Mike Krzyzewski Quotes (197 Quotes)

The thing I loved the most - and still love the most about teaching - is that you can connect with an individual or a group, and see that individual or group exceed their limits.

I wondered how they won the game. And there's this little kid who hit six 3s, every time it looked like they were going to get blown out.

He's off the charts with focus. Nobody has had more or has done it better here. Some kids have done it equally. Of all time, this kid's a treasure.

Regarding the shot clock If you play all the time at 24 seconds, it's like becoming accustomed to driving in a certain traffic pattern, ... Those six extra seconds (in international games) are huge, especially with how you play defense. ... You have to develop a team that will play 30 seconds of defense each time.

Throughout my life, my mom has been the person that I've always looked up to.

Jeff is one of the best communicators I've known and he will continue the quality tradition of basketball there by building a program suited for long-term success.

I probably shouldn't say this, but I was not much of a book person. I loved to learn, but I learn by doing. I learn from my experiences.

This injury is a bone bruise. It really has nothing to do with the other injury except that it's in the same foot -- that's the commonality there. You want him to come in as close as possible to 100 percent, and that's what we're trying to do.

I love Collins he's unflappable. For them to win, I think they needed Collins to be who Collins is and one of those other two guys have a good night. Just Collins had that night, and that's one of the reasons that we won.

If you win a National Championship, or you win two, people think you have not only seen the Holy Grail, but you've embraced it. Basically, I do what a lot of people do, but I've been able to win.

I always wanted to teach.

This was a real game. This type of game will make us better. I didn't yell at my team once tonight, not once. It wasn't a lack of effort. It just didn't always work.

He played his heart out. Don't get me wrong. . . .At that time, you've got to find him.

One, I think it showed that the game was really important, but secondly, how that was handled was maybe the best thing that happened today. It was so darn good. This has been the classiest league in the country since its inception.

I think you're not a human being unless you have doubts and fears.

Even though we want huge individual egos, our collective ego is unbelievable.

I didn't miss any games, but coach came out and stayed with me for three days in Chicago. Having a basketball family and a coach who understood and became a father figure for that time period really helped.

I don't know who we are, what our identity is. We're still developing. That's why these games are so important for us. It's not like you can let up because these guys still need to develop.

When I went to high school, an all-boys' school, a Catholic school, I tried out for football, and I didn't make it. It was the first time, athletically, that I was knocked down.

This is going to be a matter of collective responsibility. We will win and lose together and we will put together a team that represents our country the best it can -- on and off the court.

It would be a great honor, more than that, a great responsibility. If that comes about, you have to rethink a bunch of things that you're doing. I'm not ready to rethink that yet.

We went to like a match-up zone to stop their penetration. That's the first time we've played that for that extended amount of time. We played it for about 10 minutes -- that's 10 minutes more than we've played it most seasons.

I think maybe one of the problems is maybe that you need to develop a team, and a team doesn't mean you just have all the best players. I think the international game is different.... You have to build a team that will play in those conditions, not the conditions of an all-star game.

Our team has never made any excuses about injuries and depth or anything like that. They've really shown up to play every game, and I thought that paid off tonight.

Giving back what the game has given you, that's one of the things I want to permeate through the program for the next three years and serve as a basis for the team, ... I hope the players look at it that way, too. You forget how lucky you are to be in a specific situation sometimes. We need to get that feeling going again.

We got in foul trouble and we had to massage those last four minutes of the first half. A lot of times, I'd let them go back in, but with (how) the pace of the game was going today, we couldn't chance starting the second half with either one of those guys in foul trouble.

There are kids don't want to do something because they're afraid of looking stupid to their peers. There comes a time when they start protecting themselves, instead of extending. I want to make sure that they're always trying to extend themselves.

Imagination has a great deal to do with winning.

They looked more like the team they were in early February today.

We've never had this sort of disparity before, ... Certainly we've had experienced veterans and promising freshmen before, but we've usually had middle classes, too. We have basically four scholarship seniors, five scholarship freshmen and only one guy in-between who we recruited.

We were not worthy of our jerseys, our Duke jerseys, in the first half.

I've never seen this here at Duke, where with 13 guys you get one player with 40 points. He's off the charts with his focus and commitment. Nobody has had more or done it better here.

The other thing I knew I had was a high level of competitiveness.

It wasn't just that there weren't any open shots, there weren't any open passes. When you make a team think that hard about passing the ball, then you are not going to have that much concentration shooting it.

He's a kid that can be silent for a while and then explode. I'm just glad there wasn't that much time left because he might have exploded again.

I always won in my imagination. I always hit the game-winning shot, or I hit the free throw. Or if I missed, there was a lane violation, and I was given another one.

I thought we beat a really good basketball team today. For them (Wake Forest) to play this well at this time of the year, during a tough year, shows a lot about their character.

The truth is that many people set rules to keep from making decisions.

I've been waiting four years to needle him about his free throws. What can I say Tomorrow, I'll get him out and have him shoot a thousand of them.

He had a pretty seriously sprained hand and he wasn't able to get the practice in. You have to put up a lot of shots every day to keep the habit. He'll be more apt to do that (tonight).

Our help-side defense was terrific ... Josh had a big physical presence in there and when we're doing that it takes our defense up a level.

If you just focus on J.J., just watch him, you'd be shocked at the maze of things that he usually has to go through to get a shot. When you are doing that, there are times when you can get distracted or get down or get emotional about it, which would take away from your next play. So, one of the key words for J.J. is maturity.

I have a rule on my team: when we talk to one another, we look each other right in the eye, because I think it's tough to lie to somebody. You give respect to somebody.

We've been in the penthouse all season, having room service. Somebody jammed up the elevator today.

I think the people who are involved in this program should embrace it, ... When you look up at the scoreboard, it will say the United States. It will never say an individual name. I can promise you we will put together a team that will serve as an example to the rest of the world of the way the game should be played and the way you conduct yourself.

I actually got him to play for me nine years after he should've been playing for me. Kobe is one of the guys you want to build around.

I thought Greg (Paulus) continued to play like he did Friday. He played like a veteran point guard today. For that stretch in the beginning of the second half, the first six or seven minutes of the half, he made some great plays, which gave us all confidence.

Coach Meyer casts a large shadow on the game of college basketball in a positive light. He truly loved the game and the kids he coached. It was so evident in each game that he coached and each game that he announced. I love him. He served as a great example of what a coach should be.

At the end of the year we had a down time. Now we're energized.

A basketball team is like the five fingers on your hand. If you can get them all together, you have a fist. That's how I want you to play.