Pat Riley Quotes

There are only two options regarding commitment; you’re either in or you’re out.

A champion needs a motivation above and beyond winning.

You have to defeat a great players aura more than his game.

Excellence is the gradual result of always striving to do better.

Shoulda, coulda, and woulda won't get it done. In attacking adversity, only a positive attitude, alertness, and regrouping to basics can launch a comeback.

Excellence happens when you try each day to both do and be, a little better than you were yesterday!

The key to teamwork is to learn a role, accept a role, and strive to become excellent playing it.

Don't let other people tell you what you want.

The Ten Commandments were not a suggestion.

Being ready isn't enough; you have to be prepared for a promotion or any other significant change.

You have no choices about how you lose, but you do have a choice about how you come back and prepare to win again.

Coaches who let a championship team back off from becoming a dynasty are cowards.

There's always the motivation of wanting to win. Everybody has that. But a champion needs, in his attitude, a motivation above and beyond winning.

All of us have at least one great voice deep inside. People are products of their environment. A lucky few are born into situations in which positive messages abound. Others grow up hearing messages of fear and failure, which they must block out so the positive can be heard. But the positive and courageous voice will always emerge, somewhere, sometime, for all of us. Listen for it, and your breakthroughs will come.

We measure areas of performance that are often ignored: jumping in pursuit of every rebound even if you don't get it, swatting at every pass, diving for loose balls, letting someone smash into you in order to draw the foul. These 'effort' statistics are also stored on computer. Effort is what ultimately separates journeyman players from impact players. Knowing how well a player executes all these little things is the key to unlocking career-best performances.

The most DIFFICULT thing for individuals to do when they become part of a team is to sacrifice, it is much EASIER to be selfish.

When you're playing against a stacked deck, compete even harder. Show the world how much you'll fight for the winners circle. If you do, someday the cellophane will crackle off a fresh pack, one that belongs to you, and the cards will be stacked in your favor.

Each Warrior wants to leave the mark of his will, his signature, on important acts he touches. This is not the voice of ego but of the human spirit, rising up and declaring that it has something to contribute to the solution of the hardest problems, no matter how vexing!

If you get tough mentally, you can get tough physically and overcome fatigue.

Management must speak with one voice. When it doesn't management itself becomes a peripheral opponent to the team's mission.

Anytime you stop striving to get better, you're bound to get worse.

If you have a positive attitude and constantly strive to give your best effort, eventually you will overcome your immediate problems and find you are ready for greater challenges.

Am I a control freak? No. Do I believe in organization? You bet. In discipline? In being on time and making sure everything at the hotel is ready and right? Definitely. I don't control players. I try to control the environment around the players so they can flourish.

When a great team loses through complacency, it will constantly search for new and more intricate explanations to explain away defeat.

Great teamwork is the only way we create the breakthroughs that define our careers.

From nobody to upstart. From upstart to contender. From contender to winner. From winner to champion. From champion to Dynasty.

When you're playing against a stacked deck, compete even harder.

In every contest, there comes a moment that separates winning from losing. The true warrior understands and seizes that moment.

Any team can be a miracle team. The catch is that you have got to go out and work for your miracles. Effort is what ultimately separates great teams from ordinary teams.

We sometimes need adversity to fathom our true depths.

There's no such thing as coulda, shoulda, or woulda. If you shoulda and coulda, you woulda done it.

When you leave it to chance, then all of a sudden you don't have any more luck.

Giving yourself permission to lose guarantees a loss.

You can only receive what you're willing to give.

To have long term success as a coach or in any position of leadership, you have to be obsessed in some way.

Never be ready to play yesterday. Being ready to play today is what's important

When a milestone is conquered, the subtle erosion called entitlement begins its consuming grind. The team regards its greatness as a trait and a right. Half hearted effort becomes habit and saps a champion.

The true warrior understands and seizes that moment by giving an effort so intense and so intuitive that it could only be called one from the heart.

There can only be one state of mind as you approach any profound test; total concentration, a spirit of togetherness, and strength.

Great effort springs naturally from great attitude.

When a gifted team dedicates itself to unselfish trust and combines instinct with boldness and effort, its ready to climb.

Great players and great teams want to be driven. They want to be pushed to the edge. They don't want to be cheated. Ordinary players and average teams want it to be easy

Teamwork requires that everyone's efforts flow in a single direction. Feelings of significance happen when a team's energy takes on a life of its own.

No rebounds, no rings.

Being a part of success is more important than being personally indispensable.

Great players crave instruction on their weaknesses.

All I did from day-to-day is coach. That's what my job was, that's what my passion was, and the fact that now it's something I'm being considered for is just mind-blowing to me, that I would ever be in that kind of company.

Look for your choices, pick the best one, then go with it.

People who create 20% of the results will begin believing they deserve 80% of the rewards.

There is no such thing as life in-between.