Phil Jackson Team Quotations

Love is the force that ignites the spirit and binds teams together.

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.

Wow, how can you lose a ball game like that. I just don't understand sometimes the capabilities of this team to disappoint.

We want him out there. We want their full team out there to play, so you earn what you win.

When he's shooting well, I encourage him. We're trying to measure personal achievement with team goals.

Our particular team right now is not a team that does well resting on any kind of sense of accomplishment. We still have to drive ourselves and drive the team forward.

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.

I still think we have a good chance, ... I still feel that we're the odds-on favorite to be the team of destiny.

That's what happens when a team plays with some desperation.

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.

We're not even going to discuss it. It's a basketball team and we've got to focus on what we need to do.

We were flat tonight. We are still not quite good enough to stay with a team like that.

You have to give that team some credit. Three-point shooting is not an easy task.

The team played well enough to win it, but they didn't finish. When you're on the road, you have to do some things to win, because it's a bit extra special.

Teams have streaks, they get on a run, and this is fortunate for us because this team had been dying to do something like this for a couple years now.

Right now, we need to focus on who we are as a basketball club. I don't live with expectations, so there's nothing there I can say I expected. We're just out here kind of treading water as a basketball team right now. We're neither hot nor cold, neither fish nor fowl.

That's not what basketball is about. Basketball is about playing as a team and finding a functioning level.

You're talking about a different standard when a team wins 60 games.

This is a team we told our guys not to foul, and we end up sending them to the line 35 times. That was one of the things we didn't expect.

There really is something nice about it as far as energizing this team. This team has some deadbeats on it, anyway, and the coach is one of them. It's good to have some people out there that are enthusiastic about the game.

They're shooting almost 40 percent. That in itself is remarkable, unheard of. It converts to a lot of points. And to have to recycle our team to find a way to match up against them is not easy. It's not conventional.

I told the guys that the team is going to double- and triple-team Kobe at the end. So he's not going to get the ball. Somebody else is going to have to step and make shots.

It's not going to be about Kobe getting 45 points a night. It's going to be about how are we going to use all the talents to do what we have to do to take a team apart.

It's not exactly the way you want to have a team win a game, but when you have to win a game, it's great to have that weapon to be able to do that.

I'm going to address the team and try to set down some parameters as to how we're going to deal with it, ... This is something now that we seriously have to take as another type of an issue, where there's a certain sense of where our privacy lies and where the boundaries lie, that we're going to have to address and we're going to have to be serious about it.

People think I would never take on a team that has no legitimate chance to win a championship, This is one of the major misconceptions about me. Success can be measured in many different ways. . . . Either way, I would find the challenge invigorating.

Coaching is salesmanship. Coaching is winning players over and convincing them they have to play together. It takes a team conviction to play together to make things work.

Basketball, unlike football with its prescribed routes, is an improvisational game, similar to jazz. If someone drops a note, someone else must step into the vacuum and drive the beat that sustains the team.

My first act after being named head coach of the Bulls was to formulate a vision for the team. I had to take into account not only what I wanted to achieve, but how I was going to get there.

Despite their tremendous talent, (NBA players) are still, by and large, young adults, seeking validation from an authority figure, and there is no greater authority figure on a team than the coach. Needless to say, in today's warped, self-indulgent climate, too many players couldn't care less about appeasing the coach.

Remember, Team, surrender the me for the we.

It takes a number of critical factors to win an NBA championship, including the right mix of talent, creativity, intelligence, toughness, and of course, luck. But if a team doesn’t have the most essential ingredient - love - none of those other factors matter.

Basketball is a great mystery. You can do everything right. You can have the perfect mix of talent and the best system of offense in the game. You can devise a foolproof defensive strategy and prepare your players for every possible eventuality. But if the players don’t have a sense of oneness as a group, your efforts won’t pay off. And the bond that unites a team can be so fragile, so elusive.

I won't coach this team next year if he is still here. He won't listen to anyone. I've had it with this kid.

The strength of the team lies within the individual. And the strength of the individual lies within the team

The home team won - everyone can go home happy.

The game was in our hands. We led for 46 minutes. It was a basic collapse by our team in the fourth quarter.