Bobby Knight Basketball Quotations

When my time on earth is gone, and my activities here are passed, I want they bury me upside down, and my critics can kiss my ass!

And I would be the first to admit that probably, in a lot of press conferences over the time that I have been in coaching, indulging my own sense of humor at press conferences has not been greatly to my benefit.

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

You don't play against opponents, you play against the game of basketball.

Mental toughness is to physical as four is to one.

Walking has been ridiculous in college basketball the past 15 years.

All of us learn to write in the second grade. Most of us go on to greater things.

I've always felt that, you know, the Almighty has a lot of things to do other than help my basketball team.

Most people have the will to win, few have the will to prepare to win.

I don't have to wait until the next morning to regret something I did that was kinda dumb.

I don't think I have ever been out of control.

If I came in to recruit your son, I would tell you, your wife, and your son, that I will be the most demanding coach your son can play for.

As I've said, basketball has been, I think, a real cooperative venture. There have been a lot of people that have been involved in it: coaches, administrators - not recently - fans and nobody, nobody any more so than students over the years.

A quick way for any player to make himself better is to think about what he himself doesn't like to play against

There are times when my passion for basketball led me into confrontations that I could have handled a lot better. I've always been too confrontational, especially when I know I'm right.

If universities want to save a little money, they ought to make some cutbacks in administration and in faculty people who teach one class a week.

I'm not sure that an athlete is prepared to be a role model. He has a lot of attention paid to him that he shouldn't have, and then the athletes tend to think of themselves as better than they are.

Basketball may have been invented in Massachusetts, but it was made for Indiana.

Pat has been instrumental in what we've done here so far and the most selfish thing for me is that I want to see what we've done placed in the hands of the most competent person, and that's Pat. No one would come close to being able to continue to build on what we've done here so far like he will.

If I were in charge I'd drug test all you sons of b****es, not just the athletes.

If my primary purpose here at Indiana is to go out and win ballgames, I can probably do that as well as anybody can. I would just cheat, get some money from a lot of people around Indianapolis who want to run the operation that way, and just go out and get the best basketball players I can. Then we'd beat everybody.

Practice structure determines success.

People want national championship banners. People want to talk about Indiana being competitive. How do we get there? We don't get there with milk and cookies.

I tell you what really fries my ass. When somebody gets on me for the way I look. Fat. Overweight. Well, I may be overweight. But I'm sure not fat. And I guarantee you, I'm a better athlete than any f***g body writing. To this day, they don't want to play tennis with me. The don't want to play me in golf. They don't want to f***g run with me

You remember when you were a kid growing up, and believed in Santa Claus? There's not much difference between Santa Claus and me today, you know. We're two overweight lovable guys that kids really enjoy.

I recognize that I have a problem with my temper. For those times it has ever caused me to do anything that gave anyone understandable and justifiable reason to be upset, I am sincerely sorry.

A great way to test the conditioning of your team is the two-mile run.

Failure, to me, is not having the desire to try. Having the desire to try is in it own way success.

Basketball is a full court game, so every drill must be done full court.

I don't intend to retire.

To me, the most enjoyable part is the practice and preparation

My overall point is that 'one and dones' are not healthy for college basketball. I should not have made it personal to Kentucky and its players and I apologize.

We just got our ass beat by a much better team. It happens once in a while. Does every team win every game?

My practices were not set up to be easy or enjoyed.

The goal is to make practice more difficult, physically/mentally, than anything your players will face during a game.

Defense is all about helping. No one can guard a good dribbler, You have to walk kids through how to help and then how to help the helper

I just love the game of basketball so much. The game! I don't need the 18,000 people screaming and all the peripheral things. To me, the most enjoyable part is the practice and preparation.

The biggest difficulty in getting to the top of the ladder is getting through the crowd at the bottom.

Good basketball always starts with good defense!

Perform drills that force your players to think

Offense is not equal opportunity

Offense at Indiana is not equal opportunity. Those players who shoot best are going to shoot most. It is important that every player know his offensive limitations. It is also important that a player know who the best shooter is on the team. When a passer has the option of passing to two players, I expect him to get the ball to the best shooter. I continually stop practice and ask players who the best shooter is and I expect them to know. It is important that you get the ball to your best shooter.

The single most important aspect of coaching is running effective practices

I think that to stop an offense, you must go to the heart of that offense. If it is a particular move, a screen, the break, an outstanding scorer, whatever it is that they like to do and rely on, you have to work in your plans on taking that completely or as much as possible away from them.

I've never felt my job was to win basketball games - rather, that the essence of my job as a coach was to do everything I could to give my players the background necessary to succeed in life.

Son, my name isn't Knight to you, it's Coach Knight or it's Mr. Knight. I don't call people by their last name and neither should you.

Players must be able to carry out simple instructions from the bench to the court. If they can't, then they can't play

I always designed my practice plans the night before and then made tweaks a few hours before practice began

What is the best thing you can do in a close game? Drive to the basket and put pressure on the defense! Not jack up jump shots

Everyone wants to win, but not everyone is willing to prepare to win.

I sit and wonder why no one uses the shot fake. The shot fake, when used correctly, can eliminate a defender

As coaches we talk about two things: offense and defense. There is a third phase we neglect, which is more important. It's conversion from offense to defense and defense to offense.

I hate casual shooting. Every shot is preceded by working to get open and catch and shoot under game like conditions

Everybody hears, but few listen.

Passing is your best weapon against man to man. Dribble penetration is your best weapon against zone.

When we're playing a good scoring center, we tell our team that it is not our defensive man's job to stop the center. It's the responsibility of our perimeter people to stop the ball from going inside.

If the NBA were on channel 5 and a bunch of frogs making love were on channel 4, I'd watch the frogs, even if they were coming in fuzzy.

In order to achieve to achieve positive results, one must work for them, not hope for them

Marsha has done a great job with her teams over her entire career at Texas Tech. Her teams have set a very high standard on how the game of basketball should be played.

I like Huggins a lot, ... and I respect him as a basketball coach. Make sure you write that.