John Wooden Winning Quotations

You can lose when you outscore somebody in a game, and you can win when you're outscored.

Material possessions, winning scores, and great reputations are meaningless in the eyes of the Lord, because He knows what we really are and that is all that matters.

If there's anything you could point out where I was a little different, it was the fact that I never mentioned winning.

I never wanted a championship as much as I did that first one, ... After the first one in 1964, the titles seemed to come in droves. I also think I became a better coach after winning that first championship. I still continued to emphasize winning the conference, but I became a better tournament coach, putting less pressure on the players.

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.

The team with the most talent usually wins.

Winning games, titles and championships isn't all it's cracked up to be, but getting there, the journey, is a lot more than it's cracked up to be.

Generally speaking, individual performances don't win basketball games

The team that makes the most mistakes usually wins, because doers make mistakes

To win once you must have talent, but to win again you must have character.

I don't believe in praying to win.

Winning and losing aren't all they're cracked up to be, but the trip to the destination is.

Our titles would not have been possible without the unselfishness displayed by all our teams, the team wins, not the individuals

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

Success may result in winning, but winning does not necessarily mean you are a success.

How you run the race - your planning, preparation, practice, and performance - counts for everything. Winning or losing is a by-product, and aftereffect, of that effort.

Winning breeds winning.

It is difficult for young players to learn - because of the great emphasis on records - but, ideally, the joy and frustration of sport should come from the performance itself, not the score. While he is playing, the worst thing a player can think about in terms of concentration - and therefore of success - is losing. The next worst is winning.

A Dominican monk, Father Henri Didon, used it as a watchword for his pupils in sports at Arcueil College in Paris. Baron Pierre De Coubertin, founder of the modern Olympics, made it the Olympic Games ideal adopted at the Antwerp Games in 1920. I never mentioned winning to my players. I mentioned constantly that all I wanted them to do was the best they could. If they're good enough, the score will be to their liking; if they're not, it won't be but that's nothing to hang their head about. Sometimes the other fellow is just better than you are.

In 1948, I began coaching basketball at UCLA. Each hour of practice we worked very hard. Each day we worked very hard. Each week we worked very hard. Each season we worked very hard. Four fourteen years we worked very hard and didn't win a national championship. However, a national championship was won in the fifteenth year. Another in the sixteenth. And eight more in the following ten years.

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

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.

We don’t have to be superstars or win championships…. All we have to do is learn to rise to every occasion, give our best effort, and make those around us better as we do it.