Top 73 Quotes & Sayings by Pat Riley

Explore popular quotes and sayings by an American coach Pat Riley.
Last updated on November 21, 2024.
Pat Riley

Patrick James Riley is an American professional basketball executive and a former coach and player in the National Basketball Association (NBA). He has been the team president of the Miami Heat since 1995, and he also served as the team's head coach from 1995 to 2003 and again from 2005 to 2008. Regarded as one of the greatest NBA coaches of all time, Riley has won five NBA championships as a head coach, four with the Los Angeles Lakers during their Showtime era in the 1980s and one with the Heat in 2006. Riley is a nine-time NBA champion across his tenures as a player (1972), assistant coach (1980), head coach, and executive.

Management must speak with one voice. When it doesn't management itself becomes a peripheral opponent to the team's mission.
Don't let other people tell you what you want.
You can never have enough talent. — © Pat Riley
You can never have enough talent.
Great effort springs naturally from great attitude.
Being a part of success is more important than being personally indispensable.
Discipline is not a nasty word.
You have to defeat a great players aura more than his game.
People who create 20% of the results will begin believing they deserve 80% of the rewards.
There can only be one state of mind as you approach any profound test; total concentration, a spirit of togetherness, and strength.
Being ready isn't enough; you have to be prepared for a promotion or any other significant change.
A particular shot or way of moving the ball can be a player's personal signature, but efficiency of performance is what wins the game for the team.
There's no such thing as coulda, shoulda, or woulda. If you shoulda and coulda, you woulda done it.
To have long term success as a coach or in any position of leadership, you have to be obsessed in some way. — © Pat Riley
To have long term success as a coach or in any position of leadership, you have to be obsessed in some way.
Giving yourself permission to lose guarantees a loss.
The Ten Commandments were not a suggestion.
Whatever it takes to win.
You have no choices about how you lose, but you do have a choice about how you come back and prepare to win again.
When a great team loses through complacency, it will constantly search for new and more intricate explanations to explain away defeat.
There's always the motivation of wanting to win. Everybody has that. But a champion needs, in his attitude, a motivation above and beyond winning.
If you have a positive attitude and constantly strive to give your best effort, eventually you will overcome your immediate problems and find you are ready for greater challenges.
All I did from day-to-day is coach. That's what my job was, that's what my passion was, and the fact that now it's something I'm being considered for is just mind-blowing to me, that I would ever be in that kind of company.
Each Warrior wants to leave the mark of his will, his signature, on important acts he touches. This is not the voice of ego but of the human spirit, rising up and declaring that it has something to contribute to the solution of the hardest problems, no matter how vexing!
Look for your choices, pick the best one, then go with it.
Excellence is the gradual result of always striving to do better.
Public life is regarded as the crown of a career, and to young men it is the worthiest ambition. Politics is still the greatest and the most honorable adventure.
A champion needs a motivation above and beyond winning.
When you're playing against a stacked deck, compete even harder.
When you're playing against a stacked deck, compete even harder. Show the world how much you'll fight for the winners circle. If you do, someday the cellophane will crackle off a fresh pack, one that belongs to you, and the cards will be stacked in your favor.
When a gifted team dedicates itself to unselfish trust and combines instinct with boldness and effort, its ready to climb.
When you leave it to chance, then all of a sudden you don't have any more luck.
I've learned to keep things simple. Look at your choices, pick the best one, then go to work with all your heart.
We measure areas of performance that are often ignored: jumping in pursuit of every rebound even if you don't get it, swatting at every pass, diving for loose balls, letting someone smash into you in order to draw the foul. These 'effort' statistics are also stored on computer. Effort is what ultimately separates journeyman players from impact players. Knowing how well a player executes all these little things is the key to unlocking career-best performances.
Commitment to the team - there is no such thing as in-between, you are either in our out.
We sometimes need adversity to fathom our true depths.
No rebounds, no rings.
Complacency is the last hurdle standing between any team and its potential greatness.
Anytime you stop striving to get better, you're bound to get worse.
In every contest, there comes a moment that separates winning from losing. The true warrior understands and seizes that moment. — © Pat Riley
In every contest, there comes a moment that separates winning from losing. The true warrior understands and seizes that moment.
The key to success is to learn to do something right and then do it right every time.
Any team can be a miracle team. The catch is that you have got to go out and work for your miracles. Effort is what ultimately separates great teams from ordinary teams.
If you get tough mentally, you can get tough physically and overcome fatigue.
Teamwork requires that everyone's efforts flow in a single direction. Feelings of significance happen when a team's energy takes on a life of its own.
Great players crave instruction on their weaknesses.
The true warrior understands and seizes that moment by giving an effort so intense and so intuitive that it could only be called one from the heart.
Excellence happens when you try each day to both do and be, a little better than you were yesterday!
The most DIFFICULT thing for individuals to do when they become part of a team is to sacrifice, it is much EASIER to be selfish.
The changes in your life aren't always what you hoped for. But they usually help you grow.
In every adversity, there is a seed of equivalent benefit. — © Pat Riley
In every adversity, there is a seed of equivalent benefit.
From nobody to upstart. From upstart to contender. From contender to winner. From winner to champion. From champion to Dynasty.
Am I a control freak? No. Do I believe in organization? You bet. In discipline? In being on time and making sure everything at the hotel is ready and right? Definitely. I don't control players. I try to control the environment around the players so they can flourish.
You can only receive what you're willing to give.
Great teamwork is the only way we create the breakthroughs that define our careers.
There are only two options regarding commitment; you’re either in or you’re out.
Never be ready to play yesterday. Being ready to play today is what's important
Your either in or out. There's no in between.
Great players and great teams want to be driven. They want to be pushed to the edge. They don't want to be cheated. Ordinary players and average teams want it to be easy
It's what you get from games you lose that is extremely important.
All of us have at least one great voice deep inside. People are products of their environment. A lucky few are born into situations in which positive messages abound. Others grow up hearing messages of fear and failure, which they must block out so the positive can be heard. But the positive and courageous voice will always emerge, somewhere, sometime, for all of us. Listen for it, and your breakthroughs will come.
Shoulda, coulda, and woulda won't get it done. In attacking adversity, only a positive attitude, alertness, and regrouping to basics can launch a comeback.
The key to teamwork is to learn a role, accept a role, and strive to become excellent playing it.
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