Luol Deng Quotes

You don't want to let the other team feed off your outward physical demeanor. But at the same time, you can't go out and play this game and not expect to just be angry and be competitive and be excited and have that fire in your belly.

Some people seem to think football is like theatre and that everyone has to play the good guy. But I think that you transform when you cross the white line: you're not the same person as off it.

As soon as I step on the field, totally different person. As soon as I step off, I go back to who I've always been.

On the field, you have to be aggressive; you're thinking how to get the better of a situation. It's not that I don't laugh on the field. In fact, I think it's very important to laugh, especially when you are angry and aggressive, to just take the tension away, make the moment go away.

I'm not in this sport to say a guy can beat me.

Everybody gets all worked up about trash talk but it is what it is - it's talk... You ask any player, honestly, if trash talk's gonna affect how hard they play, because if a little trash talk affects how hard they can play, it just lets us know that they were holding back or weren't playing harder or as hard as they could.

I think any football is a guy that is able to one, be able to be humble and hungry off the field, but at the same time on the football field understand what they have to get done and be a little bit ferocious.

Defensive players kind of have that two-faced kind of way of being able to be very aggressive on the football field and going out there and getting there job done. At the same time, from my own incidents and my own personality, I'm much a person that's very likable and lovable.

In playing or managing, the game of ball is only fun for me when I'm out in front and winning. I don't give a hill of beans for the rest of the game.

It is difficult to be yourself on court, as you become very involved in the match and very focused.

I'm very easy-going off court, but I really want to win once I'm walking on to the court.

I think that's one of the first things you'd say if you met me: that I am just nice and smiley. And that's how I might appear when I'm not competing. But I'm totally different when it comes to sport. It's just something that seems to be within me. It's not external or visual. But it's within me.

I'm competitive when I fight, but I don't get emotionally involved.

One thing when I started playing in the league, I saw that a lot of guys are friendly. It's OK to be friendly, especially off the court. But on the court, I want to dominate.

You have to be different on the field than you are at home.

When I put my helmet on, I'm ultra competitive, talking trash.

I go into every game like I'm playing at school!

I play basketball hard-nosed and if you're not on my team, during that 48 minutes we're enemies.

Generally I don't say too much on the field. However, I am a fast bowler and with that comes the responsibility of saying a word or two and getting in a guy's face.

Show me a golfer who doesn't have a mean streak, and I'll show you a weak competitor.

Playing well or playing bad, I have to play aggressive. I must play aggressive.

When you step onto that field, you cannot concede a thing.

I don't care how much talent a team has - if the boys don't think tough, practice tough, and live tough, how they play tough on Saturday.

You can tell a great athlete by, like, not how many times he wins, unlike when he loses. Because that's what is gonna make a swimmer.

Losing is the bane and bugbear of every professional athlete's existence, but in baseball the monster seems to hang closer than in other sports, its chilly claws and foul breath palpable around the neck hairs of the infielder bending for his crosshand scoop or the reliever slipping his first two fingers off-center on the ball seams before delivering his two-and-two cut fastball.