Phil Jackson Players Quotations

That's not unusual for a player to lose concentration if certain phases of the game go wrong for him. He put some pressure on himself to score. All players want to score as a part of their game. . . . I don't know where his confidence is. You either have it or you don't have it. It doesn't reside in your jockstrap or your brain. His confidence should be in his defense. That's where he plays and rebounds and hustles for us.

The Olympics is a daunting thing. We have to face the fact that (by doing it this way) we'll cut our players short a little bit.

It is good to be back in the playoffs again. That's an important step for this club because of the number of young players we have that haven't been in the playoffs.

I was very disappointed with the road trip. We had players injured and our team was not competing as hard as it could. The injuries hurt our team morale.

We had a blowout in the third quarter and we never recovered from it. Give them credit Mobley and Brand were productive players out there.

There's a lot of chatter in basketball and, rightfully, you want players to be talking to each other... But sometimes in practice, it gets too verbose... so I tried to take things out of the ordinary and make them special so they'd understand the difference.

My philosophy is that you don't motivate players with speeches; you have motivated players that you draft. That's where they come in, and those are the guys that are competitive. You can not teach competitiveness.

They knew how intensely they had to play. They knew that there had to be a win. We just said that we're going to win this game regardless. I'm going to play the players that have to play to win the game. They buckled down and did the job they had to do.

When it doesn't produce wins, that's the fine line. And then players . . . also have to feel like they're a part of it. If they are, then they play at a better level.

I've talked to other players that were there, but that was played in like complete silence. I guess there was a radio announcer there, but there was nothing else that you could even document it. People don't even know if they had a backboard or nets.

We have a lot of players at that position and, obviously, we've got to make cuts soon. Our desire is to find a place for him and a good opportunity for him and Charlotte was a team that really and truly did want him.

This is a day and age when the perimeter players are scoring more than the interior players.

It was a good practice session, but then we started tailing-off, just as most players do during exhibition games and we started shooting more instead of executing.

They know they can get scoring from three players every night, and sometimes all five can score. It's an all-inclusive thing.

I think all our players were encouraged by the effort, and thought we had the right idea. Our execution came up a little bit short.

We remind our players that this is something that was a special night in a heated situation but it's not going to be a steady diet for us. The onus on Kobe is to stay inside the team offense. The onus on the players is to pick it up a little bit better.

It's all about developing an atmosphere where players want to support and help each other. You want a nurturing place where they feel they can make mistakes, ... Philadelphia's got one of the great passers for a big man in Webber. And one of the great players as far as scoring guards in Allen. Certainly, that should give them some momentum to work with as they go through the year.

He played with the energy and the enthusiasm and threw his body around out there, things that we want to see players do. That helped us. I thought he ran out of gas at one point in that fourth quarter. Otherwise, I probably would have had him stay on the floor.

We're not looking for Kobe to score 50 or 30 or 80. We're just looking for it to fit together. We want players to blend their talents together.

I don't see how you're going to get value out of this player who, in my estimation, is one of the most valuable players in the league. Of course, I estimate him perhaps higher than other people. I think he's a terrific player. He adds a big dimension in every game he plays in.

Some of our players didn't look ready to play.