“If you’re not playing you can affect [a game] by how you act on the bench. If you’re smiling, you’re up being positive, that affects the game. If not, if you have a frown on your face, if you’re looking upset, you want to get into the game and you’re pouting, that’s going to be a negative effect on the game. So whatever I do, I’m going to affect the game in a positive way however I can.”
Scott Brooks on Fisher:
“He’s as consistent a worker as I’ve ever been around as a player, and I’m sure he has the same type of work ethic as a coach. He’s steady. He understands that every season it’s about the process of getting better. I know this is not the season he would have liked, but he’s not changing his attitude toward the game he loves.”
HEAD COACH MIKE BUDENHOLZER
“If you’re talking about good, solid, fundamental basketball, and that’s what the Spurs do, I think every team wants to be more solid and fundamentally sound. The Spurs have done it at a high level. We want to be playing the right way and getting better every day. It’s the unselfishness of the players we have.”
AL HORFORD
“We have high character players, high basketball IQ players that enjoy sharing the ball; they enjoy playing with each other. They also know they’ll reap the rewards if they all play that way. I feel we can all do more but we’re all sacrificing for the team because this is bigger than any individual. We just want to win.”
“We could be better. Every season presents its ups and downs, and we’re no different than that, when you’re trying to perfect your craft. We’re a hard-working group, a young group, a group that wants to be better. So we’ve got pluses and minuses, just like anybody else. Every year is different. I could sit here and make up a bunch of excuses, but at the end of the day it’s about playing and executing. We’re trying to get better at executing. We’re a younger team, not that much experience, but the fight we [have] gives us a chance to win every night. I want to say yeah we can turn it around, and I hope so, but it’s about the work you put in.’’
After a 25-point loss to the Golden State Warriors:
“We have to have consistent effort, consistent energy. We have to be able to go out tomorrow and start, hopefully, a slew of games where we can be consistent. It’s our effort, our consistency we have to work on. We go from having a great effort to a medium effort. We go from a great concentration to poor concentration. We have to shore that up. I always felt as a player it was your job to bring your effort. It doesn’t mean the ball is going to go in. It doesn’t mean the pass is going to be perfect, doesn’t mean every defensive assignment is going to go your way. Everything we do there seems to be a definite link between things going well offensively and our effort being higher or things not going well for us offensively and our effort not being good. You can’t be so fragile that your effort depends on if the ball goes in or not.”
“Every time I see a shot go up, it’s like a pass to me. Guys focus on points and getting assists. My goal is to go out and get 20 rebounds a night.”
“A message to all young players: Athleticism is great. Being skilled is important. For coaches the most important skill is playing hard.”
After the Detroit Pistons 7th straight win:
“They’ve worked harder. They’ve been more attentive. A lot more together. We don’t have guys that are getting concerned about who’s in the game, or their playing time, or their shots.”
“I just think European players are just way more skillful. They are just taught the game the right way at an early age. It’s something we really have to fix. We really have to address that. We have to teach our kids to play the right way.”
“AAU basketball, horrible, terrible. It’s stupid. It doesn’t teach our kids how to play the game at all so you wind up having players that are big and they bring it up and they do all this fancy crap and they don’t know how to post. They don’t know the fundamentals of the game. It’s stupid.”
“When you have limitations and you understand your limitations and you stay within yourself, you can be great. You know what you can do and what you can’t do. In America, it’s a big problem for us because we’re not teaching players how to play all-around basketball. That’s why you have Pau and Marc [Gasol], and that’s the reason why 90 percent of the Spurs’ roster is European players, because they have more skill.”
“I probably wouldn’t be able to dribble with my left and shoot with my left and have good footwork. I was kind of fortunate because when I was growing up in Italy, the Red Auerbachs and the Tex Winters and all those great coaches were doing clinics and camps in Europe. They were teaching all the club coaches, and the club coaches were following their advice and their fundamentals like the bible, and they were teaching all of us kids that type of stuff. Me, Manu [Ginobili] and all these guys that grew up around that same time, we’re a product of that. It’s a big difference.”
“Teach players the game at an early age and stop treating them like cash cows for everyone to profit off of. That’s how you do that. You have to teach them the game. Give them instruction.”
Source: http://espn.go.com/los-angeles/nba/story/_/id/12114523/kobe-bryant-says-european-players-more-skilled-americans-blames-aau
From Tom Thibodeau:
“Every year he gets better and better. It’s a tribute to the way he works at it, studies, prepares, his offseason conditioning work he puts in. It’s incredible. It’s not an accident what he’s doing. Everyone knows it’s coming. He knows how to get open. He plays for a team whose shooting complements its stars. And he’s a star in his own way. He has always embraced his role. He has always played for the team.”
PLAY THE RIGHT WAY 