“Champions play as they practice. Create a consistency of excellence in all your habits.” — Mike Krzyzewski

“If you are afraid of failure you don’t deserve to be successful!” – Charles Barkley

“What do you do with a mistake: recognize it, admit it, learn from it, forget it.” – Dean Smith

“The one thing I learned about myself going back and watching tapes of all the losses that we’ve had is that I’m physically capable of doing this and dominating the game, but the mental part was not there. I don’t know if it comes with age, but I had to learn to be mentally tough.” – Lisa Leslie

“You have to be able to center yourself, to let all of your emotions go… Don′t ever forget that you play with your soul as well as your body.” – Kareem Abdul-Jabber

“I’ve failed over & over & over again in my life & that is why I succeed.” – Michael Jordan

“With pain, there’s growth … We’ve been through a lot of pain this year, but there’s also been a lot of growth.” – Charlotte Smith

“If all I′m remembered for is being a good basketball player, then I′ve done a bad job with the rest of my life.” – Isiah Thomas

“We lost, and that’s the main thing that went wrong,” – Mike Krzyzewski

“Be led by your dreams not by your problems.” – Roy Williams

“Mental toughness is to physical as four is to one.” – Legendary Indiana Basketball Coach

“Success does not just happen. You have to work at it and set long-term and short-term goals.” – David Thompson

“Things turn out best for the people who make the best of the way things turn out.” – John Wooden

“So, yeah, I’m going to try to win the national championship next year. But I’m not going to kill myself doing it. I’m not going to kill my players either. You really start to realize there’s a lot more to what we’re trying to do then winning games” – Geno Auriemma

“You don’t play against opponents, you play against the game of basketball.”—Bobby Knight

“They say that nobody is perfect. Then they tell you practice makes perfect. I wish they’d make up their minds.”—Wilt Chamberlain

“Any American boy can be a basketball star if he grows up, up, up.”—Bill Vaughn

“If I weren’t earning $3 million a year to dunk a basketball, most people on the street would run in the other direction if they saw me coming.”—Charles Barkley

“If you make every game a life and death proposition, you’re going to have problems. For one thing, you’ll be dead a lot.”—Dean Smith [Read more…]