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to become the best basketball player. |
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Ask someone to list a basketball team and a good majority will come back to you with the LA Lakers. The Lakers have a history of legendary seasons as well as a host of NBA Championships to their credit and at least part of the reason behind that is basketball coach Pat Riley.
Riley spent a portion of his own time as a player, over five years, on the Lakers’ court, playing with the team when they went to the NBA Championship in the ’71-’72 season. Riley moved on in ’76 to Phoenix and eventually began broadcasting Lakers games. During the early Eighties, however the Lakers seemed to have lost that elusive winning streak.
It was not until Riley took over as head coach; that their former dazzle returned. He motivated the Lakers to four NBA championships and extraordinary success. He did it by instilling in the Lakers one simple, and powerful, word: teamwork. "When a gifted team dedicates itself to unselfish trust and combines instinct with boldness and effort-it is ready to climb." There is no denying the truth to this motivational basketball quote from Riley. After he taught the Lakers the power of teamwork, they climbed to heights the NBA hadn’t seen in twenty years.
When he did leave the Lakers, he went on to coach and inspire the Knicks to an NBA playoff and although they lost the game to the Houston Rockets, just being in the playoffs was a huge coups for the team that had not seen a playoff game in more than twenty years.
After accepting a position with the Miami Heat in 1995, Riley rebuilt the team. In one season he almost completely wiped out the roster and replaced it with new faces. Except for one athlete, the team was composed of all new players.
Putting his motivational basketball quote to the test, Riley managed to build in these athletes, who barely knew one another, a sense of teamwork. His gamble paid off. The Heat made the playoffs and won the Atlantic Division in each season for the next four years, proving the truth of Riley’s motivational basketball quote.
"One man can be a crucial ingredient on a team, but one man cannot make a team." - Kareem Abdul-Jabbar
"The main ingredient of stardom is the rest of the team." -John Wooden
"Talent wins games, but teamwork and intelligence win championships." -Michael Jordan
"You don't play against opponents, you play against the game of basketball." -Bobby Knight
"Champions don’t complain, they’re too busy getting better." -Unknown
"Sometimes a player's greatest challenge is coming to grips with his role on the team." -Scottie Pippen
Related quotes: Basketball #1, Michael Jordan
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