Looking for some motivation for your basketball game or life? Read the best collection of basketball quotes and sayings gathered from your favorite coaches and professional players.
Basketball is an incredibly intense sport that demands a high level of energy, strength, and determination.
As players get tired during games or practice, words of encouragement can be incredibly valuable in keeping them motivated and pushing them to improve their skills.
These quotes always work in a positive way and give you an adrenaline rush to work harder for your goals.
With the physical and mental demands of the game, the right words can provide the extra boost of motivation needed to push through fatigue and reach new heights in performance.
Whether it’s a coach, a teammate, or a famous basketball player, hearing inspiring quotes can help players overcome challenges and stay focused on their goals.
From Michael Jordan to LeBron James, Kobe Bryant to Shaquille O’Neal, basketball has seen some of the most famous and influential players in sports history.
Their motivational quotes have touched on everything from the importance of hard work and determination to keep playing in the spirit of the game.
Top 10 Basketball Quotes
- “Success is not an accident, success is actually a choice.” – Stephen Curry
- “Good players inspire themselves, GREAT players inspire others.” – Unknown
- “Never say never, because limits, like fears, are often just an illusion.” – Michael Jordan
- “Talent wins games, but teamwork and intelligence win championships.” – Michael Jordan
- “Push yourself again and again. Don’t give an inch until the final buzzer sounds.” — Larry Bird
- “I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life and that is why I succeed.” – Michael Jordan
- “Everything negative – pressure, challenges – is all an opportunity for me to rise.” – Kobe Bryant
- “Good, better, best. Never let it rest. Until your good is better and your better is best.” – Tim Duncan
- “Basketball is a beautiful game when the five players on the court play with one heartbeat.” – Dean Smith
- “You can’t always be the most talented or gifted person in the room, but you can be the most competitive.” – Pat Summit
- “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
- “I’ve missed more than 9000 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 succeed.” ― Michael Jordan
Famous Basketball Quotes
- “If you do not believe in yourself, no one will do it for you.” – Kobe Bryant
basketball quotes - “When you are not practicing, someone else is getting better.” – Allen Iverson
- “Practice like you’ve never won. Play like you’ve never lost.” – Michael Jordon
- “The moment you give up is the moment you let someone else win.” – Kobe Bryant
- “It is far better to shoot an airball than to not shoot at all for fear of missing.” – Tony Alfonso
- “Your talent is God’s gift to you. What you do with it is your gift back to God.” ― Leo Buscaglia
- “I can accept failure, everyone fails at something. But I can’t accept not trying.” – Michael Jordan
- “Some people want it to happen, some wish it would happen, others make it happen.” – Michael Jordan
- “The key is not the ‘will to win’… everybody has that. It is the will to prepare to win that is important” – Bob Knight
- “I play to win, whether during practice or a real game. And I will not let anything get in the way of me and my competitive enthusiasm to win.” — Michael Jordan
Best Basketball Motivation Quotes
- “Be led by your dreams not by your problems.” – Roy Williams
- “Everybody has talent, but ability takes hard work.” – Michael Jordon
- “You can’t win unless you learn how to lose.” – Kareem Abdul-Jabbar
- “Hard work beats talent when talent fails to work hard.” – Kevin Durant
- “It doesn’t matter if you fall down, it’s whether you get back up.” – Kobe Bryant
- “The more you sweat in practice the less you bleed in battle.” – Michael Jordon
- “I never worry about the problem. I worry about the solution.” – Shaquille O’Neal
- “You must expect great things of yourself before you can do them.” — Michael Jordan
- “Winners are not people who do not fail, but people who never quit.” – Edwin Louis Cole
- “To be the best, you have to work the hardest. You have to chase what seems impossible over and over and over again, because giving up is not an option, and when you feel like you’ve reached your limit, it’s only the beginning, that’s when it’s time to dig deep, to find the courage to push some more.” – LeBron James
Inspiring Quotes About Basketball
- “Basketball doesn’t build character, it reveals it.” – Unknown
- “Love is playing every game as if it’s your last.” – Michael Jordon
- “I have a plan of action, but the game is a game of adjustments.” – Mike Krzyzewski
- “Get the fundamentals down and the level of everything you do will rise” — Michael Jordan
- “You don’t play against opponents, you play against the game of basketball.” – Bobby Knight
- “Teamwork is the beauty of our sport, where you have five acting as one.” – Mike Krzyzewski
- “Basketball isn’t just a sport. It is an art, one that must be mastered to succeed.” – Stephen Curry
- “Shooting percentage is just as much about decision making as it is about technique.” – Jeff Van Gundy
- “I believe you win games by what you do from your first practice until your first game.”– Dr. Jack Ramsay
- “No one plays this or any game perfectly. It’s the guy who recovers from his mistakes who wins.” ― Phil Jackson
- “If you’re not making mistakes, then you’re not doing anything. I’m positive that a doer makes mistakes.” ― John Wooden
- “Remember that basketball is a game of habits. If you make the other guy deviate from his habits, you’ve got him.” – Bill Russell
- “A key basketball skill is imagery. The best players “see” situations before they happen so they can be prepared” – Dr. Jack Ramsay
- “I don’t know if I practiced more than anybody, but I sure practiced enough. I still wonder if somebody – somewhere – was practicing more than me” – Larry Bird
- “The game has its ups and downs, but you can never lose focus of your individual goals, and you can’t let yourself be beaten because of lack of effort.” ― Michael Jordan
Basketball Quotes To Build Confidence
- “If you see me in a fight with a bear, pray for the bear.” – Kobe Bryant
- “If you are afraid of failure you don’t deserve to be successful!” – Charles Barkley
- “Confidence is everything in this game, if you don’t think you can, you won’t.” – Jerry West
- “Another day, another opportunity to prove everyone who doubts you wrong.” – Michael Jordan
- “If you run into a wall, don’t turn around and give up. Figure out how to climb it.” – Michael Jordan
- “It takes three things to be a ‘special’ player: talent, character, and competitive fire.” ― Kevin Eastman
- “I will not let anything get in the way of me and my competitive enthusiasm to win.” – Michael Jordan
- “Bottom line, you’re either a risk taker, or your not, and if you don’t take risks, you’ll never win big.” – Geno Auriemma
- “I’ve got a theory that if you give 100 percent all of the time, somehow things will work out in the end.” – Larry Bird
- “If it turns out that my best wasn’t good enough, at least I wont look back and say that I was afraid to try” – Michael Jordan
Basketball Quotes On Teamwork
Basketball quotes offer words of wisdom on teamwork, leadership, discipline, and overcoming obstacles.
- “There is no ‘I’ in team but there is in win.” — Michael Jordan
- “Create unselfishness as the most important team attribute.” — Bill Russell
- “Teamwork is what makes common people capable of uncommon results.”– Pat Summitt
- “I think, team first. It allows me to succeed, it allows my team to succeed.” – Lebron James
- “Great teamwork is the only way we create the breakthroughs that define our careers.” – Pat Riley
- “Ask not what your teammates can do for you. Ask what you can do for your teammates.” – Magic Johnson
- “A team will always appreciate a great individual if he’s willing to sacrifice for the group.” ― Kareem Abdul Jabbar
- “The strength of the team is each individual member. The strength of each member is the team.” – Phil Jackson
- “Good teams become great ones when the members trust each other enough to surrender the Me for the We.” ― Phil Jackson
- “Some say you have to use your five best players, but I found out you win with the five that fit together best as a team.” – Red Auerbach
- “In developing teams, I don’t believe in rules. I believe in standards. Rules don’t promote teamwork, standards do” – Mike Krzyzewski
- “When a gifted team dedicates itself to unselfish trust and combines instinct with boldness and effort–it is ready to climb.” – Pat Riley
- “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
- “All the successful teams I’ve ever seen have three characteristics: They play unselfish, they play together, and they play hard.” – Larry Brown
- “The best teams have chemistry. They communicate with each other and they sacrifice personal glory for the common goal.” – Dave DeBusschere
- “Winning teams at the NBA level, the college level, and the high school level all play team basketball. Championship teams have five players on the same page at all times.” – Hubie Brown
Basketball Quotes For Girls
- “You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.” – Wayne Gretzky
- “It’s not how big you are, it’s how big you play.” – John Wooden
- “Don’t make excuses. Make your free throws.” – Elena Della Donne
- “Coming in every day and walking the walk. That is what you want to do as a leader.” – Maya Moore
- “Here’s how I’m going to beat you. I’m going to outwork you. That’s it. That’s all there is to it.” – Pat Summitt
- “Coaches shouldn’t have to push you to work hard; you should push yourself to work hard because you want to be a great player.” – Bob Knight
- “Believe in yourself and all that you are. Know that there is something inside you that is greater than any obstacle.” – Christian D. Larson
- “I’m a bit of a perfectionist, but you have to know you’re going to make mistakes. It’s how you respond to those mistakes that counts.” – Sue Bird
- “To be successful, you have to expose yourself to different situations-different styles of play, different teammates, different coaching.” – Sue Bird
- “I don’t wear a crown, I wear a head band. I don’t wear heels, I wear sneakers. I don’t dance on a dance floor, I run on a basketball court. I’m not a princess, I’m a basketball beast.” – Unknown
Basketball Quotes
- “The size of your effort is all that matters.” ― Unknown
- “Nothing is given. Everything is earned.” ― LeBron James
- “The team is an extension of the coach.”– Don Meyer
- “I’ve never lost a game I just ran out of time.”– Michael Jordan
- “Just play. Have fun. Enjoy the game.” – Michael Jordan
- “It’s hard to play well, but it’s easy to work hard.” — Kevin Durant
- “A successful person never loses…they either win or learn!” – John Calipari
- “The secret of winning is working more as a team, less as individuals.” –Knute Rockne
- “Confidence is a lot of this game or any game. If you don’t think you can, you won’t.”– Jerry West
- “The key to any game is to use your strengths and hide your weaknesses.”– Paul Westphal
- “There’s only one thing we can control, and that is how hard we play.”– Don Meyer
- “Me shooting 40% at the foul line is just God’s way of saying nobody’s perfect.”― Shaquille O’Neal
- “But that’s the thing about basketball: you don’t play games on paper.” ― Bill Simmons
- “Some people believe you win with your five best players, but I found out that you win with the five who fit together best.” – Red Auerbach
- “To go from where you are to where you want to be: you have to have a dream, a goal, and you have to be willing to work for it.”– Jim Valvano
- “It’s not about the number of hours you practice, it’s about the number of hours your mind is present during the practice.” – Kobe Bryant
- “A basketball team is like the five fingers on your hand. If you can get them all together, you have a fist. That’s how I want you to play.” – Mike Krzyzewski
- “Michael Jordan may have been the best basketball player in history, but he couldn’t have won six NBA titles without a team.” – Mark E. Hyman
Short Basketball Captions For Instagram
Whether you are a basketball player, a fan, or simply someone who appreciates inspiring words, there is something for everyone in the world of basketball captions to tag your pictures!
- “Game on.”
- “Let’s hustle.”
- “Nothing but net.”
- “Ball until you fall.”
- “Court is in session.”
- “Shoot for the stars.”
- “Dunking like a boss.”
- “Practice makes perfect.”
- “Keep calm and hoop on.”
- “Champions never give up.”
- “Defense wins championships.”
- “Leave your mark on the court.”
- “In basketball, every shot counts.”
- “Eat, sleep, play basketball, repeat.”
- “Hoop dreams are made on the court.”
- “Nothing feels better than a clean swish.”
- “Bad shooters are always open.” – Pete Carril
- “In basketball, there’s no such thing as an easy shot.”
- “Don’t give up. Don’t ever give up.” — Jim Valvano
- “I don’t play basketball to win, I play to give it my all.”
- “The court is my canvas, and the ball is my paintbrush.”
- “The only way to get better is to practice, practice, practice.”
- “Basketball is not just about winning, it’s about the journey.”
- “Basketball is more than just a game, it’s a lifestyle.” — Unknown
- “Winning takes talent, to repeat takes character.” — John Wooden
More Morning Motivation;
You can use these encouraging quotes on t-shirts, posters, wallpapers, and DP to remind you daily that you have to consistently hustle to make your dreams come true!
Basketball quotes have become an integral part of the sport, providing players with inspiration and encouragement both on and off the court.
These motivating famous basketball quotes are free to download and share with friends and family on Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, Tagalog, and more.
