Basketball Player Quotes

“People say they wish they were Michael Jordan. OK, do it for a year. Do it for two years. Do it for five years. When you get past the fun part, then go do the part where you get into cities at three a.m. and you have fifteen people waiting for autographs when you're as tired as hell.”

“To be successful you have to be selfish, or else you never achieve. And once you get to your highest level, then you have to be unselfish. Stay reachable. Stay in touch. Don't isolate.”

“I would tell players to relax and never think about what's at stake. Just think about the basketball game. If you start to think about who is going to win the championship, you've lost your focus.”

“I play to win, whether during practice or a real game. And I will not let anything get in the way of me and my competitive enthusiasm to win.”

“We had to be to the stadium at six o'clock for home games, and traffic was so bad it would take us an hour and fifteen or an hour and thirty minutes to drive. So now I'm sitting in a car for almost an hour and a half and I'm very tense. I'm worried about the traffic. So I started smoking a cigar going to the games.”

“I would never play an extra year for money. I play the game because I love it. I just so happen to get paid. If I don't feel I still enjoy the game, I can care less what a year is worth. I'm not going to play the game just because of money.”

“I took cooking classes when I was younger; girls weren't interested in me, and I thought I may be alone for the rest of my life.”

“Failure gave me strength. Pain was my motivation”

“The key to success is failure”

“In reality, I never want to grow up.”

“People can fly. Some people fly higher than others, that's all.”

“There is no 'i' in team but there is in win.”

“When I got cut from the varsity team as a sophomore in high school, I learned something. I knew I never wanted to feel that bad again. I never wanted to have that taste in my mouth, that hole in my stomach. So I set a goal of becoming a starter on the varsity.”

“When I play against someone that's new in the league, I make him respect me. They may have heard about me, but now you get to see me actually in front of you. That drives me.”

“If you can't stop thinking about it, don't stop working on it.”

“If you pass the ball to Bill Cartwright, you'll never get the ball from me.”

“There's only one Michael Jordan.”

“I've never lost a game I just ran out of time.”

“Winners don't just learn the fundamentals, they master them. You have to monitor your fundamentals constantly because the only thing that changes will be your attention to them.”

“You believe an eye for an eye until you are put in that situation. If they kill those guys, it really doesn't mean much to me. My father is gone.”

“Even when I'm old and grey, I won't be able to play it, but I'll still love the game.”

“It doesn't matter if you win as long as you give everything in your heart”

“It takes a hell of a lot for a man to put up with me. I can be a handful.”

“I will not quit this game because of what the media has done to me.”

“Confidence allows you to progress in something you're attempting to accomplish, whether it's playing basketball or baseball or whether it's trying to succeed in business.”