“What’s more important than who’s going to be the first black manager is who’s going to be the first black sports editor of the New York Times.”

Remember that basketball is a game of habits. If you make the other guy deviate from his habits, you’ve got him.

You got to have the killer instinct. If you do not have it, forget about basketball and go into social psychology or something. If you sometimes wonder if you’ve got it, you ain’t got it. No pussycats, please.

I’ve been fortunate to meet and work with a lot of really smart people. The thing that strikes me most about them is how they continue to explore and learn every day. I have tried to apply that approach in my modest career as well.

Learning is a daily experience and a lifetime mission. I truly believe in the saying “We work to become, not to acquire.”

To love someone is nothing, to be loved by someone is something, to love someone who loves you is everything.

We couldn’t sustain it. And they got a lot of kids that can shoot. We just couldn’t close out well enough.

The magic to a great meeting is all of the work that’s done beforehand.

The most important thing to me is the friends that I’ve made.

Durability is part of what makes a great athlete.

On females officiating in the NBA -Incompetence should not be confined to one sex.

You can do anything you want to do if you want it bad enough.

Friendship is a full-time job.

If Shakespeare can compare all of life to a stage, maybe it’s not odd to believe that part of the play can take place on a basketball court.

The most important measure of how good a game I played was how much better I’d made my teammates play.

My father once told me that anyone who worked for three dollars an hour owed it to himself to put in four dollars’ worth of work.

If you really have integrity, there are very few people who can insult you, or honor you.

The prevailing – and foolish – attitude is that a good manager can be a good manager anywhere, with no special knowledge of the production process he’s managing.

Louis van Gaal is one of the most successful managers in the world.

Manners are good when one may have to back up his acts with his life.

The key to being a good manager is keeping the people who hate me away from those who are still undecided.

As Dortmund manager, I lived in a street, and my two neighbours were Schalke fans. They showed it every day, flying flags!

I am not saying I am the best manager in the world. But I’m quite good.

I’m really a normal football manager.

I would go swaggering into restaurants in some ridiculous tramp disguise, challenging them to mistreat me, order the things I was least likely to enjoy, then hurl my plate aside in a fury and demand to see the manager.