Don Meyer Quotes

I tell everyone that I have 25,000 assistant coaches. If I want to know something, I just go to the grocery store.'

We have 2,500 students and an 8,000-seat basketball arena. You do the math on how important basketball is in Aberdeen.

Parents would rather have their son get all-state than his team win the state championship.

If I cover my head with my hands, it means deny the ball to the opponent's ball handler.

Study people who can teach you how to deal with people.

Positioning, anticipation and technique create quickness. Therefore, you can always get quicker

When you get to be my age, you don't buy green bananas because you may not be around to eat them.

Coaching is the vehical we use to reach/ help people.

As a coach, you're just trying to figure out how to keep a team on edge. You've got to find that edge.

The only thing success should do is make you more humble.

Discover your gift, develop your gift and then give it away every day.

Recognize and reward players who put the team first, not just the gifted ones.

Players must do what you want them to do in pressure situations.

Successful programs consist of people working hard, working together, while never worrying about who gets the credit.

I have learned that peace is not the absence of trial, trouble, or torment but the presence of calm in the midst of them

You never realize the value of coaching until your children play for a coach

To those who much has been given, much is expected.

Be what ya is, 'cause if ya be what you ain't, ya ain't what ya is.

When you watch the game, be a student of the game.

Players who are late say that their time is more important than the team.

We sure didn't play great, but we played hard. And I can live with that.

It is foolish to expect a young man to follow your advice and to ignore your example.

Successful basketball coaches are those that subscribe to a system that is based on sound fundamental teachings.

Only run special plays for special players; find plays that fit your players.

Discipline and demand without being demeaning.

The worst day coaching is better than the best day doing anything else

To be a team, you must be a family.

It is not what you teach, but what you emphasize.

Plays are not as important as players, and players are not as important as teammates

In the end, what your own troops do is more important than who they are marching against.

Every day you teach attitude.

If you can do something and not blow your own horn, it sure sounds a lot better.

You can pick captains, but you can't pick leaders. Whoever controls the locker room controls the team

It doesn't matter where you coach, it matters why you coach.

The ability to rebound is in inverse proportion to the distance your house is from the nearest railroad tracks.

We can always do it better.

Let your players know that you love them.

Every coach should be recording games to watch ... use your VCR.

You have to learn to play with what you've got.

Go from good to great because good is the enemy of great.

Quickness more than anything else should determine your amount of pressure on the ball.

If you are a good team, your offense is born on the defensive end.

Your program must have an overriding purpose which is clearly visible and which teaches lessons beyond winning.

Make the practices like games and the games like practices.

Simplify the game as much as possible. When you add, you must subtract.

To win it all, winners have to be obsessive about the fundamentals and doing the little things right.

What you accept in victory, you must accept in defeat.

When the legs go, the heart and the head follow quickly behind.

Put your two best players away from the ball and bring it back to them.

The team is an extension of the coach.

The key to success is to do the next right thing right.

Complacency is the forerunner of mediocrity. You can never work too hard on attitudes, effort and technique.

Play off your great player ... great teams have a go-to player and they play off of him.

Habits are critical for players. They cannot think and play well at the same time.

Coach like the coach you want to be ten years from now.

You aren't going to win championships unless you make layups and free throws.

You build your program from the ideas of great coaches.

Good shooters take the shots; best shooters take most of the shots.

Don't be in a hurry to change during the season.

Can your player make a curl cut and score in the lane? If so, he is the cutter.

If a farmer and his family can get up at 5:30 every morning to milk cows, surly we can get up at that time to practice basketball.

There is a lot of difference at McDonald's between the guy in the back making the fries and the manager up front who is running the place.

If you have to 'try hard' to 'try hard, you are already beaten.

Defense involves three things: courage, energy, intelligence.

Shout praise and whisper criticism.

Tough minded enough to do the necessary things
this is the epitome of what a team is.

We painted a beautiful picture, but we just didn't finish it. Finishing is the difference between a beautiful picture and a masterpiece.

Have character, don't be one.

If it comes down to you or the program that decision was made long ago.

It doesn't cost nothing to be nice to people

Time doesn't fly when you are not happy.

Sometimes the best recruits are the ones you don't get.

Shared suffering makes a team a team.

Ten minutes after you lose that last game, you start working on next season.

You have to clean out the pig barn every week because you know your pigs are in there doing their jobs every day.

There's only one thing we can control, and that is how hard we play.

If you want to thank me, go do something for somebody else

Shared suffering: one guy messes up and everyone runs. One guy does well and everyone benefits.

A coach who is not teaching leads to the worst thing in a program
players not learning.

In practice, don't just run basketball drills, teach the players how to play basketball.