I'm not saying that they were Einsteins; they were marginal students. But every ballplayer whoever touched me has moved up his station in life. And the players moved up my station.
It's always really challenging trying to go from player to player/coach. You have a kind of friendship basis of relationship with all of your teammates and now you go to this power position where you have to make decisions that might hurt people's feelings.
Today was about execution, period. Every single player, all of us in the dressing room right now, we’re embarrassed because that’s not the way we want to play soccer.
I played with Joey Mullen back in Salt Lake City before he got called up to St. Louis. He was the first player ever to score 20 goals in the American League and 20 in the NHL. I've kept in contact with him and he's a great guy.
The best chess-player in Christendom may be little more than the best player of chess; but proficiency in whist implies capacity for success in all those more important undertakings where mind struggles with mind.
I think I earned the players' respect, and that's the ultimate in life, isn't it? I didn't care if they liked me or disliked me, as long as I had their respect.
I was never great, but I was a good [basketball] player, and I could play seriously. Now I'm like one of these old guys who's running around, and the guys I play with, who are all a lot younger, they sort of pity me and sympathize with me. They tolerate me, but we all know that I'm the weak link on the court. And I don't like being the weak link.
What work I have done I have done because it has been play. If it had been work I shouldn't have done it. . . . The work that is really a man's own work is play and not work at all. . . . When we talk about the great workers of the world we really mean the great players of the world.
I'd say handling people is the most important thing you can do as a coach. I've found every time I've gotten into trouble with a player, it's because I wasn't talking to him enough.
An agent won't help you get drafted higher, won't make you win more games, and won't make you faster or stronger. They all say they can, but the people who do the drafting don't talk to agents. They talk to coaches, they watch film, they talk to the people who've worked with players. They don't talk to agents.
Insurance - an ingenious modern game of chance in which the player is permitted to enjoy the comfortable conviction that he is beating the man who keeps the table.