Don Meyer Basketball Quotations

Have character, don't be one.

It doesn't matter where you coach, it matters why you coach.

In practice, don't just run basketball drills, teach the players how to play basketball.

Quickness more than anything else should determine your amount of pressure on the ball.

Sometimes the best recruits are the ones you don't get.

Proper prior planning prevents pitiful poor performance.

Successful basketball coaches are those that subscribe to a system that is based on sound fundamental teachings.

Time doesn't fly when you are not happy.

Nobody travels better than Northern State fans and nobody knows the game better than Northern State fans. If I'd die and went to heaven and I was coaching, it would be at Wachs Arena.

To those who much has been given, much is expected.

We have to get a lot tougher. If you get involved in a street fight, you can't lay down in the street and act like you're dead because they will kill you for sure. You might as well get up and fight.

The only thing success should do is make you more humble.

When I go in for heart surgery, I want a full-time surgeon. I don't want some guy who just does it part-time between rounds of golf. You want a guy who is doing it all the time and is always reading and learning about the most recent techniques.

There is a lot of difference at McDonald's between the guy in the back making the fries and the manager up front who is running the place.

In the end, what your own troops do is more important than who they are marching against.

Go from good to great because good is the enemy of great.

Can your player make a curl cut and score in the lane? If so, he is the cutter.

I have learned that peace is not the absence of trial, trouble, or torment but the presence of calm in the midst of them

Only run special plays for special players; find plays that fit your players.

If you want to thank me, go do something for somebody else

Play off your great player... great teams have a go-to player and they play off of him.

You build your program from the ideas of great coaches.

Make the practices like games and the games like practices.

Ten minutes after you lose that last game, you start working on next season.

You have to learn things in every game because you are not going to be able to practice two-and-a-half to three hours (during the season), so the games have to be the ultimate learning experience.

We have 2,500 students and an 8,000-seat basketball arena. You do the math on how important basketball is in Aberdeen.

We sure didn't play great, but we played hard. And I can live with that.

The ability to rebound is in inverse proportion to the distance your house is from the nearest railroad tracks.

It is not what you teach, but what you emphasize.

Winning a postseason game is like winning five regular season games. There is just no feeling like it. Everything is magnified. Every free throw, turnover, shot and play.

You have to learn to play with what you've got.

Put your two best players away from the ball and bring it back to them.

If I cover my head with my hands, it means deny the ball to the opponent's ball handler.

I tell everyone that I have 25,000 assistant coaches. If I want to know something, I just go to the grocery store.'

We can always do it better.

As a coach, you're just trying to figure out how to keep a team on edge. You've got to find that edge.

Every day you teach attitude.

We painted a beautiful picture, but we just didn't finish it. Finishing is the difference between a beautiful picture and a masterpiece.

What you accept in victory, you must accept in defeat.

You aren't going to win championships unless you make layups and free throws.

When the legs go, the heart and the head follow quickly behind.

Shared suffering: one guy messes up and everyone runs. One guy does well and everyone benefits.

There is nothing more important than rebounding... don't just give it lip service.

When you get to be my age, you don't buy green bananas because you may not be around to eat them.

The team is an extension of the coach.

Administrators are like pigs; don't wrestle with a pig because you both get dirty and the pig likes it.

To be a team, you must be a family.

Players must do what you want them to do in pressure situations.

We had 10 turnovers tonight. Each one gets worse as you go. It is like prior arrests: the 10th one may not have been that bad, but when you have had nine prior ones, it looks pretty bad.

If it comes down to you or the program that decision was made long ago.

There's only one thing we can control, and that is how hard we play.

Parents would rather have their son get all-state than his team win the state championship.

Anytime you get an award as a coach, you've got to be the ultimate fool to think it wasn't your assistant coaches and all the players responsible for the award.

We always need to be prepared and work hard in practice so we can be just like the farmer who has put that fourth cutting of hay in the barn. After he does that, he can feel good about what is going to happen the rest of the winter.

Plays are not as important as players, and players are not as important as teammates

If a farmer and his family can get up at 5:30 every morning to milk cows, surly we can get up at that time to practice basketball.

Simplify the game as much as possible. When you add, you must subtract.

You never realize the value of coaching until your children play for a coach

Good shooters take the shots; best shooters take most of the shots.

The worst day coaching is better than the best day doing anything else

Our goal as a team is to keep playing as a group for as long as we can because you will never have that team again. It is like a dying limb, you have to prune it off and let another one grow in its place. That is the way you have to do it, but it still hurts losing these guys and that team because they and you have put so much effort into building a team. Even if you win that last game (and a national championship), it hurts badly because the players know they will never have that same special group of guys together on the same team again. Somebody always goes and somebody new always comes in.

You can pick captains, but you can't pick leaders. Whoever controls the locker room controls the team

Discipline and demand without being demeaning.

It is foolish to expect a young man to follow your advice and to ignore your example.

Your program must have an overriding purpose which is clearly visible and which teaches lessons beyond winning.

It doesn't cost nothing to be nice to people

You have to clean out the pig barn every week because you know your pigs are in there doing their jobs every day.

Players who are late say that their time is more important than the team.

Shout praise and whisper criticism.

If you are a good team, your offense is born on the defensive end.

Discover your gift, develop your gift and then give it away every day.

If you can do something and not blow your own horn, it sure sounds a lot better.

Be what ya is, 'cause if ya be what you ain't, ya ain't what ya is.

Positioning, anticipation and technique create quickness. Therefore, you can always get quicker

When you watch the game, be a student of the game.

Successful programs consist of people working hard, working together, while never worrying about who gets the credit.

Recognize and reward players who put the team first, not just the gifted ones.