Kyrie Irving Quotes

My type of basketball is about how to create space, how to maneuver, how to get your shot off.

Basketball is a simple game. Your goal is penetration, get the ball close to the basket, and there are three ways to do that. Pass, dribble and offensive rebound.

One of my favorite aspects of basketball is good passing.

I had a vision of how basketball should be played. And the vision was the Knicks teams that won the championship in 1970 and 1973. I wanted a team that emphasized defense. I wanted a team that on offense had a system where players moved off the ball, and the ball moved.

Street basketball is all about shakes and fakes, crossing your defender up. The NBA is more strategic.

Without the hand check rule, players are more likely to work their way open.

I think in Toronto my job was to score just based on the system that we had. We played a lot of iso basketball - a lot of one-on-one basketball.

Golden State was basically a guard-oriented offense so I didn't use it that much.

I'm always open. As soon as I cross the half-court line, I'm open.

It's easy to draw up isolation basketball - it's not easy to draw up great motion offense with passing and cutting.

When I'm in the pick-and-roll, I'm looking to be a playmaker first and to score second. When I'm playing off the ball and I catch the ball, I'm looking to be a scorer first and a playmaker second.

In pick-and-roll situations, I feel like the NBA is all pick-and-rolls, so I want to be able to handle the ball in pick-and-rolls and make the right read, make the right passes, and make plays for my teammates.

The bruisers and the bump-and-grind guys, use your athleticism on the floor, try to wear them out - run them through a lot of pick-and-rolls, run the floor, do a lot more athletic stuff just to try to wear them down.

I think the best thing about my game that translates into the NBA is being able to create for others. Using open space and using pick and rolls.

You got to be able when you get the ball, slow it down, read the defense, call for a pick, and go off a pick-and-roll instead of going isolation all the time. Just be able to use that screen.

When you're watching from the bench, you can pick up on everything - where guys like to shoot the ball from, how teams defend the pick-and-roll, which big men are good at hedging the screen and so on.

When teams are crowded in the paint, it's very hard to get in there and penetrate, but you got to find ways to get into transition and get into your strengths. It's a lot of thinking out there, you got to make sure you think and strategize.

Scott Skiles was a master tactician - they're all masters, but he is elite. He knew how to manipulate his team from an X's-and-O's standpoint.

I'm more off ball, catch and go, spot-ups, cutting.

I think I can score. But personally, I like to pass first, because people love people who pass. And I'm a point guard, so my job is to kind of get people open.

Guys like Andre Miller and Kevin Garnett - they're posting up hoping a second guy will run at them so they can pass. You're better just playing one-on-one in the post if you can.

You know, pass now to pinch post, cut, shoot the shot. Do things to facilitate the offense. That's what I did in Alabama.

Phil Jackson was a brilliant basketball coach, not just because of the offense that he employed, but it was so many other things that went into it.

Who says a center can't make the pass into the post? Michael Jordan, effectively, was a post player and you saw with the championship teams players able to do multiple things.

When you're running next to a guy who's about to lay it up in transition, you just get out of the way because you know Giannis is coming to block it.