J. B. Bickerstaff Quotes

You go with what you got. That’s the thing about having a system, then you plug guys into your system.

Nothing is ever perfect in the NBA.

It’s always fun when you get to go somewhere new and you get to meet new people and get new experiences.

My dad traveled so much for work that, when he was home, we always wanted to spend as much time with him as we could, so going to practices and doing stuff like that with him took precedence over Saturday morning cartoons. We’d go to practice with my dad just so we could be a part of it.

Any good defensive team has a strong anchor, because he cleans up mistakes.

I’m always for constructive conversation, meaningful conversation, not just words, but conversation.

Whenever someone great passes, all of us have a loss.

Through the regular season, if you get really good at what you do, teams will have a hard time adjusting to you.

You don’t win without talent, but your talent has to have purpose.

It’s not the way you want to get a job, to see someone you admire and look up to and learned so much from get fired.

My dad always took over teams, except for Washington, that were rebuilding, and you hear the taunting, the jokes, negative, awful things about the person you love. That hardens you at a young age.

I watch a ton of movies. Going way back, I like ‘The Godfather.’ ‘The Matrix‘ was one of my favorites – the first one; they got a little carried away after the first one. Those are two that stand out.

I’m a big believer in communication.

Conflict resolution, all those things, are important. When you’re in a group environment, you have to have those. If you don’t, things fester. Have the conversation. Resolve it. Move forward.

Every day, you learn something. That’s the same as assistant coach and the same as a head coach. You should continue to learn. You watch so much basketball, you should see something somewhere from somebody different all the time.

My brother and I used to laugh and say, ‘Normal kids went to day care, and we went to the gym.’

During the regular season, you don’t have the sort of time you do in the playoffs to prepare for people, so you’ve got to go to your strengths.

If you look at the teams that mix and match their starting lineup a great deal, that sort of inconsistency frequently leads to inconsistency in performance.

I hope I continue to learn. If I don’t, then I know everything.

No matter what your job is, you know that you need to have a routine, that you need to be disciplined, you need to work.

Let’s face it, first-time assistant coaches normally don’t walk into jobs with two perennial All-Stars on a team that just got bounced in the Western finals. Normally, they get a job in the middle of a year, playing for lottery balls.

Grinding is a mindset and a willingness and commitment to work at it.

A lot of times, people think of selfish, and they think of offense, but you can be selfish on the defensive end of the floor, too. If you don’t uphold your end of our schemes and your responsibilities within those schemes, then you’re being just as selfish.

It’s hard to argue with a coach who says, ‘I just want you to work.’ What can you say to that without making a fool of yourself?

Small ball, spacing, shooting 3s, is something that everybody‘s trying to do.