Quotes By Mike Krzyzewski

Everybody wants to take responsibility when you win, but when you fail, all these fingers are pointing.

When I was in sixth grade, I wanted to become a priest.

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.

Fun is to experience things you would not have been able to experience in any other setting.

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.

I've tried to handle winning well, so that maybe we'll win again, but I've also tried to handle failure well. If those serve as good examples for teachers and kids, then I hope that would be a contribution I have made to sport. Not just basketball, but to sport.

When you win, sometimes it overshadows a poor performance.

It is the ultimate honor for a coach to be his country's coach.

The person who has inspired me my whole life is my Mom, because she taught me commitment. She sacrificed.

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.

My ambition in high school was to be a high school coach and teacher, and that's still what I do: teach.

With me and basketball, it became part of me.

Once you win a National Championship, how do you do that again? How do you get the passion to do that again? We won it again right away, the next year. A lot of it had to do with the fact that I didn't give myself an opportunity to enjoy the first one.

I always wanted to teach.

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.

I always won in my imagination. I always hit the game-winning shot, or I hit the free throw. Or if I missed, there was a lane violation, and I was given another one.

Playing sport was somewhat frivolous, but I liked it. I rebelled a little bit, and wouldn't go to music lessons and things like that, but I would go and play ball. My parents learned to love it because they saw how much I got out of it.

I think some parents now look at a youngster failing as the final thing. It's a process, and failure is part of the process. I would like it if the teacher and the parents would connect more. I think that used to be, but we're losing a little bit of that right now.

Actually, the Kentucky moment was better than winning the two National Championships, because it was the epitome of what I try to get from a team in a crisis situation.

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

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.

Even though we want huge individual egos, our collective ego is unbelievable.

Throughout my life, my mom has been the person that I've always looked up to.

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.

It's always an honor to be ranked high, but whatever is said about you, you take it and then take a realistic look at yourself and who you are.

Basketball was not my main sport in grade school, or even the first year of high school.

When I went to high school, an all-boys' school, a Catholic school, I tried out for football, and I didn't make it. It was the first time, athletically, that I was knocked down.

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

Imagination has a great deal to do with winning.

First of all, what happens is, when you're good at something, you spend a lot of time with it. People identify you with that sport, so it becomes part of your identity.