Basketball Teamwork Quotes

Talent wins games, but teamwork and intelligence wins championships.

The strength of the team is each individual member. The strength of each member is the team.

Basketball Rule #6 A great team has a good scorer with a teammate who's on point and ready to assist.

The star player must slay his ego and learn teamwork and communication skills before he can achieve the ultimate in sport

Winning squads emphasize fundamentals-pick and rolls,teamwork,and defense. They play with passion and they play hard. They move the ball, and when their players don't have it, they move well without the ball. They play with sagacity by exploiting mismatches. They gauge their opponents weaknesses and then attack them relentlessly.

One night, he left Stephen and me in the arcade and rushed off to a – this hurt my feelings – “real” game. That night, he missed a foul shot by two feet and made the mistake of admitting to the other players that his arms were tired from throwing miniature balls at a shortened hoop all afternoon. They laughed and laughed. ‘In the second overtime,’ Joel told me, ‘when the opposing team fouled me with four seconds left and gave me the opportunity to shoot from the line for the game, they looked mighty smug as they took their positions along the key. Oh, Pop-A-Shot guy, I could hear them thinking to their smug selves. He’ll never make a foul shot. He plays baby games. Wa-wa-wa, little Pop-A-Shot baby, would you like a zwieback biscuit? But you know what? I made those shots, and those songs of bitches had to wipe their smug grins off their smug faces and go home thinking that maybe Pop-A-Shot wasn’t such a baby game after all.” I think Pop-A-Shot’s a baby game. That’s why I love it. Unlike the game of basketball itself, Pop-A-Shot has no standard socially redeeming value whatsoever. Pop-A-Shot is not about teamwork or getting along or working together. Pop-A-Shot is not about getting exercise or fresh air. It takes place in fluorescent-lit bowling alleys or darkened bars. It costs money. At the end of a game, one does not swig Gatorade. One sips bourbon or margaritas or munches cupcakes. Unless one is playing the Super Shot version at the ESPN Zone in Times Square, in which case, one orders the greatest appetizer ever invented on this continent – a plate of cheeseburgers.

The Greeks created the Olympics to measure a man’s excellence,” he continued. “It’s the same thing with Basketball – or any other sport for that matter. Not everyone can play it, and not many are good at it. In Basketball, running, blocking, dribbling, and shooting test the stamina, strength, and balance of a person. Teamwork, though, tests discipline. All of it is supposed to be a challenge. It’s pointless if it doesn’t have any rules. To win and at the same time follow the rules is a challenge. And the ability to do it and be good at it measure’s a man’s excellence.

Famed basketball coach Phil Jackson, a meditator himself, arranged to have his players—first the Chicago Bulls, and then the L.A. Lakers—learn meditation as a way to improve their focus and teamwork. Jackson finds that mindfulness assists players in paying attention to what’s happening on the court moment by moment. Such precise training in attention has paid off during tense playoffs; Jackson has led more teams to championships than any coach in NBA history. Meditation

Life might be unfair; you might be blindsided by bad luck or misfortune. Nobody knows better than a basketball coach that you might not reap the rewards of your hard work, and that you don't always get what you deserve. But with the support of other people, you get through it. We need one another, and if we stick together, we can get through anything.

Build a foundation for continuous growth What matters, then, is having a good education, good work habits, and a good attitude that gives you a foundation to build on. Popularity is about wanting people to like you, but happiness is about liking yourself. In most schools, the science fair is not the most popular event. Being in the math club isn’t nearly as cool as being on the football team. Some of my friends made fun of people on the debate team. But now they work for people who were on the debate team. Junior high and high school are critical times in our lives and our formative years. There’s so much emphasis on sports and not enough on studies. I love sports. I played sports growing up, still do. They teach discipline and teamwork and perseverance, and that’s all great. But we need to keep sports in perspective. Most of us are not going to play sports for a living. One in one million kids will play professional basketball. I don’t mean to depress you, but if you’re white it’s one in five million! The average professional football career is three and a half years. Even if you do make it, you still need a good foundation for life after football. When you study and learn, and take school seriously you may be called a bookworm, a geek, or a nerd, but don’t worry about those names. In a few years you’ll be called the boss. You’ll be called CEO, president, senator, pastor, or doctor. Thomas Edison, Henry Ford, and Harvey Firestone had summer homes next to each other in Florida. They were close friends and spent much of their summers together. Who you associate with makes a difference in how far you go in life. If your friends are Larry, Curly, and Moe, you may have fun, but you may not be going anywhere. The scripture says, “We should redeem the time.” You need to see time as a gift. God has given us 86,400 seconds each today.

Kobe was hell-bent on surpassing Jordan as the greatest player in the game. His obsession with Michael was striking. Not only had he mastered many of Jordan's moves, but he affected many of M.J.'s mannerisms as well. When we played in Chicago that season, I orchestrated a meeting between the two stars, thinking that Michael might help shift Kobe’s attitude towards selfless teamwork. After they shook hands, the first words out of Kobe’s mouth were “You know I can kick your ass one on one.