Bobby Knight Quotes

“The will to succeed is important, but what's more important is the will to prepare.”

— Bobby Knight

“When I first started coaching, one of the worst things that I think I heard was 'It will be O.K.' I would wonder, 'How the hell is it going to be O.K.?' The worst word in the English language is 'hope.'”

— Bobby Knight

“If I were involved with the NBA, I wouldn't want a 19-year-old or a 20-year-old kid to bring into all the travel and all the problems that exist in the NBA. I would want a much more mature kid. I would want a kid that maybe I've been watching on another team, and now he's 21, 22 years old instead of 18 or 19, and I might trade for that kid.”

— Bobby Knight

“You don't play against opponents, you play against the game of basketball.”

— Bobby Knight

All the years I coached, we sent a card to every professor for each kid I had, and I was able to keep track on a daily basis who cut class or who was dropping a grade average. What I did was bring that kid in at 5:00 in the morning, and he would run the stairs from the bottom to the top until I told him to quit.

— Bobby Knight

“Mental toughness is to physical as four is to one.”

— Bobby Knight

“Walking has been ridiculous in college basketball the past 15 years.”

— Bobby Knight

“All of us learn to write in the second grade. Most of us go on to greater things.”

— Bobby Knight

“I've never predicted anything. All I have ever said is, that we will do the very best we can.”

— Bobby Knight

As his team prepares, a coach's entire being must be concentrated on winning games.

— Bobby Knight

“Why talk now when so many things have been said without ever giving me a chance to talk?”

— Bobby Knight

“Major League Baseball has the best idea of all. Three years before they'll take a kid out of college, then they have a minor league system that they put the kids in. I'm sure that if the NBA followed the same thing, there would be a lot of kids in a minor league system that still were not good enough to play in the major NBA.”

— Bobby Knight

“I don't think I have ever been out of control.”

— Bobby Knight

“I don't intend to retire.”

— Bobby Knight

“I'm an unemployed teacher right now and I'm looking for a place to teach.”

— Bobby Knight

“You play ball against yourself; your opponent is your potential.”

— Bobby Knight

Discipline is knowing what to do. Knowing when to do it. Doing it to the best of your abilities. Doing it that way every single time.

— Bobby Knight

“To be as good as it can be, a team has to buy into what you as the coach are doing. They have to feel you're a part of them and they're a part of you.”

— Bobby Knight

I don't believe in luck, I believe in preparation.

— Bobby Knight

“We should not have to push you to work hard, you should work hard because you want to be a great player.”

— Bobby Knight

“Everybody wants to be on a championship team, but nobody wants to come to practice.”

— Bobby Knight

“It has always been my thought that the most important single ingredient to success in athletics or life is discipline. I have many times felt that this word is the most ill-defined in all of our language. My definition isas follows: 1. Do what has to be done; 2. When it has to be done; 3. As well as it can be done; and 4. Do it it that way all the time.”

— Bobby Knight

“Your biggest opponent isn't the other guy. It's human nature.”

— Bobby Knight

“I always designed my practice plans the night before and then made tweaks a few hours before practice began”

— Bobby Knight

“Everyone wants to win, but not everyone is willing to prepare to win.”

— Bobby Knight

“Offense at Indiana is not equal opportunity. Those players who shoot best are going to shoot most. It is important that every player know his offensive limitations. It is also important that a player know who the best shooter is on the team. When a passer has the option of passing to two players, I expect him to get the ball to the best shooter. I continually stop practice and ask players who the best shooter is and I expect them to know. It is important that you get the ball to your best shooter.”

— Bobby Knight

“Do what needs to be done, when it needs to be done the best way it can be done, and do it that way every time.”

— Bobby Knight

“I, fortunately, have never worried about irritating people.”

— Bobby Knight

“Offense is not equal opportunity”

— Bobby Knight

Perform drills that force your players to think

— Bobby Knight

“Learn to do things right and then do them right every time.”

— Bobby Knight

We talk in coaching about "winners" - kids, and I've had a lot of them, who just will not allow themselves or their team to lose. Coaches call that a will to win. I don't. I think that puts the emphasis in the wrong place. Everybody has a will to win. What's far more important is having the will to prepare to win.

— Bobby Knight

“It is better to anticipate than to react.”

— Bobby Knight

“My practices were not set up to be easy or enjoyed.”

— Bobby Knight

“Pat has been instrumental in what we've done here so far and the most selfish thing for me is that I want to see what we've done placed in the hands of the most competent person, and that's Pat. No one would come close to being able to continue to build on what we've done here so far like he will.”

— Bobby Knight

“Basketball is a full court game, so every drill must be done full court.”

— Bobby Knight

“I recognize that I have a problem with my temper. For those times it has ever caused me to do anything that gave anyone understandable and justifiable reason to be upset, I am sincerely sorry.”

— Bobby Knight

I tell you what really fries my ass. When somebody gets on me for the way I look. Fat. Overweight. Well, I may be overweight. But I'm sure not fat. And I guarantee you, I'm a better athlete than any f***g body writing. To this day, they don't want to play tennis with me. The don't want to play me in golf. They don't want to f***g run with me

— Bobby Knight

“For me to get an award from the press, I know there's been no favoritism.”

— Bobby Knight

BS is just what it stands for, an MS is More of the Same, and a PhD is Piled Higher and Deeper.

— Bobby Knight

“My overall point is that 'one and dones' are not healthy for college basketball. I should not have made it personal to Kentucky and its players and I apologize.”

— Bobby Knight

“We've gotten into this situation where integrity is really lacking and that's why I'm glad I'm not coaching. You see we've got a coach at Kentucky who put two schools on probation and he's still coaching. I really don't understand that.”

— Bobby Knight

“At one point, I said to the officials that you guys haven't called walking for 20 years, now you don't know what it is. When you call walking, you're about half right.”

— Bobby Knight

“Defense is all about helping. No one can guard a good dribbler, You have to walk kids through how to help and then how to help the helper”

— Bobby Knight

“I was worried about losing until I looked down the floor and saw Dale Brown. Then I knew we had a chance.”

— Bobby Knight

Victory favors the team making the fewest mistakes.

— Bobby Knight

Don't fight the rabbits. If you fight the rabbits, the elephants are going to kill you.

— Bobby Knight

I would rather be thought of as a teacher than a coach.

— Bobby Knight

“Basketball may have been invented in Massachusetts, but it was made for Indiana.”

— Bobby Knight

“The red I wear is Indiana's red, not Moscow's red. Indiana was here long before communism.”

— Bobby Knight