While the game of basketball is a team sport, there will always be the need for a leader or captain on the team. This player does not necessarily have to be the best player on the court, but they should be able to carry the team towards a victory through their courage, vision, and basketball knowledge and IQ.
Whether you are the leader of your basketball team or simply looking to begin your basketball journey, below we’ve compiled the 60 best basketball leadership quotes.
While many of these quotes come from basketball legends and greats of the game, many of them are simply great leadership quotes. A true leader is one who learns from all different sources and does not shy away from gaining more knowledge.
- Winning takes talent; to repeat takes character. – John Wooden
- If you’re going to be a leader, you’re not going to please everybody. You gotta hold people accountable, even if you have that moment of being uncomfortable. – Kobe Bryant
- The best teams have chemistry. They communicate with each other, and they sacrifice personal glory for the common goal. – Dave DeBusschere
- Leadership is diving for a loose ball, getting the crowd involved, getting other players involved. It’s being able to take it as well as dish it out. That’s the only way you’re going to get respect from the players. – Larry Bird
- The important thing is that your teammates have to know you’re pulling for them, and you really want them to be successful. – Kobe Bryant
- The most important measure of how good a game I played was how much better I’d made my teammates play. – Bill Russell
- I’ve missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. 26 times I’ve been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeeded. – Michael Jordan
- Everything negative – pressure, challenges. – are all an opportunity for me to rise. – Kobe Bryant
- I really get motivated when I have doubters. – Shaquille O’Neal
- A strong leader accepts blame and gives the credit. A weak leader gives blame and accepts credit. – John Wooden
- You have to really love your people to get the most out of them. – John Wooden
- A winner is someone who recognizes his God-given talents, works his tail off to develop them into skills, and uses these skills to accomplish his goals. – Larry Bird
- You don’t play against opponents. You play against the game of basketball. – Bobby Knight
- ‘Play the right way’ means play unselfishly, respect each other’s achievements, play hard, fulfill your role. – Gregg Popovich
- I can accept failure, everyone fails at something, but what I can’t accept is not trying. – Michael Jordan
- Leadership is unlocking people’s potential to become better. – Bill Bradley
- Talent wins games, but teamwork and intelligence wins championships. – Michael Jordan
- A good leader inspires people to have confidence in the leader, a great leader inspires people to have confidence in themselves.
- The trust of the people in the leader’s reflects the confidence of the leaders in the people. – Paulo Freire
- Leadership is about empathy. It is about having the ability to relate to and connect with people for the purpose of inspiring and empowering their lives. – Oprah Winfrey
- How good can we expect to be if our best player is not our best teammate. – Brad Stevens
- The day I stopped worrying about stats is the day I started winning. – Shaquille O’Neal
- Don’t aspire to be the best on the team. Aspire to be the best for the team.
- Your best player has to set a tone of intolerance for anything that gets in the way of winning. – Jeff Van Gundy
- Never say never because limits, like fears, are often just an illusion. – Michael Jordan
- It’s not the team with the best players that win. It’s the players with the best team that wins.
- There is only one thing we can control and that is how hard we play.
- Basketball is a beautiful game when five players on the court play with one heartbeat. – Dean Smith
- A leader’s job is to develop committed followers. Bad leaders destroy their followers’ sense of commitment. – Dean Smith
- What to do with a mistake; recognize it, admit it, learn from it, forget it. – Dean Smith
- The topic of leadership is a touchy one. A. lot of leaders fail because they don’t have the bravery. To touch that nerve or strike that chord. Throughout my years, I haven’t had that fear. – Kobe Bryant
- In a team sport like basketball, every time you help somebody else, you help yourself. – Pate Carril
- Leadership does not mean getting people to do their job. It means getting people to do their best. – Harvey MacKay
- Leadership is unlocking people’s potential to become better. – Bill Bradley
- If you quit once it becomes a habit. Never quit. – Michael Jordan
- I would tell players to relax and never think about what’s at stake. Just think about the basketball game. If you start to think about who is going to win the championship, you’ve lost your focus. – Michael Jordan
- It’s amazing what you can accomplish if you do not care who gets the credit. – Harry S. Truman
- Talent is God given. Be humble. Fame is man given. Be grateful. Conceit. Is self-given. Be careful. S
- When I walked into the gym, I fell in love with the game. I didn’t fall in love with it just because it was me playing. I fell in love with it because I’ve got guys like this – like these guys – every single day that push me to be the best I can be. – Kevin Durant
- I don’t wanna be Jordan, I don’t wanna be Bird or Isiah, I don’t wanna be any of those guys. I want to look in the mirror and say I did it my way. – Allen Iverson
- Good teams become great ones when the members trust each other enough to surrender the me for the we. – Phil Jackson
- Coming together is a beginning, staying together is progress, and working together is success. – Henry Ford
- Great discoveries and improvements invariably involve the cooperation of many minds. – Alexander Graham Bell
- The idea is not to block every shot. The idea is to make your opponent believe that you might block every shot. – Bill Russell
- All the successful teams I’ve ever seen have three characteristics: they play unselfish, they play together, and they play hard. – Larry Brown
- If you don’t fall, how are you going to know what getting up is like? – Stephen Curry
- Seek opportunities to show you care. The smallest gestures often make the biggest difference. – John Wooden
- I think, team first. It allows me to succeed, it allows my team to succeed. – Lebron James
- A leader is a dealer in hope. — Napoleon Bonaparte
- Before you are a leader, success is all about growing yourself. When you become a leader, success is all about growing others. — Jack Welch
- My own definition of leadership is this: The capacity and the will to rally men and women to a common purpose and the character which inspires confidence. — General Montgomery
- To command is to serve, nothing more and nothing less. — Andre Malraux
- Become the kind of leader that people would follow voluntarily, even if you had no title or position. — Brian Tracy
- A great person attracts great people and knows how to hold them together. — Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
- You don’t lead by pointing and telling people some place to go. You lead by going to that place and making a case. — Ken Kesey
- When I give a minister an order, I leave it to him to find the means to carry it out. — Napoleon Bonaparte
- People buy into the leader before they buy into the vision. — John Maxwell
- The very essence of leadership is that you have to have a vision. It’s got to be a vision you articulate clearly and forcefully on every occasion. You can’t blow an uncertain trumpet. —Reverend Theodore Hesburgh
- The challenge of leadership is to be strong, but not rude; be kind, but not weak; be bold, but not bully; be thoughtful, but not lazy; be humble, but not timid; be proud, but not arrogant; have humor, but without folly. — Jim Rohn
- A ruler should be slow to punish and swift to reward. — Ovid