nobody wants to come to practice.

It is better to anticipate than to react.

Players must be able to carry out simple instructions from the bench to the court. If they can't, then they can't play

A quick way for any player to make himself better is to think about what he himself doesn't like to play against

I just love the game of basketball so much. The game! I don't need the 18,000 people screaming and all the peripheral things. To me, the most enjoyable part is the practice and preparation.

We should not have to push you to work hard, you should work hard because you want to be a great player.

Everyone wants to win, but not everyone is willing to prepare to win.

I recognize that I have a problem with my temper. For those times it has ever caused me to do anything that gave anyone understandable and justifiable reason to be upset, I am sincerely sorry.

Your biggest opponent isn't the other guy. It's human nature.

Defense is all about helping. No one can guard a good dribbler, You have to walk kids through how to help and then how to help the helper

I would rather be thought of as a teacher than a coach.

Discipline is knowing what to do. Knowing when to do it. Doing it to the best of your abilities. Doing it that way every single time.

Failure, to me, is not having the desire to try. Having the desire to try is in it own way success.

There are times when my passion for basketball led me into confrontations that I could have handled a lot better. I've always been too confrontational, especially when I know I'm right.

So when I hear a guy after a game-winning home run say or gesture that God was on his side, I think to myself, 'He's saying God screwed the pitcher.

In my dealings with the press, I was like the guy who goes into the cathouse and the madam gets him prepared and looks at him and says, "Who are you going to satisfy with that?" And he looks back at her and says, "Me." That's kind of my sense of humor at times.