Player Relationships Quotes

I've always had a good relationship with superstar players. I don't really demand the ball a lot.

It's very rare to find a basketball coach that gets both: that gets the Xs and Os and also gets life.

When you're the head coach, you coach 53 people, and their wives and their girlfriends and their families and all those people.

When I was coach at Ajax, in the first half of the season, the players needed time to adapt to me, to know who I am as a person and as a coach.

This is a tremendous opportunity to be named head coach of the Brooklyn Nets, and it's a role I have been studying for over the course of my playing days.

I always appreciated the ex-players. Being a Yankee, you get spoiled. Old-Timers Day, all these guys coming back, spring training, being around them, you get a chance to get to know them. So I always think you learn a lot by listening.

This was how Johan Cruyff worked. He was demanding a lot, but when you got there, and you were in his team, he was an incredible protector. He would push and push you, and then he would protect you. He was a master at handling players. He knew when you needed to be pushed or protected.

When your best players are really good guys, it's the best.

Tim Floyd was a guy from college who hadn't won in the league and he still had that college coaching style of a dictatorship. He didn't want to listen.

The role of my job is I'm always trying to figure out where I need to be. Do I need to be at a college game, at an international game, with the team, at practice, with my coaches, with a few of the players, up in Portland, Maine? I mean, where do I need to be?

If we can't find the next technological breakthrough, well, maybe we can be better than anyone else with how we treat our players and how we connect with players and the relationships we develop and how we put them in positions to succeed.

From our perspective, the most important thing is what you do with the players, how you handle them, your ability to communicate with them.

Whenever I hear people crying about Kobe yelling at people in practice or wondering whether or not LeBron is best friends with his teammates, I just roll my eyes. You know how many off-court conversations I had with the Zen-Master Phil Jackson in my entire time with the Lakers? One.

Wenger is an immense manager and a great man. He takes care of his players, maybe too much. He's not a man of conflict.

One reason I don't want to play in England again is because we don't have any personalities.

When a coach loses a team... that's when a coach is kind of done.

Ancelotti showed in the past, that he can work with different teams and different players.

Kevin McHale was a master communicator and knows how to coach stars, and that's a unique gift because you take an old-school guy that's used to coaching his way, he'd have a hard time coaching them cats now, but Kevin knows how, and he has the patience of Job.

As a coach, you've got to do what's best for the team. If guys don't like it, they're going to leave. If they stay and don't like it, well, your team's going to suck anyway. Even if this happens, you still have to do it. You can't coach worrying about any individual.

Football is made up of all kinds of conflict. In a dressing room, between players, between us and the manager, between us and loads of people who don't seem to matter. It's constant and harsh sometimes.

In the NFL a lot of times everyone gets caught up in the business side of things. For them it's all about money and it really leaves a sour taste in your mouth.

That's something that's so often overlooked in this game - the dynamics of the locker room.

Neymar will not return to Barcelona. It was a very difficult situation for him there.

Andre Villas-Boas wasn't the ideal coach for me. He bought Gylfi Sigurdsson and then told me he would be his new No.10.

I don't want to lose the feeling I have for players, but the pro system almost causes you to be cold and insensitive, when you have to release players yearly.