Kelvin Sampson Quotes

I don't love playing zone all the time, because it does have an effect on your offense.

At Golden State, it was basically a guard-oriented offense and it wasn't either around me or in my direction.

I think there's a lot that goes into an offense, obviously.

Everyone does things differently on offense. Everyone's goal is to score points.

Most teams won't really focus on one player because they've got multiple players to defend and that will open up a lot of things for me.

When you put pressure on the paint, you not only score but you force the whole defense to collapse and you can make easy plays to hit shooters.

I like playing size per position defensively.

Obviously I think offensively, spacing for me as a guy that puts a lot of pressure on the rim is going to make it harder on a defense. They're going to have to make tougher decisions, and space is going to be way more open for all the guards, too.

With a line of six in the defence and then three in front of that, it's not always easy to find the spaces to score the goals.

When you've got guys touching the ball on the offensive end, they're really into the defensive end.

Whoever I'm playing against, I go in and try to stop their best scorer and try to get myself going on the offensive end.

I want to make sure the other point guard can't start his offense until 12 or 13 seconds. Then I've put my team in position to defend just one pick-and-roll and one pass.

I get a lot of front ball in a position that, normally, the opponent's defense is making the move outwards, and our attackers are getting in.

Not a majority of the offense is run for me to post. I'm fine with that, but I want to play better on the offensive end.

When you talk about forming an offensive identity, it's about, first, let's figure out what our players do best.

When we move the ball, we're one of the best teams in the league.

If you have the ball, you must make the field as big as possible, and if you don't have the ball, you must make it as small as possible.

Good teams beat you with speed. Great teams beat you with spacing and timing.

I want to go get a stop on defense so James can do it again. It was a big spurt for him. That made then get out of their game plan and play him closer. But when he does that, we want to make sure we capitalize and get timely stops. And that's what got us right back in the game.

Offense is about rhythm and timing, and you're not going to always have that every game.

I've always been a guy that if you can shoot 3s, you need to shoot 3s. It extends the defense, especially when you've got a guy that can play an undersize 5 role.

Some big teams prefer to be very strong defensively and have two, three, four counter-attacking players.

I don't go into a game thinking I'm going to run more than I'm going to pass. So it just depends on what the defense is going to bring in the situation of the game and what happens that play.

Typically, you'll see that zones work better in November than in February. As the season goes on, teams get better and better at attacking zones, and it becomes harder to become an effective zone defense as the season progresses. But early on, it can be can good at times.

Coach K tried to implement a style where we passing, moving the ball, the open guy gets the open shot, running in transition.