Quotes About Basketball

To be honest, I never thought I'd be famous for baseball. I want to play basketball, and I could also do both basketball and baseball - but I really want to play basketball.

Set the basketball on the kitchen table. Open a cupboard, get out a bottle of sesame seeds, and place a single seed beside the basketball. If you were to reduce the Earth to the size of a basketball, all the fresh surface water on the planet - all those rivers and lakes and ponds and streams - would fit inside that one tiny sesame seed. Add a second sesame seed; now you have all the usable underground water as well. Is fresh water a scarce resource?

I have two definitions of success - one on the basketball court and one in my personal life. In basketball, success means making my teammates better, winning basketball games and winning championships. In my personal life, success means being a good father to my sons and raising them to be strong men; taking care of my family and being a good friend; and using my influence to make a difference in the community.

It's fair to say that Jews dominated basketball and that started in the 30s in all the big cities. I think it was simply because Jews lived in ghettoes and basketball is a great schoolyard game. You don't need a lot of space or equipment and you can adapt it to how many players you have.

We never ask candidates to demonstrate their skill. We ask lots of questions about past experience, but simply looking at the results of their decisions does not let us understand the process that they used to make the choice in the first place. A good analogy is sports. If you wanted to know how well a person plays basketball, for example, you could look at statistics like shooting percentage or blocked shots. But, this is just an historical account of how well the individual played in the past - the numbers do not tell us much about how that individual plays basketball now.

I usually just speak in English when I'm on the basketball court. For some reason, my mind never even tried to cross any other language when I'm playing basketball.

I care about systematically playing basketball. If the spacing isn't right, if guys are standing on top of each other, if there aren't lanes to be provided, or rebounders available to offensively rebound the ball, or we don't have defensive balance when a shot goes up, all of these things are fundamental basketball. I follow it.

When I was growing up, we used to play basketball in a park that was never shoveled when it snowed. The basketball rims were never fixed. And we understood then that there was a relationship between public policy and our quality of life.

Indiana gets credit for having the most rabid basketball fans in the union, but Maine is a very, very active basketball state.

Magic is crazy. He is that crazy wild guy on the basketball court that is very intense and very serious. He is the guy who lives and eats and breathes basketball.

Once people couldn't trust the college game, some checked out the pro game, but that was in big trouble, too. We had no clock and a lot of faults. People looked at the slow pace and at big guys like George Mikan and said pro basketball was just for overgrown pituitary cases. Baseball and football were numbers one and two and pro basketball wasn't even in the same universe.

I couldn't imagine not playing basketball. To me, basketball is what life is all about.

I played a lot of sports and it's the plays in basketball that weren't worked out that are the ones that are just fantastic that you remember. We don't know the power that's within our own bodies.

On an awards-show day, I can play basketball, go in, take a shower and put on a tux - it takes me three minutes to put on a tux - and be out the door in 15 minutes.

If I don't get five [titles], I won't be happy with myself as a basketball player. I don't know how you guys will feel about me.

Basketball isn't my job.

The tradition in Serbia has always been team sports - football, basketball, handball, volleyball and water polo, individual sports are not supported.

I submit that tennis is the most beautiful sport there is, and also the most demanding....Basketball comes close, but it's a team sport and lacks tennis's primal mano a mano intensity. Boxing might come close- at least at the lighter weight divisions- but the actual physical damage the fighters inflict on each other makes it too concretely brutal to be really beautiful- a level of abstraction and formality (i.e., play) is necessary for a sport to possess true metaphysical beauty (in my opinion).

Basketball is just a platform for me to inspire people.

I was a skinny, scrawny guy. I stuttered horrendously, couldn't speak at all. I was a very shy, reserved player and a very shy, reserved person. I found a safe place in life in basketball.

Basketball is a game that gives you every chance to be great, and puts every pressure on you to prove that you haven't got what it takes. It never takes away the chance, and it never eases up on the pressure.

Guarding LeBron James has to be the hardest job in basketball.

I played sports year around: basketball, soccer, softball and I ran track year around, from the time I was, like, six, seven.

You might be a redneck if... your high school basketball game got rained out.

It's a really weird mindset to kind of try to take my mentality on the basketball court and bring it here on to the golf course. I don't want to have too high of expectations on, like, each hole, just try to enjoy the process, but hopefully get out to a good start tomorrow and be in the conversation and see what happens.

When asked if he was a basketball player he replied No I clean giraffe ears.

My first motion capture game was with Sony - NBA: The Life. It was very ahead of its time. Brandon Akiaten, he was the writer and director. He had a real vision of what this game was meant to be; it was a basketball game where I was the Jerry Maguire sports agent type guy. And it was great!

I'm not comfortable being preachy, but more people need to start spending as much time in the library as they do on the basketball court.

There was not too much to do as a kid when we arrived in Germany. Playing basketball and listening to music gave me something to do.

I was a much better writer than I was an athlete. My college coach told me flat out, he said, "Deford, you write basketball better than you play it."

As you keep shooting the ball, you become a better basketball player.

I can't palm a basketball.

Back in East St. Louis, tennis wasn't the real thing. If you weren't playing baseball, basketball, football, you were kind of on the outside.

There is still an assumption among many people that to be black is to be lower class. In the last fifteen to twenty years, perhaps even further back than that, there's also been an explosion of a very wealthy black class in the United States, but those people are often treated as special cases: they're athletes, entertainers. Jay-Z. Basketball players. The country metabolizes the fact these rich black people exist, but it seems only to reinforce the idea that every other black person is limping along in poverty.

Part of the charm of basketball lies in the fact that it's a simple game to understand. Players race up and down a fairly small area indoors and stuff the ball into a ring with Madonna's dress hanging on it.

I was about 14, and my friend's stepdad asked me to do a 10K with him because his son - who was more into basketball - didn't want to. It was amazing, and I still remember the time I got: 48:23.

There are some rappers out there that I listen to, that I'm like: "You are really good but you could be like the Michael Jordan of rap if you applied yourself." There's a lot of people who are better at basketball than Michael Jordan, but Michael Jordan just wanted to be Michael Jordan, more.

I did quite a lot of fencing when I was a kid, I was a swimmer, and I played a lot of basketball. I was a fencer for Great Britain, but I only did that because I watched Robin Hood, Star Wars, Highlander and The Three Musketeers, and I wanted to emulate Richard Harris and the great British actors that I grew up watching.

It wasn't until late high school and early college that I gained enough size and skill to make me welcome on intramural basketball teams.

My goal is to let people see who I am as a person, not just a basketball player. Many people see athletes in a certain way - flat and one dimensional. I want to change that view.

We have to move the meter in sports in Africa, especially basketball. With the growth of the NBA globally, we have to figure out more ways to develop facilities, coaching, leagues, and youth development in Africa. The talent is incredible. Especially physically. How do we get the youth to start playing at an early age just like in soccer? The future is bright. We now have an NBA office in Africa, we have legends and Hall of Famers, we have African assistant coaches, front office members, and some prominent African players over the last 10 years. So we must plan well for the next 10.

Something I like to do a lot is just sit by water when there’s a current and just stare into the water. I don’t fish, I don’t hunt, I don’t scuba, I don’t spear, don’t boat, don’t play basketball or football – I excel at staring into space. I’m really good at that.

I think that my God-given physical attributes, big hands, and big feet, the way that I'm built, proportion-wise, just made basketball the most inviting sport for me to play.

Michael Jordan was a cultural icon that everybody on the playground wanted to be. The Bulls dynasty was a huge part of my childhood and it was the peak of my basketball interest as a kid.

I take my sport damned seriously. Basketball is my life. There are other people who go into important games as if they were any other game. I'm a brooder and I spend a lot of time thinking about my opponent, about the things he can do and about what I have to do to win. I don't think I'll ever be able to change that.

Once you become a good person, then you have a chance of becoming a good basketball player.

I have always maintained that in basketball the importance of the mental to the physical is about four to one.

The only place where we're not segregated in mass is in sports. You go to a football stadium or a basketball arena, and all of America is there: the wealthy, the poor, the black, white, Latino, conservative, liberal, and we all talk about sports.