Mike Krzyzewski Quotes

Why do you play a game? I play a game to see how good we can be.

Each group and each youngster is different. As a leader or coach, you get to know what they need.

Two are better than one if two act as one.

Don't worry about losing. Think about winning.

With accomplishments comes confidence and with confidence comes belief. It has to be in that order.

When you first assemble a group, it's not a team right off the bat. It's only a collection of individuals

Courage and confidence are what decision making is all about.

I hated to lose.

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.

When I had troubles, I'd go out with basketball - you can do it by yourself, too. So you'd go out and shoot, and you'd fantasize.

It's always an honor to be ranked high, but whatever is said about you, you take it and then take a realistic look at yourself and who you are.

I think leadership is never singular. In a good organization, it's plural.

Discipline is doing what you are supposed to do in the best possible manner at the time you are supposed to do it.

Believe that the loose ball that you are chasing has your name wirtten on it.

Leaders have to search for the heart on a team, because the person who has it can bring out the best in everybody else.

A leader is someone who puts their people in position to be successful all the time

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

I'm looking for players who make their teammates better. You do that with enthusiasm and passion.

Footwork is one of the primary prerequisites to becoming a great player

You can see and you can listen, but you have to have moments in which you feel.

I believe a big part of leadership is about winning the moment.

You can't play any defense if the other team is on the foul line.

Almost everything in leadership comes back to relationships.

Don't let a single game break your heart.

Throughout the season, I look into my players eyes to gauge feelings, confidence levels, and to establish instant trust.

Players' attention spans get less and less as they progress.

You should do things because of what your expectations are of yourself.

Champions play as they practice. Create a consistency of excellence in all your habits.

Imagination has a great deal to do with winning.

The team that trusts-their leader and each other-is more likely to be successful.

If you have talent with teamwork, you've got a chance to be a championship team.

The only way you're going to grow is to be in difficult situations.

It is the ultimate honor for a coach to be his country's coach.

Goals should be realistic, attainable, and shared among all members of the team

Always get back to your core principles.

Turning down the Lakers was tough, but it is always good to renew your vows to the loves of your life.

I love practice. It is when a coach exercises the most control over the improvement of his or her team.

Good sound habits are more important than rules - use concepts.

Leadership is simple: Add value to people everyday.

You can't defer if you're the person who's in the leadership position.

A leader's responsibility to his team is paramount. It overshadows even his own personal feelings at any given time.

It takes courage not only to make decisions, but to live with those decisions afterward

You cannot merely expect culture to be a natural occurrence; it has to be taught and made a part of your everyday routine.

You don't just be a team. You become a team. Through tough games you find that you need each other

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

Never let a person's weakness get in the way of their strength.

There are always those times when you're going to be down. It's how you step through it that makes you the person you are.

Our goal is not to win. It's to play together and play hard. Then, winning takes care of itself.

I had a really bad temper, when I was growing up. Sport helped me channel that temper into more positive acts.

I have a plan of action, but the game is a game of adjustments.

Making shots counts, but not as much as the people who make them.

My ambition in high school was to be a high school coach and teacher, and that's still what I do: teach.

Everybody wants to take responsibility when you win, but when you fail, all these fingers are pointing.

As a leader you can get sidetracked but you have to complete your mission

I don't think we surprise people. We try to out-execute them.

Sometimes it's not bad to hurt. Sometimes you don't want things until you get hurt. We got hurt today, let's see what we do.

Parents can really help, but they can also really hinder the development of their youngsters.

When you cleanse yourself of a big victory, you may open yourself up to the opportunity for an even bigger victory

Basketball was not my main sport in grade school, or even the first year of high school.

Confidence shared is better than confidence only in yourself.

Leaders should be reliable without being predictable. They should be consistent without being anticipated

To me, teamwork is the beauty of our sport, where you have five acting as one. You become selfless.

In developing teams, I don't believe in rules. I believe in standards. Rules don't promote teamwork, standards do

Pete Newell told me 'get as much information and learn as much about the game as you can, but use your own personality to teach it.'

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

My mom gave me unconditional support and unfailing love. You can't get any better than that. That's why I've never been afraid to lose.

Fun is to experience things you would not have been able to experience in any other setting.

You develop a team to achieve what one person cannot accomplish alone. All of us alone are weaker, by far, than if all of us are together.

A leader has to show the face his team needs to see.

Friendships, along with love, make life worth living.

If the only reason I coached was to win basketball games, my life would be pretty shallow

Leaders show respect for people by giving them time.

A team is a fist-not five fingers.

Don't do anything as an individual that will make you stand out from your teammates.

Defense is one man guarding the ball and four others helping him

It's simply doing what you're supposed to do as well as you can when you're supposed to do it.

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

Encourage members of your team to take the initiative and act on their own.

Courage gives a leader the ability to stand straight and not sway, no matter which way the wind blows.

The worst thing we can do is put the (other) team in a one-and-one.

Play and practice like you are trying to make the team.

We travel in Duke stuff ... They can have a hat, but it must be a Duke hat.

If a team cannot perform with excellence at a moment's notice, they probably will fail in the long run.

We lost, and that's the main thing that went wrong,

Great rivalries don't have to be built on hatred. They're built on respect, on a respect for excellence.

Whatever a leader does now sets up what he does later. And there's always a later.

Never delegate. Always empower.

I don't look at myself as a basketball coach. I look at myself as a leader who happens to coach basketball.

Leadership is an ever-evolving position.

Are you going to show integrity only when someone is watching you - or are you going to show it all the time?

Every season is a journey. Every journey is a lifetime.

The person who has inspired me my whole life is my Mom, because she taught me commitment. She sacrificed.

I always wanted to teach.

It's funny what happens when you become a grandparent. You start to act all goofy and do things you never thought you'd do. It's terrific.

A leader has to be positive about all things that happen to his team. Look at nothing in the past as failure.

When you win, sometimes it overshadows a poor performance.

My hunger is not for success, it is for excellence. Because when you attain excellence, success just naturally follows.

I believe work is good. There is dignity in work. I also believe that a hard-work ethic forges strong leaders.

With me and basketball, it became part of me.

The life expectancy of a team is about eight months. Then the next year, it's a whole new team.