Mike Krzyzewski Quotes

My parents didn't really understand too much about sport. At that time, we were in a Polish community in the inner city of Chicago, and I was the youngest of a bunch of cousins. Polish families are real big, with cousins and aunts and uncles.

A leader is someone who puts their people in position to be successful all the time

Champions play as they practice. Create a consistency of excellence in all your habits.

A basketball team is like the five fingers on your hand. If you can get them all together, you have a fist. That's how I want you to play.

Only the mediocre are always at their best. If your standards are low, it is easy to meet those standards every single day, every single year. But if your standard is to be the best, there will be days when you fall short of that goal. It is okay to not win every game. The only problem would be if you allow a loss or a failure to change your standards. Keep your standards intact, keep the bar set high, and continue to try your very best every day to meet those standards. If you do that, you can always be proud of the work that you do.

In all forms of leadership, whether you are a coach, a CEO, or a parent, there are four words that, when said, can bring out the best in your team, your employees, and your family. I BELIEVE IN YOU. Those four words can mean the difference between a fear of failure and the courage to try.

You don't just be a team. You become a team. Through tough games you find that you need each other

Imagination has a great deal to do with winning.

In order to be a winner, you have to look for ways of getting things done and not for reasons why things can’t be done. People who live with excuses have things that can’t be done hovering around them all the time.

If you win a National Championship, or you win two, people think you have not only seen the Holy Grail, but you've embraced it. Basically, I do what a lot of people do, but I've been able to win.

My hunger is not for success, it is for excellence. Because when you attain excellence, success just naturally follows.

When you are passionate, you always have your destination in sight and you are not distracted by obstacles. Because you love what you are pursuing, things like rejection and setbacks will not hinder you in your pursuit. You believe that nothing can stop you!

The thing I loved the most - and still love the most about teaching - is that you can connect with an individual or a group, and see that individual or group exceed their limits.

I'm looking for players who make their teammates better. You do that with enthusiasm and passion.

Effective teamwork begins and ends with communication

There are five fundamental qualities that make every team great: communication, trust, collective responsibility, caring and pride. I like to think of each as a separate finger on the fist. Any one individually is important. But all of them together are unbeatable

You develop a team to achieve what one person cannot accomplish alone. All of us alone are weaker, by far, than if all of us are together.

Never let a person's weakness get in the way of their strength.

To me, teamwork is the beauty of our sport, where you have five acting as one. You become selfless.

The only way you're going to grow is to be in difficult situations.

Footwork is one of the primary prerequisites to becoming a great player

With accomplishments comes confidence and with confidence comes belief. It has to be in that order.

It takes courage not only to make decisions, but to live with those decisions afterward

In leadership, there are no words more important than trust. In any organization, trust must be developed among every member of the team if success is going to be achieved

Sometimes in a defeat, you can set the stage for future victory.

People want to be on a team. They want to be part of something bigger than themselves. They want to be in a situation where they feel that they are doing something for the greater good.

The truth is that many people set rules to keep from making decisions.

In our program, the truth is the basis of all we do. There is nothing more important than the truth because there's nothing more powerful than the truth. Consequently, on our team, we always tell each other the truth. We must be honest with one another. There is no other way.

That's another thing, we made up games. We didn't have equipment. When it snowed, we would play slow motion tackle football. We would play hockey, but we wouldn't skate. We just made things up. I loved doing that.

Talent is important. But the single most important ingredient after you get the talent is internal leadership. It's not the coaches as much as one single person or people on the team who set higher standards than that team would normally set for itself. I really believe that that's been ultimately important for us.

One of the worst things anybody can do is assume. I think fools assume. If people have really got it together, they never assume anything. They believe, they work hard, and they prepare- but they don't assume.

Our goal is not to win. It's to play together and play hard. Then, winning takes care of itself.

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

If you have talent with teamwork, you've got a chance to be a championship team.

Communication does not always occur naturally, even among a tight-knit group of individuals. Communication must be taught and practiced in order to bring everyone together as one

You can't defer if you're the person who's in the leadership position.

Goals should be realistic, attainable, and shared among all members of the team

During critical periods, a leader is not allowed to feel sorry for himself, to be down, to be angry, or to be weak. Leaders must beat back these emotions

It's funny what happens when you become a grandparent. You start to act all goofy and do things you never thought you'd do. It's terrific.

There are always those times when you're going to be down. It's how you step through it that makes you the person you are.

The other thing I knew I had was a high level of competitiveness.

The life expectancy of a team is about eight months. Then the next year, it's a whole new team.

Confrontation simply means meeting the truth head-on.

In high school, in sport, I had a coach who told me I was much better than I thought I was, and would make me do more in a positive sense. He was the first person who taught me not to be afraid of failure.

That's what I do now: I lead and I teach. If we win basketball games from doing that, then that's great, but I lead and teach. Those are the two things I concentrate on.

I have a rule on my team: When we talk to one another, we look each other right in the eye, because I think it's tough to lie to somebody. You give respect to somebody.

Don't worry about losing. Think about winning.

Play and practice like you are trying to make the team.

It’s simply doing what you’re supposed to do as well as you can when you’re supposed to do it.

Leaders should be reliable without being predictable. They should be consistent without being anticipated