Mike Krzyzewski Quotes

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

First of all, what happens is, when you’re good at something, you spend a lot of time with it. People identify you with that sport, so it becomes part of your identity.

When I went to high school, an all-boys’ school, a Catholic school, I tried out for football, and I didn’t make it. It was the first time, athletically, that I was knocked down.

With me and basketball, it became part of me.

That’s what I do now: I lead and I teach. If we win basketball games from doing that, then that’s great, but I lead and teach. Those are the two things I concentrate on.

There are kids don’t want to do something because they’re afraid of looking stupid to their peers. There comes a time when they start protecting themselves, instead of extending. I want to make sure that they’re always trying to extend themselves.

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

The thing I loved the most – and still love the most about teaching – is that you can connect with an individual or a group, and see that individual or group exceed their limits.

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

Actually, the Kentucky moment was better than winning the two National Championships, because it was the epitome of what I try to get from a team in a crisis situation.

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.

I’ve tried to handle winning well, so that maybe we’ll win again, but I’ve also tried to handle failure well. If those serve as good examples for teachers and kids, then I hope that would be a contribution I have made to sport. Not just basketball, but to sport.

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

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

I think some parents now look at a youngster failing as the final thing. It’s a process, and failure is part of the process. I would like it if the teacher and the parents would connect more. I think that used to be, but we’re losing a little bit of that right now.

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

I always won in my imagination. I always hit the game-winning shot, or I hit the free throw. Or if I missed, there was a lane violation, and I was given another one.

I’ve been so fortunate in my life that my family has never been jealous of my success. They have shown true love and commitment to me by being supportive. They shared in it.

In high school, in sport, I had a coach who told me I was much better than I thought I was, and would make me do more in a positive sense. He was the first person who taught me not to be afraid of failure.

My parents didn’t really understand too much about sport. At that time, we were in a Polish community in the inner city of Chicago, and I was the youngest of a bunch of cousins. Polish families are real big, with cousins and aunts and uncles.

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

When I was growing up, there weren’t any Little Leagues in the city. Parents worked all the time. They didn’t have time to take their kids out to play baseball and football.

If you win a National Championship, or you win two, people think you have not only seen the Holy Grail, but you’ve embraced it. Basically, I do what a lot of people do, but I’ve been able to win.

I’m still not a great reader, but my wife is and my daughters are, and I envy them. I think I got into a bad habit of trying to do something all the time, instead of trying to sit down and take my time a little bit.

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

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

When I was in sixth grade, I wanted to become a priest.

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

I hated to lose.

Once you win a National Championship, how do you do that again? How do you get the passion to do that again? We won it again right away, the next year. A lot of it had to do with the fact that I didn’t give myself an opportunity to enjoy the first one.

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

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

Leadership is an ever-evolving position.

Imagination has a great deal to do with winning.

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