1.
It's not just about working hard, it's about working together. You have to care more about the team than you do about yourself
John Calipari
2.
A successful person never loses...they either win or learn!
John Calipari
3.
You've gotta learn to love the grind. Because life IS the grind.
John Calipari
4.
If I walk in a home and a kid disrespects a woman, his mother or grandmother, then I am out... I wont recruit them
John Calipari
5.
I need people who look at adversity as a challenge and failure as a learning opportunity.
John Calipari
6.
It's not about how far you fall, but how high you rebound.
John Calipari
7.
Practice gotta be harder than the games and it never is unless you want it to be as a player. The coach can't drive that
John Calipari
8.
There's no other state, none, that's as connected to their basketball program as this one. Because those other states have other programs. Michigan has Michigan State, California has UCLA, North Carolina has Duke. It's Kentucky throughout this whole state, and that's what makes us unique.
John Calipari
9.
The only thing I pay attention to with free throws is what a guy does in the final four minutes of a game. If you can improve players' self-esteem and confidence, get them to relax, teach visualization and routine, they will shoot as well, or better, with the pressure on.
John Calipari
10.
I'm playing the guys who are going to fight. If you're not into this, I'm going to someone else
John Calipari
11.
You understand, you do not invent stuff on this team. Guys that invent stuff will not play for me. Make the easy play
John Calipari
12.
The best teams I've had had a little bit of swagger.
John Calipari
13.
When you're trying to build or change a culture, what do you do? I always say to take players from state championship teams because they only know one thing -- winning.
John Calipari
14.
What type of teammates do you want to play with? Be that teammate yourself
John Calipari
15.
You better educate yourself. You don't stand in the front of the line unless you're up there because you know everything that's involved.
John Calipari
16.
If we're going to stay the gold standard, we're going to stay ahead of the curve, well, then, when people try to do the things we're doing, we're trying to do more. We're trying to do something different. We're coming at it a different way. That, for me, to be honest, is the fun part.
John Calipari
17.
What do you do to help us win when you're not scoring baskets?
John Calipari
18.
I'm a teacher, a motivator. That's what I do. And I'm a protector on top of that.
John Calipari
19.
A great defensive effort. The one thing we have to do is make it hard for people to beat us. We're not worried about winning and losing, we just have to make the game hard
John Calipari
20.
The biggest thing is you cannot be afraid to miss the game-winning shot. It's not that you want to make it; it's that you're not afraid to miss it. You're not afraid to make a play and it go wrong. You have to have amnesia. You're not afraid to make a play and it go wrong.
John Calipari
21.
You have to lose yourself in the team and you have to lose yourself in the game
John Calipari
22.
Nothing is given to you. You're going to have to work for it.
John Calipari
23.
The people that are around me that give me ideas that I pass along or we try, the one thing I never do, I never give credit to anybody but myself. So I take all of the ideas. So everybody thinks that all of the ideas are mine.
John Calipari
24.
The biggest day in the history of Kentucky's program.
John Calipari
25.
The hardest thing for a basketball player to do is dribble two really hard dribbles. You are flying, and then pull up and shoot a ball from 15, 17 feet. It's the hardest thing in the game.
John Calipari
26.
You don't have pressure on yourself to have to go nuts.
John Calipari
27.
You'd better make sure that you know you can make a difference, and if it's a difference you want to make, is there another way to do the same thing, and what's the down side? What's the repercussions if I do this? To my career, to my family, whatever else.
John Calipari
28.
The guys that make game winners are
the guys that are not afraid to miss them.
John Calipari
29.
The best players I've coached make really hard things look easy. Like you may say, well, that was easy, and then, well, go try it. You think it's so easy, go ahead and do it.
John Calipari
30.
You do things other people cannot do, so just stay in the moment as you improve the other areas.
John Calipari
31.
If my team won a national title and no one got drafted, I'd be disappointed.
John Calipari
32.
You can be the seventh scorer or the first scorer, just be your best version.
John Calipari
33.
Be more concerned with everybody else than yourself.
John Calipari
34.
I would enjoy the fact that I had a team that won a national title, but I would be disappointed that none of the kids got drafted because that's not how it's supposed to work.
John Calipari
35.
I know who I am. I don't see myself as this whoever they see me as.
John Calipari
36.
For our children, you want them to build their own self-esteem and their own self-confidence. For your own child. You don't want it to come from somebody else because, if it does, that same person can take it away. You want them to learn the grind.
John Calipari
37.
When your best players are really good guys, it's the best.
John Calipari
38.
It has to be fun for you when you see somebody at a distance and you take their opinion of what they're going to be like and then you go interview them, and they're totally different. You're like, wow, I didn't expect that.
John Calipari
39.
Generational poverty, most of us don't know what that means.
John Calipari
40.
Everything all of us do is stolen from somebody.
John Calipari
41.
Having a kind heart, you care about everybody else. You don't eat everything. Don't be a big. People in the community, be nice. As coaches, we want to see guys develop those kind of things, take those things with them when they leave our programs.
John Calipari
42.
That's America, competition.
John Calipari
43.
All the teams you have have different personalities, and you kind of want it.
John Calipari
44.
If I ever tell the same story twice, just laugh and roll with it because, when you get older, you start doing that kind of stuff.
John Calipari
45.
We can't have one group that oversees everything and then they define what amateurism is.
John Calipari
46.
We're not moving fast enough with where things are going.
John Calipari
47.
I know I'm not a saint, but I'm not the guy I'm made out to be by others.
John Calipari
48.
You want perfection, go to a bowling alley!
John Calipari
49.
When you're trying to make somebody the best version of themselves, you have to keep defining that over a period of time because sometimes it changes.
John Calipari
