Recently, the 75th Annual North Carolina Coaches Convention had the opportunity to host a conversation between Duke’s 5-time national champion and all-time winningest coach in D-1 history Mike Krzyzewski and North Carolina’s 3-time national champion Roy Williams. The ACC Network captured their time together in program called Coach K & Roy Williams: Rivals Reunited.
From a leadership perspective, the opportunity to learn from these two Hall of Fame coaches (and two of the top 5 winningest coaches in college basketball history) in one venue is potentially once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.
Therefore, I want to share their comments and leadership lessons with you. First, is the preview below followed 47 leadership quotes from their time together.
Mike Krzyzewski
- “We’re good friends because we were always trying to make the game better.”
- “I’ve always coached my best player the hardest.”
- “If you never do anything wrong, you’re never going to accomplish what you could’ve accomplished. You need people around you to make you better. You also need opportunity.”
- “I was amazed at the intense loyalty of his (Coach Dean Smith) teams.”
- “Organizations that are value-driven generally stand the test of time.”
- “When you’re coaching, the kids stay the same age. So they’re always ‘modern athletes.’… The main thing you have to do is adapt with current communication… Don’t talk too long.”
- “I look for three things and they’re all equal and we never changed. One, they have to be really good. We have to have talent and you can see that right away. Second, will they fit into the environment at Duke? Third is the nutcracker, it’s character.”
- “You’re always the best player on the team, so how do you judge character? I always looked at the relationship the kid had with his mother… We had pretty good young men when they came in and we made them better.”
- “We both recruited talent with character. We didn’t recruit talented characters.”
- “Every kid you coach is important and some don’t develop until later. Teach them the fundamentals.”
- “You only get better by not having a ceiling put on you.”
- “Work is a talent… Can you work together? Make someone else better in practice.”
- “Practice is where you learn. It’s a class.”
- “People are only going to ask you one question – ‘Did you win?’ So let’s be concerned with winning.”
- “Can you be concerned with goal (winning) and be worthy of winning?”
- “A concept that is not taught as well as it should is time and score. The last three minutes of the game I’m counting seconds.”
- “There’s a reason why people are announcers, former coaches who are still of an age they can coach… A lot of games are won between the four-and-eight minute make. So don’t become a slave to what other people think is a way to do things. There is no one book and that is the beauty of our game. Our game is a game of quick decisions.”
- “If you were going to make the best meal, you would get the best ingredients for the meal. Our games had the best ingredients.”
- “I respected that moment (when we played). Other programs can play but they can’t play that game.”
- “The players on both teams were good friends.”
- “Coach Smith was as good as anyone who has coached any sport.”
- “The difference between a great team and a championship team – one play.”
- “Our game is cruel. That’s the beauty of it because only one team wins.”
- “It’s been an honor. It’s been an honor to be your coach.”
- “Everything is run by committees (in college basketball) and that’s not the best way to run things.”
- “As a coach, it’s the one classroom where every kid you teach wants to be there. So when you have the opportunity to have them in your class, teach good stuff and teach values that I’m not sure they’re being taught everywhere.”
- “Your wins, they’ll keep track of them. But your wins are how you develop those young men and women you have the opportunity to coach.”
Roy Williams
- “We agreed on most issues, most things important to college basketball. We didn’t agree on anything during the course of the game.”
- “My high school coach was the first person to say nice things about me to my older buddies. He was the first person to ever give me confidence.”
- “My first year (as a high school coach) we went 2-19.”
- “I thought Coach Smith was the best basketball coach I’d ever seen in my life. He was far better off the court than on the court and I’d say the same think about Michael (Coach K) and his family.”
- “If we hadn’t adjusted, we wouldn’t have lasted so long but there’s certain times when I’m out here (on the court) that I coached the same way I did at the start.”
- “I would never chew them out unless it was one of two things – lack of hustle… Hustle at our level is not 95%, it’s 100%. Or if they didn’t concentrate.”
- “Every coach must change because if you don’t, you don’t survive.”
- “I wanted to recruit kids I wanted to be around.”
- “You want players who will be great teammates.”
- “If you can get better, why are you satisfied with where you are?”
- “We’re going to use our brain better than anybody else. If we use our brain better than anybody else we’re going to get confidence.”
- “The work ethic to do it the best you can at the highest level of energy, if you do that in practice you don’t have to change for a game.”
- “It’s fun if you work your butt off in practice. You’re investing… In basketball, you don’t get success unless you invest.”
- “I did not play up differently before we played Duke. Nothing different because the fans and media were going to make it so our players wanted to be involved. He (Coach K) set the standard that when you played you had to be ready to play Duke… You’re game had to be at the highest level. I didn’t have to motivate my players because the nature of the series motivated them.”
- “There’s no other rivalry that the week before the game they play 10 games from the past. Our institutions are unique and the rivalry is unique and we both appreciated that part of it.”
- “The only thing I ever wanted to do is coach and no one has ever enjoyed coaching as much as I have.”
- “I’ve been so lucky because of those players.”
- “I feel like I’m the luckiest man on this Earth.”
- “We’re the only sport where the coaches don’t have any say and we’re the ones who touch the players.”
- “You (high school coaches) have the influence to change somebody. You have the influence to change somebody for the rest of their lives.”
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