John Wooden Player Quotations

If a player's not doing the things he should, put him on the bench. He'll come around.

I talked to the players and tried to make them aware of what was good and bad, but I didn't try to run their lives.

His style would not cut it with me. I wanted the socks all pulled up neatly and I didn't permit long hair. He was different. It was a great attraction. He made fancy shots that I wouldn't allow a player to take.

I would never have a player come close to taking that many shots in a game. I don't ever recall seeing a player who could do so much with a basketball, but he never played on a championship team.

A player who makes a team great is much more valuable than a great player.

My bench never heard me mention winning. My whole emphasis was for each one of my players to try to learn to execute the fundamentals to the best of their ability. Not to try to be better than somebody else, but to learn from others, and never cease trying to be the best they could be; that's what I emphasized more than anything else.

I also wanted my basketball players to know that I really cared about them. Forget basketball; as a person, I cared, I cared about their family.

You cannot attain and maintain physical condition unless you are morally and mentally conditioned. And it is impossible to be in moral condition unless you are spiritually conditioned. I always told my players that our team condition depended on two factors / how hard they worked on the floor during practice and how well they behaved between practices.

Good coaching is about leadership and instilling respect in your players. Dictators lead through fear - good coaches do not.

I discovered early on that the player who learned the fundamentals of basketball is going to have a much better chance of succeeding and rising through the levels of competition than the player who was content to do things his own way. A player should be interested in learning why things are done a certain way. The reasons behind the teaching often go a long way to helping develop the skill.

A gifted player, who is not a team player, will ultimately hurt the team.

The best players don't win championships. The best team players win championships.

Once you become a good person, then you have a chance of becoming a good basketball player.

The person who is afraid to risk failure seldom has to face success. I expected my players to make mistakes, as long as they were mistakes of commission. A mistake of commission happens when you are doing what should be done but don't get the results you want.

Selfishness is the greatest challenge for a coach. Most players are more concerned with making themselves better than the team.

I wanted my players to always be searching, especially for truth. I wanted them to know what they believed and be able to defend it. Truth will always stand the test of scrutiny.

The player who puts the ball through the hoop has ten hands.

I always talked to my players about today. It's the only day that matters.

Since the most important responsibility of a coach in regard to the actual playing of the game is to teach his players properly and effectively to execute the various fundamentals of the game, he is first of all a teacher.

I never yelled at my players much. That would have been artificial stimulation, which doesn't last very long. I think it's like love and passion. Passion won't last as long as love. When you are dependent on passion, you need more and more of it to make it work. It's the same with yelling.

What you do in practice is going to determine your level of success. I used to tell my players, 'You have to give 100 percent every day. Whatever you don't give, you can't make up for tomorrow. If you give only 75 percent today, you can't give 125 percent tomorrow to make up for it.'

When everyone has good players, teaching will be a telling difference.

A coach's primary function should be not to make better players, but to make better people

Too many people look on outscoring someone as winning, I never tried to get that across to my players.

Good players can take coaching; great players can take coaching and learn.

I never let our players get satisfied, I never let our Coaches get satisfied, I was never satisfied. We can always do it better.

A player who makes a team great is better than a great player.

I continually stress to my players that all I expect from them at practice and in the games is their maximum effort.

I do not want players who do not have a keen desire to win and do not play hard and aggressively to accomplish that objective.

Although I wanted my players to work to win, I tried to convince them they had always won when they had done their best.

A player who makes a team great is more valuable than a great player. Losing yourself in the group, for the good of the group, that's teamwork.