Bill Russell Quotes

If you really have integrity, there are very few people who can insult you, or honor you.

If a guy pays you five dollars, you give him seven dollars worth of work.

I've been fortunate to meet and work with a lot of really smart people. The thing that strikes me most about them is how they continue to explore and learn every day. I have tried to apply that approach in my modest career as well.

Commitment separates those who live their dreams from those who live their lives regretting the opportunities they have squandered.

Remember that basketball is a game of habits. If you make the other guy deviate from his habits, you've got him

The most important measure of how good a game I played was how much better I’d made my teammates play.

To love someone is nothing, to be loved by someone is something, to love someone who loves you is everything.

What's more important than who's going to be the first black manager is who's going to be the first black sports editor of the New York Times.

The last five or six days, I've been running. The last two days, I've been running pretty hard. Everybody's got to be someplace.

To me, the most important part of winning is joy. You can win without joy, but winning that’s joyless is like eating in a four-star restaurant when you’re not hungry. Joy is a current of energy in your body, like chlorophyll or sunlight, that fills you up and makes you naturally want to do your best.

The magic to a great meeting is all of the work that's done beforehand.

Most people have a harder time letting themselves love than finding someone to love them.

If you can take something to levels that very few other people can reach, then what you're doing becomes art.

Durability is part of what makes a great athlete.

The most important thing to me is the friends that I've made.

I think that David Stern is probably the greatest commissioner that any sport has ever had in the history of this country.

Learning is a daily experience and a lifetime mission. I truly believe in the saying "We work to become, not to acquire."

You got to have the killer instinct. If you do not have it, forget about basketball and go into social psychology or something. If you sometimes wonder if you've got it, you ain't got it. No pussycats, please.

My most prized possession was my library card from the Oakland Public Library.

Success is a result of consistent practice of winning skills and actions. There is nothing miraculous about the process. There is no luck involved.

I hope I epitomize the American dream. For I came against long odds, from the ghetto to the very top of my profession. I was not immediately good at basketball. It did not come easy. It came as the result of a lot of hard work and self-sacrifice. The rewards, where they worth it? One thousand times over.

Create unselfishness as the most important team attribute.

If Shakespeare can compare all of life to a stage, maybe it's not odd to believe that part of the play can take place on a basketball court.

I think what has happened to our basketball team, we've been badly distracted. They're not reading too many positive things in the paper.

We couldn't sustain it. And they got a lot of kids that can shoot. We just couldn't close out well enough.

People say it was the greatest individual rivalry they've ever seen. I agree with that. Let me assure you that if either Wilt's or Russ' coach had ever told one of them he couldn't guard the other guy, he would have lost that player forever.

Concentration and mental toughness are the margins of victory.

The idea is not to block every shot. The idea is to make your opponent believe that you might block every shot.

What distinguishes a great player is his presence. When he goes on to the court, his presence dominates the atmosphere.

We learn to make a shell for ourselves when we are young and then spend the rest of our lives hoping for someone to reach inside and touch us. Just touch us—anything more than that would be too much for us to bear.

Heart in champions has to do with the depth of our motivation and how well your mind and body react to pressure - that is, being able to do what you do best under maximum pain and stress.

The morale and the camaraderie that we had for one another earlier in the year is starting to come under duress because of all the losses. Some of the guys are feeling the pressure now from the last year when they were not successful.

On females officiating in the NBA -Incompetence should not be confined to one sex.

After I played him for the first time, I said 'Let's see. He's four or five inches taller. He's 40 or 50 pounds heavier. His vertical leap is at least as good as mine. He can get up and down the floor as well as I can. And he's smart. The real problem with all this is I have to show up.

I don't have very many regrets, not because I lived a perfect life but because life is a bunch of rolling hills, not mountains, or speed bumps instead of stop signs, and so you come to a situation and it's neither good or bad, it just is, and what it means to you is what's your take on it. But the second part of the equation is what are you going to do about it. A lot of times I'm completely wrong, but all you do is back up and start over.

My father once told me that anyone who worked for three dollars an hour owed it to himself to put in four dollars' worth of work.

Friendship is a full-time job.

You can do anything you want to do if you want it bad enough

Don't knock the ball in the stands, keep it in your hands!

The only important statistic is the final score.

We overreached our decision power. Sometimes our decisions have to fit the reality of the outside world.

A rebounder, or a shot-blocker for that matter, is always at a disadvantage if he tells himself the only way he can succeed is by out jumping the guy next to him. Sometimes he will have to, but most of the time he will not. Most of my rebounds came from positioning, where I was able to get the ball while in heavy traffic.