A Quote by Mike D'Antoni

You have to play offense and defense without thinking, and react like you know what to do, but if you're thinking of where to be and 1,000 other things you can lose focus. You're trying to play hard, but you're overthinking.
I didn't set out to win Olympic medals, to play at UConn, to play in the WNBA. I just loved to play basketball. It's really very simple. Then when you start thinking about those other things, that's when thinking gets complicated.
Something like missing a shot, and the next play you're thinking about it, or you give up a play on defense and you're thinking about it, you're frustrated about it, what's happening is that you're really thinking about yourself. You're not connected to the team. And you have to be connected, or those few plays add up.
It takes brains. It's not like a forward, where you can get away with scoring and not play defense. On defense you have to be thinking.
As coaches we talk about two things: offense and defense. There is a third phase we neglect, which is more important. It's conversion from offense to defense and defense to offense.
I am not thinking about World Cup and all those things. You can't play freely if you start thinking like that.
I always try to play hard as possible to help my team - it doesn't matter if it's on defense or offense. I would say when I was young I was playing like that, too.
I like to play with people who can play simple and are not threatened by other musicians thinking they can't play. And that eliminates 99 percent of the musicians.
Don't play an attitude; don't play a guy who's negative. Play a guy who's not trying to sell anybody on anything, he's just saying how it is and if you want to come by what he's thinking, you're welcome. If you do not, then do not.
As your captain, I'm going to push you to not fall back on defense, but to play offense, and to play our match -- the Gospel, together.
I don't really know, I was thinking about that the other day that there aren't a lot of younger up and comers that I'm that interested in, in the comedy world. Everyone seems to be trying to play it safe.
We need to play tough defense and have a sound offense. But mostly, we have to outrebound the other team.
The longer you play, the more you realize that you can't lose focus for one play or two plays or an entire drive. Those things are the difference between wins and losses. You have to figure out how to refocus after a bad play or how to stay focused when you're up in a game. Those are things you learn from experience in playing this position. I've learned a ton of ways and have different triggers for how to regain my focus if I've lost it.
What I have found is, so much of that is like a Chinese finger trap: the more you play to the dark, the more you will get trapped in the dark, and if you just play to the light and focus on the people that don't misunderstand you and focus on the audience that does celebrate you and focus on the people who aren't trying to tear you down, all that other stuff eventually erases itself because it has nothing to feed on.
And it was the idea that you can do a play - like a Shakespeare play, or any well-written play, Arthur Miller, whatever - and say things you could never imagine saying, never imagine thinking in your own life.
We got to stop people. We go ahead and we score 100 points every night, but we give up more. Our whole thing was, we know we can score, and we have to start having some kind of fun on the defensive end. Everybody want to play offense. Not too many people want to play defense. Defense is ego, pride, and that's the way we've been coming out, just taking the challenge. Man-on-man first, and having each other's back when a guy gets beat.
You can't learn to play the piano without playing the piano, you can't learn to write without writing, and, in many ways, you can't learn to think without thinking. Writing is thinking. To write well is to think clearly. That's why it's so hard.
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