A Quote by David Maraniss
The young Obama's lack of playing time on the high school basketball team was due more to his ability than the coach's preference for white players.
Quote Topics
Quote Author
Related Quotes
I hear that players tend to burn out of basketball, but I absolutely never had that experience myself. There were many times in my life where I got cut from a team I wanted to make, or didn't get playing time in high school, and even into college. But setbacks always inspired me to work harder, spend more time in the gym, play more, learn more, and watch more basketball.
I wasn't really that interested in playing. I had gone through some hard times not playing in high school, but my coach had it in his mind that basketball was the way I would get an education.
In high school I was on the basketball team, but the coach did something I didn't dig and the next day he looked up and saw me practising with the football team.
In his sophomore year Wilbanks tried out for the high school basketball team and made it. On the first day of practice his coach had him play one-on-one while the team observed. When he missed an easy shot, he became angry and stomped and whined. The coach walked over to him and said, "You pull a stunt like that again and you'll never play for my team." For the next three years he never lost control again. Years later, as he reflected back on this incident, he realized that the coach had taught him a life-changing principle that day: anger can be controlled.
In Germany, young players are given more time, more patience. In England, they prefer to buy already-high-level players rather than spending some time building up a really talented young guy.
The three greatest people in my life as a young person were white, my high school superintendent, my high school coach and a - I graduate in Manhasset High, Kenneth Molloy who's a mentor to yours truly.I'm not a person that really deal in color.
I coach a high school wrestling team and a middle school team. I consider myself a coach and an activist, so I'm really involved in the community.
My whole family likes to play basketball. George II plays for his high school team and George III and George IV and George V are going to be good players. One day we're going to have a team and call it Georgetown.
Change does not mean you will win with a new coach and achieve victories, but rather it causes instability in the team as the new coach needs some time for the players to adapt his new plans, which are always different than the previous coach.
Other than my parents, no one had a bigger influence on my life than Coach Smith. He was more than a coach – he was my mentor, my teacher, my second father. Coach was always there for me whenever I needed him and I loved him for it. In teaching me the game of basketball, he taught me about life. My heart goes out to Linnea and their kids. We've lost a great man who had an incredible impact on his players, his staff and the entire UNC family.
Coach isn't the one playing. The players do that. The coach can only help with planning so if the team loses, I don't think the coach is not as accountable as we hold him as a nation.
I couldn't make it on the swimming team in high school. In fact, I got thrown off the swimming team and was forced to audition for the school play because they had at the audition about 35 girls show up and no boys, so my swimming coach suggested that I might be able to do the drama department more good than I was doing the swimming team.
Play more than one sport in high school. If you play, say, football and basketball, you can learn to be physical and you can take those physical aspects of both sports and become better in both sports. Basketball players use some of the same skills football players do and vice versa.
I've had the privilege of coaching the best basketball team in the history of the world, and that's the USA national team. I've had a chance to coach them for eight years. If you were to ask me if I could end my career only coaching one team for the rest of my coaching career, I don't think it could get better than that, especially with the players that I've had during those eight years. When you've coached at that level, you know, you've coached those players, it's pretty hard to say, I would rather coach anybody else.
After Michael Jordan recently criticized President Obama's golf game, Obama responded by saying that Jordan should spend more time thinking about his basketball team, the Charlotte Hornets. Then Jordan said, 'Do you really want to talk about whose team got crushed this week?'
William McKinley Oswald was my high school football coach. He was a great coach and had a profound influence on my life. But I think he could have learned his method of motivating players from an army drill sergeant.
Related Authors
Ambrose Bierce Quotes
American
Journalist
Andy Rooney Quotes
American
Journalist
Ann Coulter Quotes
American
Journalist
Anna Quindlen Quotes
American
Journalist
Bill Vaughan Quotes
American
Journalist
Dave Barry Quotes
American
Journalist
Dennis Prager Quotes
American
Journalist
Erma Bombeck Quotes
American
Journalist
Fran Lebowitz Quotes
American
Journalist
George Will Quotes
American
Journalist
Glenn Beck Quotes
American
Journalist
Hunter S. Thompson Quotes
American
Journalist
Mignon McLaughlin Quotes
American
Journalist
Molly Ivins Quotes
American
Journalist
Rachel Maddow Quotes
American
Journalist
Walter Lippmann Quotes
American
Journalist