If I had to pick the greatest team player in baseball today-and I have some of the greats on my own club-I would have to pick Pie Traynor.
I'm a team player. I've, you know, played team sports my whole life, at least as a kid. And I believe that you have to subordinate yourself to the greater good of the team.
My favorite football team is the Bears because my favorite player is on there, Devin Hester. I love the whole team, though. But that's just my favorite player.
I think winning a championship, for me, it put things in perspective. You can either be a great player on a so-so team, or you can be a role player on a championship team, or, in an extreme case, a great player on a championship team.
I pick first my best team, and my captain from that team and I only pick players that are on form.
I've been the best player on every team that I played on, so if I can't be the poster child of your team, then what else is it? It's got to be a black-white issue. Every white player I know who's the best player on their team is the poster child of that team.
If you continue to keep low performers on your team, that are actually dragging the team down; you're failing the whole team, and eventually, the whole team is going to fail.
I think the only thing that matters is you win as a team and you lose as a team. And so the team needs to understand that no one player is bigger than any other player. Everybody has a role... Every single role is important.
Of course team spirit and team's strategy matters more than anything else as far as the team is concerned. As far as I am concerned, if the presence of one player is affecting the morale or the spirit of the team, then we might as well rest that player for a while.
I want people to say that an African basketball player is the best player in the whole world.
If a team cannot perform with excellence at a moment's notice, they probably will fail in the long run.
Only in baseball can a team player be a pure individualist first and a team player second, within the rules and spirit of the game.
The whole point of team competition is to pick your teammates up.
You need experience around you when you are a young player. You need to know how to run a team, to lead a team and to play as a team which means, your team has leaders but you still function as a team.
We need the whole squad, every player of the team, if we are to be successful.
A winning player is nothing more than a player on a winning team. A losing player is a guy who played on a losing team that year.