Don Meyer famous quotes

Recognize and reward players who put the team first, not just the gifted ones.
-- Don Meyer

#Basketball #Team #Player

Successful programs consist of people working hard, working together, while never worrying about who gets the credit.
-- Don Meyer

#Basketball #Hard Work #Successful

When you watch the game, be a student of the game.
-- Don Meyer

#Basketball #Games #Coaching

Positioning, anticipation and technique create quickness. Therefore, you can always get quicker
-- Don Meyer

#Basketball #Technique #Anticipation

We had 10 turnovers tonight. Each one gets worse as you go. It is like prior arrests: the 10th one may not have been that bad, but when you have had nine prior ones, it looks pretty bad.
-- Don Meyer

#Basketball #Looks #Tonight

It doesn't cost nothing to be nice to people
-- Don Meyer

#Basketball #Nice #People

Discipline and demand without being demeaning.
-- Don Meyer

#Basketball #Discipline #Coaching

It is foolish to expect a young man to follow your advice and to ignore your example.
-- Don Meyer

#Basketball #Men #Advice

Your program must have an overriding purpose which is clearly visible and which teaches lessons beyond winning.
-- Don Meyer

#Basketball #Winning #Coaching

Complacency is the forerunner of mediocrity. You can never work too hard on attitudes, effort and technique.
-- Don Meyer

#Sports #Attitude #Effort

Plays are not as important as players, and players are not as important as teammates
-- Don Meyer

#Basketball #Player #Important

Discover your gift, develop your gift and then give it away every day.
-- Don Meyer

#Basketball #Giving

Good shooters take the shots; best shooters take most of the shots.
-- Don Meyer

#Basketball #Coaching #Shooter

You can pick captains, but you can't pick leaders. Whoever controls the locker room controls the team
-- Don Meyer

#Basketball #Team #Leader

When you get to be my age, you don't buy green bananas because you may not be around to eat them.
-- Don Meyer

#Basketball #Age #May

If a farmer and his family can get up at 5:30 every morning to milk cows, surly we can get up at that time to practice basketball.
-- Don Meyer

#Basketball #Morning #Practice

Players who are late say that their time is more important than the team.
-- Don Meyer

#Basketball #Team #Player

Shared suffering: one guy messes up and everyone runs. One guy does well and everyone benefits.
-- Don Meyer

#Basketball #Running #Guy

There is nothing more important than rebounding... don't just give it lip service.
-- Don Meyer

#Basketball #Giving #Coaching

Players must do what you want them to do in pressure situations.
-- Don Meyer

#Basketball #Player #Coaching

The team is an extension of the coach.
-- Don Meyer

#Basketball #Team #Coaching

When the legs go, the heart and the head follow quickly behind.
-- Don Meyer

#Basketball #Heart #Coaching

To be a team, you must be a family.
-- Don Meyer

#Basketball #Team #Coaching

Administrators are like pigs; don't wrestle with a pig because you both get dirty and the pig likes it.
-- Don Meyer

#Basketball #Dirty #Pigs

Shout praise and whisper criticism.
-- Don Meyer

#Basketball #Coaching #Criticism

A coach who is not teaching leads to the worst thing in a program -- players not learning.
-- Don Meyer

#Teaching #Player #Program

Tough minded enough to do the necessary things--this is the epitome of what a team is.
-- Don Meyer

#Team #Tough #Enough

We have 2,500 students and an 8,000-seat basketball arena. You do the math on how important basketball is in Aberdeen.
-- Don Meyer

#Basketball #Math #Important

Have character, don't be one.
-- Don Meyer

#Basketball #Character

You have to learn things in every game because you are not going to be able to practice two-and-a-half to three hours (during the season), so the games have to be the ultimate learning experience.
-- Don Meyer

#Basketball #Practice #Games

Make the practices like games and the games like practices.
-- Don Meyer

#Basketball #Practice #Games

There's only one thing we can control, and that is how hard we play.
-- Don Meyer

#Basketball #Play

If I cover my head with my hands, it means deny the ball to the opponent's ball handler.
-- Don Meyer

#Basketball #Mean #Hands

I tell everyone that I have 25,000 assistant coaches. If I want to know something, I just go to the grocery store.'
-- Don Meyer

#Basketball #Want #Assistants

We can always do it better.
-- Don Meyer

#Basketball

We always need to be prepared and work hard in practice so we can be just like the farmer who has put that fourth cutting of hay in the barn. After he does that, he can feel good about what is going to happen the rest of the winter.
-- Don Meyer

#Basketball #Hard Work #Cutting

What you accept in victory, you must accept in defeat.
-- Don Meyer

#Basketball #Victory #Defeat

Parents would rather have their son get all-state than his team win the state championship.
-- Don Meyer

#Basketball #Team #Son

If you have to 'try hard' to 'try hard, you are already beaten.
-- Don Meyer

#Trying

To those who much has been given, much is expected.
-- Don Meyer

#Basketball #Given #Expected

In practice, don't just run basketball drills, teach the players how to play basketball.
-- Don Meyer

#Basketball #Running #Player

Habits are critical for players. They cannot think and play well at the same time.
-- Don Meyer

#Sports #Thinking #Player

It doesn't matter where you coach, it matters why you coach.
-- Don Meyer

#Basketball #Coaching #Matter

It is not what you teach, but what you emphasize.
-- Don Meyer

#Basketball #Coaching #Teach

To win it all, winners have to be obsessive about the fundamentals and doing the little things right.
-- Don Meyer

#Sports #Winning #Fundamentals

Put your two best players away from the ball and bring it back to them.
-- Don Meyer

#Basketball #Player #Two

Can your player make a curl cut and score in the lane? If so, he is the cutter.
-- Don Meyer

#Basketball #Cutting #Player

Play off your great player... great teams have a go-to player and they play off of him.
-- Don Meyer

#Basketball #Team #Player

You build your program from the ideas of great coaches.
-- Don Meyer

#Basketball #Ideas #Coaching

Simplify the game as much as possible. When you add, you must subtract.
-- Don Meyer

#Basketball #Games #Coaching

Only run special plays for special players; find plays that fit your players.
-- Don Meyer

#Basketball #Running #Player

You have to learn to play with what you've got.
-- Don Meyer

#Basketball #Play

The ability to rebound is in inverse proportion to the distance your house is from the nearest railroad tracks.
-- Don Meyer

#Basketball #Distance #Track

You aren't going to win championships unless you make layups and free throws.
-- Don Meyer

#Basketball #Winning #Championship

Nobody travels better than Northern State fans and nobody knows the game better than Northern State fans. If I'd die and went to heaven and I was coaching, it would be at Wachs Arena.
-- Don Meyer

#Basketball #Games #Heaven

Anytime you get an award as a coach, you've got to be the ultimate fool to think it wasn't your assistant coaches and all the players responsible for the award.
-- Don Meyer

#Basketball #Player #Thinking

Successful basketball coaches are those that subscribe to a system that is based on sound fundamental teachings.
-- Don Meyer

#Basketball #Teaching #Successful

If it comes down to you or the program that decision was made long ago.
-- Don Meyer

#Basketball #Long #Decision

Sometimes the best recruits are the ones you don't get.
-- Don Meyer

#Basketball #Sometimes #Recruit

I have learned that peace is not the absence of trial, trouble, or torment but the presence of calm in the midst of them
-- Don Meyer

#Basketball #Trials #Calm

Every day you teach attitude.
-- Don Meyer

#Basketball #Attitude #Coaching

Proper prior planning prevents pitiful poor performance.
-- Don Meyer

#Basketball #Planning #Poor

Be what ya is, 'cause if ya be what you ain't, ya ain't what ya is.
-- Don Meyer

#Basketball #Causes

The worst day coaching is better than the best day doing anything else
-- Don Meyer

#Basketball #Coaching #Worst

Quickness more than anything else should determine your amount of pressure on the ball.
-- Don Meyer

#Basketball #Coaching #Balls

You never realize the value of coaching until your children play for a coach
-- Don Meyer

#Basketball #Children #Play

If you want to thank me, go do something for somebody else
-- Don Meyer

#Basketball #Want

The key to success is to do the next right thing right.
-- Don Meyer

#Inspiring #Keys #Next

Time doesn't fly when you are not happy.
-- Don Meyer

#Basketball #Not Happy

Ten minutes after you lose that last game, you start working on next season.
-- Don Meyer

#Basketball #Games #Lasts

If you can do something and not blow your own horn, it sure sounds a lot better.
-- Don Meyer

#Basketball #Blow #Sound

Our goal as a team is to keep playing as a group for as long as we can because you will never have that team again. It is like a dying limb, you have to prune it off and let another one grow in its place. That is the way you have to do it, but it still hurts losing these guys and that team because they and you have put so much effort into building a team. Even if you win that last game (and a national championship), it hurts badly because the players know they will never have that same special group of guys together on the same team again. Somebody always goes and somebody new always comes in.
-- Don Meyer

#Basketball #Hurt #Team

As a coach, you're just trying to figure out how to keep a team on edge. You've got to find that edge.
-- Don Meyer

#Basketball #Team #Trying

We sure didn't play great, but we played hard. And I can live with that.
-- Don Meyer

#Basketball #Play

Go from good to great because good is the enemy of great.
-- Don Meyer

#Basketball #Enemy

The only thing success should do is make you more humble.
-- Don Meyer

#Basketball #Humble #Should

In the end, what your own troops do is more important than who they are marching against.
-- Don Meyer

#Basketball #Important #Troops

There is a lot of difference at McDonald's between the guy in the back making the fries and the manager up front who is running the place.
-- Don Meyer

#Basketball #Running #Mcdonalds

When I go in for heart surgery, I want a full-time surgeon. I don't want some guy who just does it part-time between rounds of golf. You want a guy who is doing it all the time and is always reading and learning about the most recent techniques.
-- Don Meyer

#Basketball #Reading #Heart

You have to clean out the pig barn every week because you know your pigs are in there doing their jobs every day.
-- Don Meyer

#Basketball #Jobs #Pigs

We have to get a lot tougher. If you get involved in a street fight, you can't lay down in the street and act like you're dead because they will kill you for sure. You might as well get up and fight.
-- Don Meyer

#Basketball #Fighting #Might

If you are a good team, your offense is born on the defensive end.
-- Don Meyer

#Basketball #Team #Ends

We painted a beautiful picture, but we just didn't finish it. Finishing is the difference between a beautiful picture and a masterpiece.
-- Don Meyer

#Basketball #Beautiful #Differences

Winning a postseason game is like winning five regular season games. There is just no feeling like it. Everything is magnified. Every free throw, turnover, shot and play.
-- Don Meyer

#Basketball #Winning #Games