Top 92 Quotes & Sayings by Don Meyer

The worst day coaching is better than the best day doing anything else

It doesn't cost nothing to be nice to people

If you are a good team, your offense is born on the defensive end.

It is not what you teach, but what you emphasize.

To be a team, you must be a family.

Recognize and reward players who put the team first, not just the gifted ones.

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.

The only thing success should do is make you more humble.

Good shooters take the shots; best shooters take most of the shots.

I tell everyone that I have 25,000 assistant coaches. If I want to know something, I just go to the grocery store.'

When the legs go, the heart and the head follow quickly behind.

Be what ya is, 'cause if ya be what you ain't, ya ain't what ya is.

Plays are not as important as players, and players are not as important as teammates

We always need to be prepared and work hard in practice so we can be just like the farmer who has put that fourth cutting of hay in the barn. After he does that, he can feel good about what is going to happen the rest of the winter.

Habits are critical for players. They cannot think and play well at the same time.

Your program must have an overriding purpose which is clearly visible and which teaches lessons beyond winning.

If you want to thank me, go do something for somebody else

If you have to 'try hard' to 'try hard, you are already beaten.

You never realize the value of coaching until your children play for a coach

I have learned that peace is not the absence of trial, trouble, or torment but the presence of calm in the midst of them

Simplify the game as much as possible. When you add, you must subtract.

Shared suffering makes a team a team.

There's only one thing we can control, and that is how hard we play.

Positioning, anticipation and technique create quickness. Therefore, you can always get quicker

To win it all, winners have to be obsessive about the fundamentals and doing the little things right.

Complacency is the forerunner of mediocrity. You can never work too hard on attitudes, effort and technique.

What you accept in victory, you must accept in defeat.

Defense involves three things: courage, energy, intelligence.

It is foolish to expect a young man to follow your advice and to ignore your example.

It doesn't matter where you coach, it matters why you coach.

There is nothing more important than rebounding... don't just give it lip service.

If a farmer and his family can get up at 5:30 every morning to milk cows, surly we can get up at that time to practice basketball.

In practice, don't just run basketball drills, teach the players how to play basketball.

To those who much has been given, much is expected.

When I go in for heart surgery, I want a full-time surgeon. I don't want some guy who just does it part-time between rounds of golf. You want a guy who is doing it all the time and is always reading and learning about the most recent techniques.

We had 10 turnovers tonight. Each one gets worse as you go. It is like prior arrests: the 10th one may not have been that bad, but when you have had nine prior ones, it looks pretty bad.

Shared suffering: one guy messes up and everyone runs. One guy does well and everyone benefits.

Players must do what you want them to do in pressure situations.

Discipline and demand without being demeaning.

Administrators are like pigs; don't wrestle with a pig because you both get dirty and the pig likes it.

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

The key to success is to do the next right thing right.

You have to clean out the pig barn every week because you know your pigs are in there doing their jobs every day.

Discover your gift, develop your gift and then give it away every day.

If you can do something and not blow your own horn, it sure sounds a lot better.

When you watch the game, be a student of the game.

Have character, don't be one.

Winning a postseason game is like winning five regular season games. There is just no feeling like it. Everything is magnified. Every free throw, turnover, shot and play.

The team is an extension of the coach.

Players who are late say that their time is more important than the team.

When you get to be my age, you don't buy green bananas because you may not be around to eat them.

Sometimes the best recruits are the ones you don't get.

You can pick captains, but you can't pick leaders. Whoever controls the locker room controls the team

In the end, what your own troops do is more important than who they are marching against.

Only run special plays for special players; find plays that fit your players.

Successful programs consist of people working hard, working together, while never worrying about who gets the credit.

Tough minded enough to do the necessary things--this is the epitome of what a team is.

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.

Coach like the coach you want to be ten years from now.

Every day you teach attitude.