48 Doc Rivers Quotes On Coaching, Ubuntu, Success, Basketball & Life

motivational quotes Jan 23, 2024

The top Doc Rivers quotes:

Doc Rivers is a former professional basketball player and a successful coach in the NBA.

Doc played point guard in the NBA from 1983 to 1996 for teams like the Atlanta Hawks, Los Angeles Clippers, New York Knicks, and San Antonio Spurs.

After retiring as a player, Rivers transitioned into coaching. He's led teams like the Orlando Magic, Boston Celtics, Los Angeles Clippers, and Philadelphia 76ers.

Doc's greatest coaching success was with the Boston Celtics. In the 2007-2008 season, he led the Celtics to an NBA Championship, defeating the Los Angeles Lakers in the Finals. This was the Celtics' first championship in over 20 years.

Rivers also won an NBA Coach of the Year Award in 2000 while coaching the Orlando Magic.

Doc Rivers is known for his strong leadership skills, positive approach, and focus on teamwork, culture, and "Ubuntu," an African concept about the importance of togetherness.

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Doc Rivers Quotes About Coaching And Leadership

1. "Everybody likes each other until things get tough. Then you will find out what kind of team you have, and I understand that as much as anyone."

2. "I am not going to coach you to who you are. I am going to coach you to who you should be someday."

3. "This is why coaches are crazy because they have to be. To be a good coach, you to have to get your players to believe that you believe that you can win the next game."

4. "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."

5. "You're always growing as a coach, and I am not done growing, and hopefully I'm not done winning."

6. "Good players want to be coached. Great players want to be told the truth."

7. "I don’t think you can ever stop growing as a coach or as a person. It’s a fact. If we’re gonna win, you just can’t keep doing what you’ve always done and think you’re gonna get different results. You have to do something different."

8. "The more positive you can be with your players, the better they're going to play."

9. "I’m looking for activity. I put players in and take them out based on effort and defense, not making or missing shots."

10. "Trust me, if you do the right things, minutes go up."

11. "I've yet to meet a coach that wants to lose."

12. "You've got to coach worrying about your entire team: whether that gets you a championship or whether that gets you fired. I think it allows you to coach free. You're coaching with freedom because you know you're doing what you think is right."

13. "Every time I walk into the locker room for the first time, I tell my players every year, and I have told them for 21 years, "I'm Doc Rivers, and I'm human, and I am going to make mistakes. Having said that, every decision that I make will be good for the team. That may not be what's good for you, or for me. But if it's good for the team, it's good."

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Doc Rivers Ubuntu Quotes

14. "I am because we are."

15. "Ubuntu is not a word. It’s a way of life. It’s a way of living."

16. "A person is a person through other people."

17. "The only way [a player] can achieve what he wants to achieve, is he has to make his teammates better."

18. "If Kevin Garnett is out on the floor helping Rajon Rondo with his shooting, Kevin Garnett is being 'ubuntu.'"

19. "Ubuntu comes from Africa as the essence of being human, it says that a lone human being is a contradiction in terms. I have to learn to be human from other human beings."

20. "I can't be all I can be, unless you are all you can be."

21. "I can’t be threatened by you because you are good, because the better you are, the better I am for it."

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Doc Rivers Quotes About Success And Winning

22. "The thing a player has to ask himself: 'Do you want to choose winning over standing out?' Dwyane Wade made that choice, and I don't think he gets enough credit."

23. "Do you want to choose winning over standing out? It’s a choice every player on every championship team has to do."

24. "You have to be willing to get your heartbroken to be a champion, and you have to do it over and over again."

25. "Winning is like deodorant – it comes up and a lot of things don’t stink."

26. "Never underestimate the heart of a champion!"

27. "People think if you are the champion, you don’t get hit. It’s the exact opposite. Champions get hit over and over and over again. It’s just that the champion is the one that decides to keep moving forward."

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Doc Rivers Quotes About Basketball

28. "If you’re not talking, you’re not playing defense."

29. "This team is one execution away from being a very good basketball team."

30. "Encourage ‘random’ picks on the ball because they cannot be scouted."

31. "I think you have to be who you are. The Lakers weren’t worried about going small. They actually went bigger. I think the mistake a lot of teams have made is everybody wanting to be Golden State but no one can shoot like Golden State, so to me everyone made a mistake. You have to be the best version of you and not apologize for that. "

32. "I think kids need to learn how to fight for it. And you can do that in a positive way. 'I support you...I know you can play. You just gotta keep playing, you just gotta keep working..."

33. "When I was young, I practiced every day, but I never called it practice. I hate that. When I was a kid, I never called it practice. I was said I was going to play basketball. I don't ever get this going to practice thing. Basketball is a game and I love it. I never looked at it as some tortuous thing."

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Doc Rivers Quotes About Life

34. "We’re all human, and we all make mistakes."

35. "Many will start, few will finish."

36. "Life isn't fair."

37. "Pressure is a privilege."

38. "Get knocked down, get back up."

39. "Work hard, stay out of trouble, and never quit. You are going to find yourself in tough situations and bad things are going to happen but it will be alright."

40. "I don't think you should run from pressure. I think you should run towards it."

41. "You don’t get into a lot of pressure situations in your lifetime. If you can put yourself in a pressure situation where the stakes are high, you have worked hard for it, you have earned it."

Doc Rivers Quotes About Teamwork And Togetherness

42. "I think the biggest statement we can make as men, not as black men, as men, is to stick together and show how strong we are as a group. Not splinter. Not walk. It’s easy to protest. The protest will be in our play."

43. "If you want to go quickly, go by yourself – if you want to go farther, go in a group."

44. "If we are going to win, we are going to have to sacrifice. We are going to have to change. If you want to shoot every time, that’s the wrong team. If you are going to do whatever you want to, that’s the wrong team."

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Other Motivational Doc Rivers Quotes

45. "I don't think you should ever run from history. You should learn from it and embrace it."

46. "You only have a number for one day. After that, it is all up to you."

47. "Everybody’s brave because you’re at a screen. No one knows who you are. But if you were a reporter and you wrote a bad article about me, you know what you did? You came to practice the next day. Now, there’s stuff written about players, coaches all the time, we’ve never seen the person. The guy’s never been to a practice or a game, but people read it as truth. As I say a lot, a lie told a thousand times is still a lie. It does not become the truth."

48. "How competitive can you be without losing your discipline?"

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