 The person who has inspired me my whole life is my Mom, because she taught me commitment. She sacrificed. |
| The truth is that many people set rules to keep from making decisions. |
| When I went to high school, an all-boys' school, a Catholic school, I tried out for football, and I didn't make it. It was the first time, athletically, that I was knocked down. |
| In high school, in sport, I had a coach who told me I was much better than I thought I was, and would make me do more in a positive sense. He was the first person who taught me not to be afraid of failure. |
| I always won in my imagination. I always hit the game-winning shot, or I hit the free throw. Or if I missed, there was a lane violation, and I was given another one. |
| Actually, the Kentucky moment was better than winning the two National Championships, because it was the epitome of what I try to get from a team in a crisis situation. |
| Once you win a National Championship, how do you do that again? How do you get the passion to do that again? We won it again right away, the next year. A lot of it had to do with the fact that I didn't give myself an opportunity to enjoy the first one. |
| The other thing I knew I had was a high level of competitiveness. |
| Playing sport was somewhat frivolous, but I liked it. I rebelled a little bit, and wouldn't go to music lessons and things like that, but I would go and play ball. My parents learned to love it because they saw how much I got out of it. |
| Everybody wants to take responsibility when you win, but when you fail, all these fingers are pointing. |
| Parents can really help, but they can also really hinder the development of their youngsters. |
| There are kids don't want to do something because they're afraid of looking stupid to their peers. There comes a time when they start protecting themselves, instead of extending. I want to make sure that they're always trying to extend themselves. |
| I've tried to handle winning well, so that maybe we'll win again, but I've also tried to handle failure well. If those serve as good examples for teachers and kids, then I hope that would be a contribution I have made to sport. Not just basketball, but to sport. |
| My ambition in high school was to be a high school coach and teacher, and that's still what I do: teach. |
| The life expectancy of a team is about eight months. Then the next year, it's a whole new team. |
| I have a rule on my team: when we talk to one another, we look each other right in the eye, because I think it's tough to lie to somebody. You give respect to somebody. |
| I'm fortunate now that I coach at Duke University and we've won a lot. I have some kids who haven't failed that much. But when they get to college, they're going to fail some time. That's a thing that I can help them the most with. |
| I always wanted to teach. |
| I had a really bad temper, when I was growing up. Sport helped me channel that temper into more positive acts. |
| Even though we want huge individual egos, our collective ego is unbelievable. |
