Matt Barnes Quotes

The most cowardly thing in the world is blaming mistakes upon the umpires. Too many managers strut around on the field trying to manage the umpires instead of their teams.

It's not just what you do on the pitch, it's what you do off the pitch.

I didn't view myself as attacking the boss. I viewed my boss at ESPN as the publisher and president of ESPN.

The last person I have ever criticized is an official. They have a tough job to do. Things are happening so quick.

You have to enjoy winning and being part of a successful team, just being a young bloke. But at the same time you want to be back page and not front page news and be spoken about for your cricket and contributing to winning rather than getting it wrong on a night out.

Sometimes I had bad behaviour with managers that I loved at Sampdoria, like Vujadin Boskov and Sven-Goran Eriksson. I understand that this can happen during the game or when you are substituted.

When you're talking to potential professional athletes, I really like to talk about the fact that even though you're a great athlete, that doesn't make you a good person. And if you can build that foundation first, everything else usually follows suit.

I don't have anything against Jon Jones. We are fighters and we do whatever we want with our lives.

It's time for people to hold these athletes accountable for their actions.

I'm a firm believer in... just because these guys are professional athletes or whatever, everybody's going to have an opinion on something, and not everybody's going to get along. I've had my words with fans on Twitter too.

It's not everybody that can handle firing Denzel Washington or coming to blows and saying, 'This is what's happening because I said so.' Usually, it's the reverse.

I can't say I ever got to the stage of swapping phone numbers with refs, but I don't have a problem with managers and referees communicating.

When they say I'm a bad teammate and that I got a coach fired, that irritates the hell out of me. The biggest thing for me is to always have respect for my teammates. And then the whole Westphal thing - the man got himself fired. He was losing before I got here.

What I don't like to see is a lot of chirping and guys just talking crap to each other. If you got something wrong with a guy, go see him.

I'm a father. If my son jumped on a boy in a backyard, it would have been the worst mistake he made that day. And he'd have had to apologize to everybody.

I respect the rules of the game.

Everyone thinks that footballers go on the pitch and they have so much money that they think about themselves. But I am not like that.

I play with the same energy, passion and fire that I played with as a 10-year-old in north Alabama, and I'll continue to play that way. I think sometimes that's misrepresented. There's nothing I say out there that I can't say to my mom, wife or daughters. It's all clean.

If you are captain of a great team like Paris St-Germain there are lots of players like Zlatan, players who are known by everybody. So to be captain of that team gives you respect and, in football, respect is very important.

It's changed big-time 'cause now I wanna go out, have fun with my friends, but I gotta also take in that I'm playing at the MLS level and I have to represent the club. I can't go out and fool around, cause trouble anymore.

It's so wrong when some players think, 'I scored five goals; therefore, I am a god of football.' You're nobody.

I'm not really big on humiliating assistant coaches in front of everybody.

We are professionals, we have to set the example and not provoke anyone.

There's a standard here as you step on the field as a Broncos defender.

I don't care what anybody says: a pro athlete is going to be a role model. I tried to use that as a positive influence, to let kids know we are regular people.