Inspiring Confidence: 30 Basketball Quotes to Elevate Your Game

"Confidence comes from being prepared"

- John Wooden

"Failure doesn't exist"

- Kobe Bryant

"The most important key to achieving great success is to decide upon your goal and launch, get started, take action, move"

- John Wooden

"There is no substitution for hustle, and if you don’t hustle there will be substitution"

- Tex Winter

"Basketball is a beautiful game when the five players on the court play with one heartbeat"

- Dean Smith

"You’ve got to stay ready, especially around here. That’s what we preach, you’ll get your opportunity whether it comes at the beginning or in the middle or in the end whenever it may be. When your time comes, you need to be ready to go because you’re going to earn your minutes"

- Tim Duncan

"The fundamentals of the game are the same wherever you go: pass, dribble, shoot, defend, rebound, screen, play hard and together"

- Terry Stotts

"You need to work as hard to be a great teammate as you do to be a great player"

- Jon Gordon

"Never give up. Failure and rejection are just the first steps to succeeding"

- Jim Valvano

"Champions behave like champions before they are champions"

- Bill Walsh

"Winning is about having the whole team on the same page"

- Bill Walton

"Mental toughness is believing, without a doubt, that whatever happens, you got this"

- Tim Grover

"Players that learn the value of hard work, commitment, teamwork, and sacrifice are the ones that make their teams great"

- Tom Crean

"working hard with purpose is what separates the good from the great"

- Thad Matta

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

- Mike Krzyzewski

"Teamwork is the beauty of our sport, where you have five acting as one"

- Mike Krzyzewski

"Talent wins games, but teamwork and intelligence wins championships"

- Michael Jordan

"Confidence is what happens when you’ve done the hard work that entitles you to succeed"

- Pat Summitt

"Success is determined by your daily choices and habits"

- Rick Pitino

"Never let fundamentals and building skills take a backseat to game planning. Game plans win games. Fundamentals win championships"

- Tom Crean

"Do your best when no one is looking. If you do that, then you can be successful in anything that you put your mind to"

- Bob Cousy

"If you are afraid of failure you don’t deserve to be successful"

- Charles Barkley

"Confidence is everything in this game, if you don’t think you can, you won’t"

- Jerry West

"that all I expect from them at practice and in the games is their maximum effort"

- John Wooden

"Push yourself to keep improving or you’ll stay as close to the bottom as you are to the top"

- John Wooden

"It’s important to keep trying to do what you think is right no matter how hard it is or how often you fail. Never stop trying"

- John Wooden

"Create unselfishness as the most important team attribute"

- Bill Russell

"Don’t measure yourself by what you have accomplished, but by what you should have accomplished with your ability"

- John Wooden

"The best competition I have is against myself to become better"

- John Wooden

"The most important measure of how good a game I played was how much better I’d made my teammates play"

- Bill Russell

"Great players are willing to give up their own personal achievement for the achievement of the group. It enhances everybody"

- Kareem Abdul-Jabbar

"If you do not believe in yourself, no one else will"

- Sheryl Swoopes

"It doesn’t matter who scores the points. It’s who gets the ball to the scorer"

- Larry Bird

"Push yourself again and again. Don’t give an inch until the final buzzer sounds"

- Larry Bird

"I’ve got a theory that if you give 100 percent all of the time, somehow things will work out in the end"

- Larry Bird

"Failure does not come from losing, but from not trying"

- Larry Brown

"Success doesn’t stop when you get there"

- Michael Jordan

"If you run into a wall, don’t turn around and give up. Figure out how to climb it, go through it, or work around it"

- Michael Jordan

"You have to expect things of yourself before you can do them"

- Michael Jordan

"We are unselfish and we trust each other"

- Tim Duncan

"It's not about what you have or don't have. It's about what you make of what you've got."

- Stephen Curry

"What you are as a person is far more important than what you are as a basketball player"

- John Wooden

"What do you do with a mistake: recognize it, admit it, learn from it, forget it"

- Dean Smith

"Concentration and mental toughness are the margins of victory"

- Bill Russell

"The key is not the ‘will to win’… everybody has that. It is the will to prepare to win that is important"

- Bobby Knight

"This is a team game and one man doesn’t win and one man doesn’t lose. In the end, the best team usually wins"

- Wilt Chamberlain

"I really get motivated when I have doubters"

- Shaquille O'Neal

"Good basketball always starts with good defense!"

- Bobby Knight

"You have to earn your right to win the game with effort and togetherness"

- Brad Stevens

"Be quick without hurrying"

- John Wooden

"When opportunity comes, it’s too late to prepare"

- John Wooden

"A coach is someone who can give correction without causing resentment"

- John Wooden

"If you’re not making mistakes, then you’re not doing anything. I’m positive that a doer makes mistakes"

- John Wooden

"The extra pass and the extra effort on defense always get the job done"

- Kareem Abdul-Jabbar

"It’s OK to make mistakes. That’s how we learn. When we compete, we make mistakes"

- Kareem Abdul-Jabbar

"Great effort springs naturally from a great attitude"

- Pat Riley

"You must be unselfish and accept the role that helps the team the most"

- Tom Crean

"Discipline is the greatest form of love you can show someone. Great players crave discipline"

- Tom Izzo

"He who controlleth the backboard, controlleth the game"

- Adolph Rupp

"Your defense will save you on the nights that your offense isn’t working"

- Adolph Rupp

"Talent sets the floor, character sets the ceiling"

- Bill Belichick

"Mental Toughness is doing the right thing for the team when it’s not the best thing for you"

- Bill Belichick

"If you don’t feel you have something to prove every day, you’ll never improve"

- Billy Donovan

"I never think about missing a free throw. All that goes through my mind when I’m at the line is seeing the ball go through the bottom of the net"

- Brad Daugherty

"You can’t get much done in life if you only work on the days when you feel good"

- Jerry West

"On good teams coaches hold players accountable, on great teams players hold players accountable"

- Joe Dumars

"Goals determine what you’re going to be"

- Julius Erving

"The biggest thing is getting our guys to understand, you can’t let one mistake compound into another mistake"

- Thad Matta

"The time when there is no one there to feel sorry for you or to cheer for you is when a player is made"

- Tim Duncan

"The game honors toughness"

- Brad Stevens

"Sometimes you will hate me because I will tell you the truth about your game. And the truth can hurt/humble you"

- Doc Rivers

"You have to have a mentality. This is a business. This ain’t hanging out having a good time"

- Tom Thibodeau

"Freshman want to play. Sophomores want to start. Juniors want to score. Seniors want to win"

- John Beilein

"You don’t go through life, you grow through life"

- Kevin Ollie

"You learn from everybody. You learn from the players. You learn from great coaches. You learn from great teams"

- Tom Thibodeau

"The secret is to have eight great players and four others who will cheer like crazy"

- Jerry Tarkanian

"Your decisions reveal your priorities"

- Jeff van Gundy

"Winning is overemphasized. The only time it is really important is in surgery and war"

- Al McGuire

"Commitment means staying loyal to what you said you were going to do, long after the mood you said it in has left you"

"Working hard is one thing, but"