The greatness of Michael Jordan is his competitive drive. The weakness of Michael Jordan is his competitive drive

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

The bigger your head, the easier to fill your shoes.

The sign of a great player is how much he elevates his colleagues' performance.

The best part of basketball, for those people on the inside, is the bus going to the airport after you've won a game on an opponent's floor. It's been a very tough battle. And preferably, in the playoffs. And that feeling that you have, together as a group, having gone to an opponent's floor and won a very good victory, is as about as high as you can get.

My job as a coach was to make something meaningful out of one of the most mundane activities on the planet: playing pro basketball.

Kobe was hell-bent on surpassing Jordan as the greatest player in the game. His obsession with Michael was striking. When we played in Chicago that season, I orchestrated a meeting between the two of them, thinking that Michael might help shift Kobe’s attitude toward selfless teamwork. After they shook hands, the first words out of Kobe’s mouth were, ‘You know I can kick your ass one on one.’