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Phil Jackson Quotes

Total quotes: 10
“One thing I’ve learned as a coach is that you can’t force your will on people. If you want them to act differently, you need to inspire them to change themselves.”
— Phil Jackson, Hugh Delehanty, Eleven Rings: The Soul of Success
Tagged: Coaching, Mentoring, Leadership
“I bought a bicycle and pedaled all over town, trying to connect with the real New York City. But no matter how much time I spent in Central Park, to me living in the city felt like living indoors. I needed to be someplace where I could feel a strong connection to the earth.”
— Phil Jackson, Eleven Rings: The Soul of Success
Tagged: Nature, New York City, Rural Vs. Urban
“The essence of coaching is to get the players to wholeheartedly agree to being coached, then offer them a sense of their destiny as a team.”
— Phil Jackson, Eleven Rings: The Soul of Success
Tagged: Consent, Managment, Same Page
“The key to a 3-peat is change. You can't 'repeat' the formula. Your opponent has already figured it out. You have to keep growing. Continue into the unknown.”
— Phil Jackson, Eleven Rings: The Soul of Success
Tagged: strategy
“My intention was to give the players the freedom to figure out how to fit themselves within the system, rather than dictating from on high what I wanted them to do. Some players felt uncomfortable because they'd never been given that kind of latitude before. Others felt completely liberated.”
— Phil Jackson, Eleven Rings: The Soul of Success
Tagged: Freedom, Liberation, Open
“I learned to dial back my ego and distribute power as widely as possible without surrendering final authority. Paradoxically, this approach strengthened my effectiveness because it freed me to focus on my job as keeper of the team's vision.”
— Phil Jackson, Eleven Rings: The Soul of Success
Tagged: Ego, Managment, Negotiation, Power Dynamics
“The old Knicks were used to taking responsibility for our own laundry because there was no equipment manager then, and strange as it may sound, washing our own uniforms had a unifying effect on the team. If the newcomers weren't willing to wash their own gear, we wondered whether they would take responsibility for what they had to do on court.”
— Phil Jackson, Eleven Rings: The Soul of Success
Tagged: Humble, New York Knicks, The Importance of Drudgery
“This forced me to start thinking of the game as a strategic problem rather than a tactical one. As a young player, you tend to focus most of your attention on how you're going beat your man in any given game. But now I began to see basketball as a dynamic game of chess in which all the pieces were in motion. It was exhilarating.”
— Phil Jackson, Eleven Rings: The Soul of Success
Tagged: Beyond the Tactical, Growing Up
“What I liked about basketball was how interconnected everything was. The game was a complex dance of moves and countermoves that made it much more alive than other sports I played. In addition, basketball demanded a high level of synergy. To succeed, you needed to rely upon everybody else on the floor, not just yourself. That gave the sport a certain transcendent beauty that I found deeply satisfying.”
— Phil Jackson, Eleven Rings: The Soul of Success
Tagged: Basketball, Sports as Transcendence, Teamwork
“Kobe, who had been named the NBA's most valuable player that year, was particularly laser focused. I've always been impressed by Kobe's resilience and ironclad self-confidence. Unlike Shaq, who was often plagued by self-doubt, Kobe never let such thoughts cross his mind. If someone set the bar at ten feet, he'd jump eleven, even if no one had ever done it before. That's the attitude he brought with him when he arrived at training camp that fall, and it had a powerful impact on his teammates.”
— Phil Jackson, Eleven Rings: The Soul of Success
Tagged: Confidence, Kobe Bryant, Self-Confidence, Shaquille O'Neal
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