“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.”

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

“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.”

“I always wanted to teach.”

“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.”

“I had a really bad temper, when I was growing up. Sport helped me channel that temper into more positive acts.”

“I think you're not a human being unless you have doubts and fears.”

“I'm fortunate now that I coach at Duke University and we've won a lot. I have some kids who haven't failed that much. But when they get to college, they're going to fail some time. That's a thing that I can help them the most with.”

“I'm still not a great reader, but my wife is and my daughters are, and I envy them. I think I got into a bad habit of trying to do something all the time, instead of trying to sit down and take my time a little bit.”

“Imagination has a great deal to do with winning.”

“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.”

“I've been so fortunate in my life that my family has never been jealous of my success. They have shown true love and commitment to me by being supportive. They shared in it.”

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

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

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

“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.”

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

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

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

“When I was growing up, there weren't any Little Leagues in the city. Parents worked all the time. They didn't have time to take their kids out to play baseball and football.”

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

“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.”

“With me and basketball, it became part of me.”

“You can see and you can listen, but you have to have moments in which you feel.”