Phil Jackson Player Quotations

I think the most important thing about coaching is that you have to have a sense of confidence about what you're doing. You have to be a salesman and you have to get your players, particularly your leaders, to believe in what you're trying to accomplish on the basketball floor.

He is coming up with some key plays for us. And at the offensive end, he is doing things that help him finish at the basket. When a player plays extended minutes, you fall into that rhythm. Kwame has set himself up to have this sort of success.

That's not unusual for a player to lose concentration if certain phases of the game go wrong for him. He put some pressure on himself to score. All players want to score as a part of their game. . . . I don't know where his confidence is. You either have it or you don't have it. It doesn't reside in your jockstrap or your brain. His confidence should be in his defense. That's where he plays and rebounds and hustles for us.

I just think he's a very determined player and dedicated to what he's doing. He's doing a lot of letting things develop on their own.

He's still not 100 percent. He will be established in this organization as a prominent player. I'm going to ask him to step into that level as a responsible player on the floor.

I don't see how you're going to get value out of this player who, in my estimation, is one of the most valuable players in the league. Of course, I estimate him perhaps higher than other people. I think he's a terrific player. He adds a big dimension in every game he plays in.

I always tell the players, "We are in the business that's very much like a marathon race only we're gonna be doing it for 260-something days or so." And the race is something you get ready to do. There's gonna be some trial inside of there, but you put yourself through it because ultimately it brings a lot of meaning to your life, it gives a lot of energy to what you're doing.

Coaching is salesmanship. Coaching is winning players over and convincing them they have to play together. It takes a team conviction to play together to make things work.

The problem with trading dominant players of that size is you never get in return what you've bargained away.

Despite their tremendous talent, (NBA players) are still, by and large, young adults, seeking validation from an authority figure, and there is no greater authority figure on a team than the coach. Needless to say, in today's warped, self-indulgent climate, too many players couldn't care less about appeasing the coach.

My philosophy is that you can't motivate players with speeches, you have motivated players that you draft. That's where they come in and those are the guys that are competitive. You cannot teach competitiveness.

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.’

He practiced against Kobe all of last year, so obviously it was sweet revenge for him. We deserved that. We didn't know who he was, we gave him up to Charlotte, we had no idea how good a player he was.

A coach's main job is to reawaken a spirit in which the players can blend together effortlessly.

Basketball is a great mystery. You can do everything right. You can have the perfect mix of talent and the best system of offense in the game. You can devise a foolproof defensive strategy and prepare your players for every possible eventuality. But if the players don’t have a sense of oneness as a group, your efforts won’t pay off. And the bond that unites a team can be so fragile, so elusive.

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