Jim Valvano Quotes

When I coached guys that I knew would be good coaches, I kind of push them.

It's very easy to say take a player, a world-class player out of the system of playing and just push him into a coaching role but coaching is a whole other thing. It's a skill.

Every coach has a different style and approach.

I have coaching friends, and when we get together, we often talk more about what we're doing to get players' attention than we do about the fascinating X's and O's of our sport.

No head coach does it by himself. I don't care who the coach is or how great he might be. Mike Krzyzewski is is a great friend of mine and he's a great coach but he has great, great assistant coaches and they bring a lot to the table and that's what it takes.

I've been following some of the coaches, trying to get a little bit more experience, because coaching is very different from being a player.

I think all coaches have their own way of doing things.

At heart, I'm still a coach. I'm always a coach.

When I first starting coaching, I used a megaphone.

Every coach has their own philosophy for getting the best out of players, and sometimes these can seem strange to the public.

I don't look at myself as a basketball coach. I look at myself as a leader who happens to coach basketball.

Larry Brown thought Steve Francis was a Larry Brown type of player.

I have been coaching recently. I coached high school basketball in Arizona, and I hope that more opportunities become available.

I've been coaching the sport for a number of years. And I went through many athletes. Some athletes stay with your program for a long, long period of time. Some athletes, they have a different approach as far as coaching style or your philosophies. I totally respect their own opinions - they have the right to choose their own coach.

So you get two good hours on the field about every day, you get about an hour and a half in the meeting room and that's pretty much all you need to thoroughly coach your team.

Teaching players during practices was what coaching was all about to me.

If I were a young coach today, I would be extremely careful in selecting assistants.

In Seattle, I've talked about how Pete Carroll is such... I'm kind of surprised at the variety of styles that successful coaches can have. Some are very communicative and positive and energized - like, Pete Carroll has all that in spades. Some of them are more cerebral; some are more directive.

You can't win unless you have good people with great attitude. They are the ones who won the games. I didn't win any games. You never saw a coach make a tackle anywhere. My philosophy was to get the best players and then try to do something new with them.

It wasn't until I started my coaching badges that I found that I enjoyed it.

I don't like to compare coaches.

When you get in coaching, you realize there are only two kinds of coaches - those that are fired and those who are going to get fired.

I think when a new manager who has a specific way of playing comes to any league, he doesn't think about adapting but rather looks for ways to slowly implement his style so it can be developed for years to come.

One of the things you get caught up as a coach is thinking short-term.

I think, as a coach, you've got to do what your players can do.