500 Motivational Phil Jackson Quotes About Teamwork (2023)

1. “The strength of the team is each individual member. The strength of each member is the team.” – Phil Jackson

2. “Trying to eliminate anger never works. The more you try to suppress it, the more likely it is to erupt later in a more virulent form. A better approach is to become as intimate as possible with how anger works on your mind and body so that you can transform its underlying energy into something productive.”

3. “Like life, basketball is messy and unpredictable. It has its way with you, no matter how hard you try to control it. The trick is to experience each moment with a clear mind and an open heart. When you do that, the game – and life – will take care of itself.” – Phil Jackson

4. From that point on, I felt confident enough to throw my whole mind, body, and soul into what I loved—and that, as much as anything, has been the secret of my success in sports.

5. “I learned to dial back my ego and distribute power as widely as possible without surrendering final authority. Paradoxically, this approach strengthened my effectiveness because it freed me to focus on my job as keeper of the team's vision.”

6. “The sun nurtures and vitalizes the trees and flowers. It does so by giving away its light. But in the end, in which direction do they grow? So it is with a master craftsman like Liu Bang. After placing individuals in positions that fully realize their potential, he secures harmony among them by giving them all credit for their distinctive achievements. And in the end, as the trees and flowers grow toward the sun, individuals grow toward Liu Bang with devotion.”

7. “Basketball is sharing.”

8. We won the league championship during my first season as coach, and I discovered that I had a gift for making adjustments during games and getting the most out of the talent on the roster.

9. “like to make practices stimulating, fun, and, most of all, efficient. Coach Al McGuire once told me that his secret was not wasting anybody’s time. “If you can’t it get done in eight hours a day,” he said, “it’s not worth doing.” That’s been my philosophy ever since. Much of my thinking on this subject was influenced by the work of Abraham Maslow, one of the founders of humanistic psychology who is best known for his theory of the hierarchy of needs. Maslow believed that the highest human need is to achieve “self-actualization,” which he defined as “the full use and exploitation of one’s talents, capacities and potentialities.” The basic characteristics of self-actualizers, he discovered in his research, are spontaneity and naturalness, a greater acceptance of themselves and others, high levels of creativity, and a strong focus on problem solving rather than ego gratification. To achieve self-actualization, he concluded, you first need to satisfy a series of more basic needs, each building upon the other to form what is commonly referred to as Maslow’s pyramid. The bottom layer is made up of physiological urges (hunger, sleep, sex); followed by safety concerns (stability, order); love (belonging); self-esteem (self-respect, recognition); and finally self-actualization. Maslow concluded that most people fail to reach self-actualization because they get stuck somewhere lower on the pyramid. In his book The Farther Reaches of Human Nature, Maslow describes the key steps to attaining self-actualization: experiencing life “vividly, selflessly, with full concentration and total absorption”; making choices from moment to moment that foster growth rather than fear; becoming more attuned to your inner nature and acting in concert with who you are; being honest with yourself and taking responsibility for what you say and do instead of playing games or posing; identifying your ego defenses and finding the courage to give them up; developing the ability to determine your own destiny and daring to be different and non-conformist; creating an ongoing process for reaching your potential and doing the work needed to realize your vision. fostering the conditions for having peak experiences, or what Maslow calls “moments of ecstasy” in which we think, act, and feel more clearly and are more loving and accepting of others.”

10. “Not only is there more to life than basketball, but there’s also a lot more to basketball than basketball.” – Phil Jackson

11. “Here’s a typical list: Song of Solomon (for Michael Jordan), Things Fall Apart (Bill Cartwright), Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (John Paxson), The Ways of White Folks (Scottie Pippen), Joshua: A Parable for Today (Horace Grant), Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind (B.J. Armstrong), Way of the Peaceful Warrior (Craig Hodges), On the Road (Will Perdue), and Beavis & Butt-Head: This Book Sucks (Stacey King). Some players read every”

12. “In basketball - as in life - true joy comes from being fully present in each and every moment, not just when things are going your way.”

13. “My dad always had this little sign on his desk: ‘The bigger your head is, the easier your shoes are to fill’. He really drilled that in.” – Phil Jackson

14. My struggle to come to terms with my anger reminds me of an old Zen story.

15. Zen encourages practitioners to question everything.

16. Good teams become great ones when the members trust each other enough to surrender the me for the we.

17. “I have just three things to teach: simplicity, patience, compassion. These three are the greatest treasures. Simple in actions and thoughts, you return to the source of being. Patient with both friends and enemies, you accord with the way things are. Compassionate toward yourself, you reconcile all beings in the world.”

18. “The strength of the team is each individual member. The strength of each member is the team.” -Phil Jackson

19. “In my view, the key to becoming a successful NBA player is not learning the coolest highlight-reel moves. It’s learning how to control your emotions and keep your mind focused on the game, how to play through pain, how to carve out your role on the team and perform it consistently, how to stay cool under pressure and maintain your equanimity after crushing losses or ecstatic wins.”

20. “The most we can hope for is to create the best possible conditions for success, then let go of the outcome. The ride is a lot more fun that way.”– Phil Jackson.

21. “Yes, victory is sweet, but it doesn’t necessarily make life any easier the next season or even the next day.”

22. “One thing I’ve learned as a coach is that you can’t force your will on people. If you want them to act differently, you need to inspire them to change themselves.”

23. “Coaching is about, “How do I get people to play at their peak level?” It is a spiritual quest. And if it’s not that, you don’t have a challenge, you don’t have a mission. Forming a brotherhood and trying to move it forward – that’s what coaching is.”

24. “Always keep an open mind and a compassionate heart.” – Phil Jackson

25. “When the mind is allowed to relax, inspiration often follows.” – Phil Jackson

26. “Success can be measured in many different ways. . . . Either way, I would find the challenge invigorating.” – Phil Jackson

27. “To be trusted is a greater compliment than to be loved. GEORGE MACDONALD”

28. “The strength of the team is each individual member. The strength of each member is the team.”– Phil Jackson.

29. What appealed to me about Zen practice was its inherent simplicity.

30. “The old Knicks were used to taking responsibility for our own laundry because there was no equipment manager then, and strange as it may sound, washing our own uniforms had a unifying effect on the team. If the newcomers weren't willing to wash their own gear, we wondered whether they would take responsibility for what they had to do on court.”

31. “1 Corinthians 13: If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing.”

32. “The unconscious mind is a terrific solver of complex problems when the conscious mind is busy elsewhere or, perhaps better yet, not overtaxed at all.”– Phil Jackson.

33. “Like life, basketball is messy and unpredictable. It has its way with you, no matter how hard you try to control it. The trick is to experience each moment with a clear mind and open heart. When you do that, the game - and life - will take care of itself.”

34. As a young player, you tend to focus most of your attention... But now I began to see basketball as a dynamic game of chess in which all the pieces were in motion.

35. “The strength of the team is each member. The strength of each member is the team.” – Phil Jackson, Basketball Player

36. Jackson was inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame in 2007, and his jersey was retired by the Knicks in the same year.

37. “dial back my ego and distribute power as widely as possible without surrendering final authority. Paradoxically, this approach strengthened my effectiveness because it freed me to focus on my job as keeper of the team’s vision.”

38. “You can’t force your will on people. If you want them to act differently, you need to inspire them to change themselves.”

39. “You're only a success at the moment you perform a successful act.”

40. I was disappointed with our fourth-quarter beginning. We put ourselves in good position, then didn't score for three minutes. We gave it away.

41. “The strength of the team is each individual member. The strength of each member is the team.”― Phil Jackson

42. Bryant’s long-time coach, Phil Jackson’s journey as a coach, including advice for future leaders and background on Kobe’s development as a leader of the Lakers.

43. “Yes, victory is sweet, but it doesn't necessarily make life any easier the next season or even the next day.”

44. You have to be able to psychologically help your players, support-wise, be in touch with them, so I think managing people is very important.

45. “It seems like they played really hard against Sacramento, didn’t they? That was their other opponent they had an option to play. It would seem like they want to choose us.”– Phil Jackson.

46. The most we can hope for is to create the best possible conditions for success, then let go of the outcome. The ride is a lot more fun that way.

47. “Everybody has an opportunity to play a role, a playmaking role, so it makes it harder to coach. It takes a little more time.”

48. “A man travels the world over in search of what he needs and returns home to find it. GEORGE MOORE”

49. What moves me is watching young men bond together and tap into the magic that arises when they focus—with their whole heart and soul—on something greater than themselves.

50. “Basketball is a simple game. Your goal is penetration, get the ball close to the basket, and there are three ways to do that: pass, dribble, and offensive rebound.”

51. “Like life, basketball is messy and unpredictable. It has its way with you, no matter how hard you try to control it. The trick is to experience each moment with a clear mind and open heart. When you do that, the game–and life–will take care of itself.”

52. Practicing Zen not only helped me become more acutely aware of what was happening in the present moment but also slowed down my experience of time because it diminished my tendency to rush into the future or get lost in the past.

53. I had just spent the past five years as head coach of the Albany Patroons and had experimented with all kinds of ideas about how to make the game more equitable and collaborative.

54. “What I discovered after years of meditation practice is that when you immerse yourself fully in the moment, you start developing a much deeper awareness of what’s going on, right here, right now. And that awareness ultimately leads to a greater sense of oneness — the essence of teamwork.”

55. “Winning is important to me, but what brings me real joy is the experience of being fully engaged in whatever I’m doing.” – Phil Jackson

56. “The greatness of Michael Jordan is his competitive drive. The weakness of Michael Jordan is his competitive drive”

57. “And yet as a coach, I know that being fixated on winning (or more likely, not losing) is counterproductive, especially when it causes you to lose control of your emotions.” – Phil Jackson

58. “Feelings come and go like clouds in a windy sky. Conscious breathing is my anchor. THICH NHAT HANH”

59. “There’s a Zen saying I often cite that goes, “Before enlightenment, chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment, chop wood, carry water.” The point: Stay focused on the task at hand rather than dwelling on the past or worrying about the future.”

60. “It takes a number of critical factors to win an NBA championship, including the right mix of talent, creativity, intelligence, toughness, and of course, luck. But if a team doesn’t have the most essential ingredient – love – none of those other factors matter.”

61. “I think there’s something about wanting to stand in the spotlight. I think the ball is a spotlight, for example, and I think they want to stand in that. I a lot of times see – LeBron is a guy that vacillates between wanting to do that and then wanting to get somebody else involved.”– Phil Jackson.

62. “No one plays this or any game perfectly. It’s the guy who recovers from his mistakes who wins.” – Phil Jackson

63. “I gave it my body and mind, but I have kept my soul.” – Phil Jackson

64. “Trying to eliminate anger never works. The more you try to suppress it, the more likely it is to erupt later in a more virulent form. A better approach is to become as intimate as possible with how anger works on your mind and body so that you can transform its underlying energy into something productive.”

65. “As a leader, your job is to do everything in your power to create the perfect conditions for success by benching your ego and inspiring your team to play the game the right way. But at some point, you need to let go and turn yourself over to the basketball gods. The soul of success is surrendering to what is.” – Phil Jackson

66. “In their groundbreaking book, Tribal Leadership, management consultants Dave Logan, John King, and Halee Fischer-Wright lay out the five stages of tribal development, which they formulated after conducting extensive research on small to midsize organizations.”

67. “If your primary objective is to bring the team into a state of harmony and oneness, it doesn’t make sense for you to rigidly impose your authority.”

68. “To Fox, the reason we lost was simple. “A team always beats a group of individuals,” he said. “We picked a poor time to be a group of individuals.”

69. “He was a great student and a really fine leader on the basketball court. He directed a lot of what happened, he was very much one of the reasons why we were successful over those six championships.”– Phil Jackson.

70. “But theres only so much a player can absorb when his body is pulsing with adrenaline. This is not a good time for deep left brain discussion. It’s the moment to calm the player’s minds and strengthen their spiritual connection with one another before they head into battle.”

71. “Winning is important to me, but what brings me real joy is the experience of being fully engaged in whatever I’m doing” – Phil Jackson

72. “I had always insisted on structured practices with a clear agenda that the players would receive ahead of time.”

73. “The way you do anything is the way you do everything. TOM WAITS”

74. “I always tell the players, "We are in the business that's very much like a marathon race only we're gonna be doing it for 260-something days or so." And the race is something you get ready to do. There's gonna be some trial inside of there, but you put yourself through it because ultimately it brings a lot of meaning to your life, it gives a lot of energy to what you're doing.”

75. “My philosophy is that you can’t motivate players with speeches, you have motivated players that you draft. That’s where they come in and those are the guys that are competitive. You cannot teach competitiveness.”

76. What I liked about basketball was how interconnected everything was.

77. “I thrive on challenges, and there is no more imposing challenge for someone in my profession than winning an NBA title” – Phil Jackson

78. “Holding on to anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else; you are the one who gets burned. THE BUDDHA”

79. “Basketball is a great mystery. You can do everything right. You can have the perfect mix of talent and the best system of offense in the game. You can devise a foolproof defensive strategy and prepare your players for every possible eventuality. But if the players don’t have a sense of oneness as a group, your efforts won’t pay off. And the bond that unites a team can be so fragile, so elusive.”

80. “Basketball is a simple game. Your goal is penetration, get the ball close to the basket, and there are three ways to do that. Pass, dribble and offensive rebound.” – Phil Jackson

81. Good teams become great ones, when members trust each other enough to surrender the ‘me’ for the ‘we.’ –Phil Jackson

82. “Not only is there more to life than basketball, there’s a lot more to basketball than basketball.” – Phil Jackson

83. “The ideal way to win a championship is step by step.” – Phil Jackson

84. “Jr. spoke eloquently about this phenomenon. “In a real sense, all of life is interrelated,” he said. “All persons are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects”

85. “No one plays this or any game perfectly. It’s the guy who recovers from his mistakes who wins.”

86. “NBA is not exactly the friendliest environment for teaching selflessness. Even though the game itself is a five-person sport, the culture surrounding it celebrates egoistic behavior and stresses individual achievement over team bonding.”– Phil Jackson

87. “Good teams become great ones when the members trust each other enough to surrender the Me for the We.” - Phil Jackson

88. In 2012, Jackson was named president of the New York Knicks, becoming the first former NBA player to become the head of a team.

89. “The Buddhist teacher Pema Chodron talks about letting go as an opportunity for true awakening. One of her favorite sayings is “Only to the extent that we expose ourselves over and over to annihilation can that which is indestructible be found in us.” That’s what I was searching”

90. “My first act after being named head coach of the Bulls was to formulate a vision for the team. I had to take into account not only what I wanted to achieve, but how I was going to get there.”

91. We were playing the game the way the 'basketball gods' had ordained: reading defenses on the move and reacting in unison like a finely tuned jazz combo.

92. “Think lightly of yourself and think deeply of the world. MIYAMOTO MUSASHI”

93. “I was also moved by William James’s The Varieties of Religious Experience, which not only helped me put my childhood experience in perspective but also showed me how my search to find a new, more authentic spiritual identity fit within the vast landscape of American culture.”– Phil Jackson.

94. “He’s absolutely brilliant in bringing a group together to accomplish one common goal” – Kobe Bryant

95. “No toques el saxofón, déjate tocar por él. CHARLIE PARKER”

96. “I won’t coach this team next year if he is still here. He won’t listen to anyone. I’ve had it with this kid.”

97. “There’s a lot of chatter in basketball and, rightfully, you want players to be talking to each other… But sometimes in practice, it gets too verbose… so I tried to take things out of the ordinary and make them special so they’d understand the difference.”– Phil Jackson.

98. “In the West we tend to think of compassion as a form of charity, but I share Lao-tzu’s view that compassion for all beings—not least of all oneself—is the key to breaking down barriers among people.”– Phil Jackson.

99. “Once you’ve done the mental work, there comes a point you have to throw yourself into the action and put your heart on the line. That means not only being brave, but being compassionate towards yourself, your teammates and your opponents.”

100. “Once you've done the mental work, there comes a point you have to throw yourself into the action and put your heart on the line. That means not only being brave, but being compassionate towards yourself, your teammates and your opponents.”

101. “The master nodded. “To hear the unheard,” he said, “is a necessary discipline to be a good ruler. For only when a ruler has learned to listen closely to the people’s hearts, hearing their feelings uncommunicated, pains unexpressed, and complaints not spoken of, can he hope to inspire confidence in the people, understand when something is wrong, and meet the true needs of his citizens.”

102. “Approach the game with no preset agendas and you'll probably come away surprised at your overall efforts.”

103. The first thing I did with the Bulls was to teach the players an abbreviated version of mindfulness meditation based on the Zen practice I’d been doing for years.

104. “The unconscious mind is a terrific solver of complex problems when the conscious mind is busy elsewhere or, perhaps better yet, not overtaxed at all.”

105. “Yes, victory is sweet, but it doesn’t necessarily make life any easier the next season or even the next day.” – Phil Jackson

106. “After years of experimenting, I discovered that the more I tried to exert power directly, the less powerful I became. I learned to dial back my ego and distribute power as widely as possible without surrendering final authority.”– Phil Jackson

107. I’d ask them to commit to being coached that season, saying, God has ordained me to coach you young men, and I embrace the role I’ve been given.

108. “I think the most important thing about coaching is that you have to have a sense of confidence about what you’re doing. You have to be a salesman and you have to get your players, particularly your leaders, to believe in what you’re trying to accomplish on the basketball floor.”

109. “In The Tao of Leadership, John Heider stresses the importance of interfering as little as possible. “Rules reduce freedom and responsibility,” he writes. “Enforcement of rules is coercive and manipulative, which diminishes spontaneity and absorbs group energy. The more coercive you are, the more resistant the group will become.”

110. “Approach the game with no preset agendas, and you’ll probably come away surprised at your overall efforts.”

111. “My philosophy is that you can’t motivate players with speeches, you have motivated players that you draft. That’s where they come in and those are the guys that are competitive. You cannot teach competitiveness.” – Phil Jackson

112. When I joined the Bulls in 1987 as an assistant coach, my colleague Tex Winter taught me a system, known as the triangle offense, that aligned perfectly with the values of selflessness and mindful awareness I’d been studying in Zen Buddhism.

113. “The most we can hope for is to create the best possible conditions for success, then let go of the outcome. The ride is a lot more fun that way”

114. “We couldn’t overcome a tough shooting game for Kobe. They threw an extra man at him, and we didn’t make good adjustments. Offensively, I don’t think we grasped the concepts of what we are trying to do here.”– Phil Jackson.

115. “The most we can hope for is to create the best possible conditions for success, then let go of the outcome.”

116. “You go in the weight room and you lift weights and you do all these things to strengthen your body. This is strengthening your mind. When you can stay focused and you can use that focus to always come back with your breath to center yourself so that you’re kind of floating in the moment, in the spirit.” – Phil Jackson

117. “Not only is there more to life than basketball, there’s a lot more to basketball than basketball” – Phil Jackson

118. “Is it not the sturdiness of the spokes?” they replied. “Then why is it that two wheels made of identical spokes differ in strength?” asked the master. “See beyond what is seen. Never forget that a wheel is made not only of spokes, but also of the space between the spokes. Sturdy spokes poorly placed make a weak wheel. Whether their full potential is realized depends on the harmony between them. The essence of wheel-making lies in the craftman’s ability to conceive and create the space that holds and balances the spokes within the wheel. Think now, who is the craftsman here?” After a long silence, one of the disciples asked, “But master, how does a craftsman secure the harmony among the spokes?”

119. “NBA is not exactly the friendliest environment for teaching selflessness. Even though the game itself is a five-person sport, the culture surrounding it celebrates egoistic behavior and stresses individual achievement over team bonding.”

120. “Good teams become great teams when the members trust each other enough to surrender the me for the we.”

121. We're exploring life without Shaq,... and enjoying it, too.

122. “The strength of the team is each individual member. The strength of each member is the team” - Phil Jackson

123. “Leadership is not about forcing your will on others. It’s about mastering the art of letting go.” – Phil Jackson

124. “The strength of the team is each individual member. The strength of each member is the team.” –Phil Jackson

125. “I thrive on challenges, and there is no more imposing challenge for someone in my profession than winning an NBA title.” – Phil Jackson

126. “I’m not trying to find answers anymore. I’m trying to live what I know.”

127. “Wisdom is always an overmatch for strength.” – Phil Jackson

128. “When I let him solve the problem himself, he was more likely to buy into the solution and not repeat the same counterproductive behavior in the future.”

129. Wisdom is always an overmatch for strength.

130. “That’s the essence of what it means to bring individuals together and connect them to something greater than themselves.”

131. “Things falling apart is a kind of testing and also a kind of healing,” writes Chodron. “We think that the point is to pass the test or to overcome the problem, but the truth is that things don’t really get solved. They come together again and fall apart again. It’s just like that. The healing comes from letting there be room for all of this to happen: room for grief, for relief, for misery, for joy.”

132. “Like life, basketball is messy and unpredictable. It has its way with you, no matter how hard you try to control it. The trick is to experience each moment with a clear mind and open heart. When you do that, the game – and life – will take care of itself.”

133. “Basketball is a sport that involves the subtle interweaving of players at full speed to the point where they are thinking and moving as one.”

134. “Like life, basketball is messy and unpredictable. It has its way with you, no matter how hard you try to control it. The trick is to experience each moment with a clear mind and an open heart. When you do that, the game and life will take care of itself.”

135. “In a nutshell, the Buddha taught that life is suffering and that the primary cause of our suffering is our desire for things to be different from the way they actually are. One moment, things may be going our way, and in the next moment they’re not. When we try to prolong pleasure or reject pain, we suffer.”

136. “Approach the game with no preset agendas and you’ll probably come away surprised at your overall efforts.”

137. Zen is pragmatic, down to earth, and open to exploration. It doesn’t require you to subscribe to a certain set of principles or take anything on faith.

138. “Looking back, I think my struggle with Jerry taught me things about myself that I couldn’t have learned any other way. The Dalai Lama calls it “the enemy’s gift.” From a Buddhist perspective, battling with enemies can help you develop greater compassion for and tolerance of others.”

139. In basketball, you need to go inside first before you can go to your shooters and cutters for easy baskets.

140. “In a commentary on CNNMoney.com, Fortune senior writer Anne Fisher reported that scientists have begun to realize “that people may do their best thinking when they are not concentrating on work at all.” She cites studies published in the journal Science by Dutch psychologists who concluded, “The unconscious mind is a terrific solver of complex problems when the conscious mind is busy elsewhere or, perhaps better yet, not overtaxed at all.” That’s why I subscribe to the philosophy of the late Satchel Paige, who said, “Sometimes I sits and thinks, and sometimes I just sits.”

141. The very thing that attracts most people to basketball in the first place: the inherent beauty of the game.

142. “There’s a Zen saying I often cite that goes, ‘Before enlightenment, chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment, chop wood, carry water.’ The point, stay focused on the task at hand rather than dwelling on the past or worrying about the future.”

143. “Kobe was hell-bent on surpassing Jordan as the greatest player in the game. His obsession with Michael was striking. When we played in Chicago that season, I orchestrated a meeting between the two of them, thinking that Michael might help shift Kobe’s attitude toward selfless teamwork. After they shook hands, the first words out of Kobe’s mouth were, ‘You know I can kick your ***** one on one.’”

144. “Good teams become great ones when the members trust each other enough to surrender the Me for the We.” – Phil Jackson

145. It takes a number of critical factors to win an NBA championship, including the right mix of talent, creativity, intelligence, toughness, and, of course, luck.

146. Hearing the unheard. That’s a skill everyone in the group needs, not just the leader.

147. “The most we can hope for is to create the best possible conditions for success, then let go of the outcome”

148. “If you meet the Buddha in the lane, feed him the ball.”

149. Basketball takes place at such a lightning pace that it’s easy to make mistakes and get obsessed with what just happened or what might happen next.

150. “If we can accept whatever hand we’ve been dealt, no matter how unwelcome, the way to proceed eventually becomes clear.”

151. No matter how gaudy or cumbersome a championship ring maybe, the dream of winning one is what motivates players to put themselves through the trials of a long NBA season.

152. “Cuando haces cosas desde el alma,

153. Basketball players don’t risk their lives every day like soldiers in Afghanistan, but in many ways the same principle applies.

154. “Only to the extent that we expose ourselves over and over to annihilation can that which is indestructible be found in us.”– Phil Jackson.

155. “LIVING WITH COMPASSION One aspect of Buddhism that I found to be especially compelling was the teachings on compassion. The Buddha was known as the “compassionate one,” and according to religion scholars, his moral teachings bear a close resemblance to those of Jesus, who told his followers at the Last Supper: “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” In a similar vein, the Buddha said, “Just as a mother would protect her only child at the risk of her own life, even so, cultivate a boundless heart towards all beings. Let your thoughts of boundless love pervade the whole world.”

156. Leadership is not about forcing your will on others. It's about mastering the art of letting go.

157. Truth be told... I’m phobic about large crowds.

158. Success can be measured in many different ways. . . . Either way, I would find the challenge invigorating.

159. “For some reason, God is telling me to move on, and I must move on,” he said. “People have to learn that nothing lasts forever.” Then we tried to figure out a way that he could compete in the playoffs without playing”

160. “In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities; in the expert’s mind there are few.”

161. “When I got to the locker room, M.J. was about to step into the shower. He said, “I’ve got to go.” And I told him, “You’d better call Steve and get it straight before tomorrow.” This was a major wake-up call for Michael. He had just gotten into a fight with the smallest guy on the team over nothing. What was going on? “It made me look at myself, and say, ‘you know what? You’re really being an idiot about this whole process,’” Jordan recalls. “I knew I had to be more respectful of my teammates. And I had to be more respectful of what was happening to me in terms of trying to get back into the game. I had to get more internal.”

162. “In basketball - as in life - true joy comes from being fully present in each and every moment, not just when things are going your way. Of course, it's no accident that things are more likely to go your way when you stop worrying about whether you're going to win or lose and focus your full attention on what's happening right this moment.”

163. “The strength of the team is each individual member. The strength of each member is the team.” - Phil Jackson

164. What I discovered after years of meditation practice is that... you start developing a much deeper awareness of what’s going on, right here, right now.

165. “So George talked about the two aspects of every crisis: danger and opportunity. If you have the right mind-set, he said, you can make the crisis work for you. You have the chance to create a new identity for the team that will be even stronger than before.”

166. “If we can accept whatever hand we’ve been dealt, no matter how unwelcome, the way to proceed eventually becomes clear.”

167. “I’ve done that since I was a kid sort of naturally. I never put too much thought into it. When Phil Jackson came, though, I started to understand the importance of my personalized meditative process. From then on, I placed an increased emphasis on it.”

168. “This forced me to start thinking of the game as a strategic problem rather than a tactical one. As a young player, you tend to focus most of your attention on how you're going beat your man in any given game. But now I began to see basketball as a dynamic game of chess in which all the pieces were in motion. It was exhilarating.”

169. “Heider, whose book is based on Lao-tzu’s Tao Te Ching, suggests that leaders practice becoming more open. “The wise leader is of service: receptive, yielding, following. The group member’s vibration dominates and leads, while the leader follows. But soon it is the member’s consciousness which is transformed, the member’s vibration which is resolved.”

170. “My intention was to give the players the freedom to figure out how to fit themselves within the system, rather than dictating from on high what I wanted them to do. Some players felt uncomfortable because they'd never been given that kind of latitude before. Others felt completely liberated.”

171. “You’re only a success for the moment that you complete a successful act.” – Phil Jackson

172. “If we can accept whatever hand we’ve been dealt – no matter how unwelcome – the way to proceed eventually becomes clear.” – Phil Jackson

173. “I'm a patient person. I think that's one thing that I feel comfortable I can deal with - the downfall and the errors, as long as I see progress and people trying.”

174. “Only to the extent that we expose ourselves over and over to annihilation can that which is indestructible be found in us.”

175. “You go in the weight room and you lift weights and you do all these things to strengthen your body. This is strengthening your mind. When you can stay focused and you can use that focus to always come back with your breath to center yourself, so that you're kind of floating in the moment, in the spirit.”

176. “Wisdom is always an overmatch for strength.”

177. “They were a tough, fiery team led by guard Allen Iverson who that year at six feet, 165 pounds, became the smallest player ever to win the MVP award. Iverson dismissed talk of a sweep, pointing to his heart and saying, “Championships are won here.”

178. “I’m not trying to find answers anymore. I’m trying to live what I know.” – Phil Jackson

179. “I gave it my body and mind, but I have kept my soul.”

180. The strength of the team is each individual member. The strength of each member is the team.'—Phil Jackson

181. “I’m not trying to find answers anymore. I’m trying to live what I know.”

182. What concerned me most were some of the younger players eager to make a name for themselves with the ESPN SportsCenter crowd.

183. “The best part of basketball, for those people on the inside, is the bus going to the airport after you’ve won a game on an opponent’s floor. It’s been a very tough battle. And preferably, in the playoffs. And that feeling that you have, together as a group, having gone to an opponent’s floor and won a very good victory, is as about as high as you can get.” – Phil Jackson

184. “Always keep an open mind and a compassionate heart.”

185. “Forget mistakes, forget failures, forget everything, except what you’re going to do now and do it. Today is your lucky day.” – Phil Jackson

186. “Always keep an open mind and a compassionate heart” – Phil Jackson

187. “Suzuki had just finished giving a talk to a group of Zen students when someone in the audience said, “You’ve been talking about Buddhism for nearly an hour, and I haven’t been able to understand a thing you said. Could you say one thing about Buddhism I can understand?” After the laughter died down, Suzuki replied calmly, “Everything changes.”

188. “No one plays this or any game perfectly. It’s the guy who recovers from his mistakes who wins.”

189. “I’m not trying to find answers anymore. I’m trying to live what I know.” – Phil Jackson

190. “In basketball — as in life — true joy comes from being fully present in each and every moment, not just when things are going your way” – Phil Jackson

191. The old Knicks were used to taking responsibility for our own laundry... and strange as it may sound, washing our own uniforms had a unifying effect on the team.

192. My brother Joe often talks about faith being one of the two things that can help you cope with fear. The other is love.

193. “The strength of the team lies within the individual. And the strength of the individual lies within the team” – Phil Jackson

194. “You can’t force your will on people. If you want them to act differently, you need to inspire them to change themselves.”

195. “Winning is important to me, but what brings me real joy is the experience of being fully engaged in whatever I’m doing.” – Phil Jackson

196. “The strength of the team is each individual member. The strength of each member is the team.” –Phil Jackson

197. “Edwin Markham’s “Outwitted”: He drew the circle that shut me out – Heretic, rebel, a thing to flout. But love and I had the wit to win: We drew a circle that took him in!”

198. Maybe I should have ended it there, with the crowd roaring and confetti raining down. But life is never quite so well scripted.

199. “What’s more, obsessing about winning is a loser’s game: The most we can hope for is to create the best possible conditions for success, then let go of the outcome.”– Phil Jackson.

200. If we can accept whatever hand we've been dealt - no matter how unwelcome - the way to proceed eventually becomes clear.

201. “To inspire the players, I adapted a quote from Walt Whitman and taped it on their lockers before the first game of the playoffs, against the Miami Heat. “Henceforth we seek not good fortune, we are ourselves good fortune.”– Phil Jackson

202. “Remember, Team, surrender the me for the we.”

203. “Everybody has an opportunity to play a role, a playmaking role, so it makes it harder to coach. It takes a little more time.” – Phil Jackson

204. “The beauty of the system—and this applies to all kinds of systems, is that it turned the whole team into a learning organization.

205. “Basketball is a sport that involves the subtle interweaving of players at full speed to the point where they are thinking and moving as one.”– Phil Jackson.

206. “A coach’s main job is to reawaken a spirit in which the players can blend together effortlessly.” – Phil Jackson

207. “I’ve always been impressed by Kobe’s resilience and ironclad self-confidence. Unlike Shaq, who was often plagued by self-doubt, Kobe never let such thoughts cross his mind. If someone set the bar at ten feet, he’d jump eleven, even if no one had ever done it before. That’s the attitude he brought with him when he arrived at training camp that fall, and it had a powerful impact on his teammates.”

208. I’ve always wondered where that power came from and whether I could learn how to tap into it on my own, not just on the basketball court but in the rest of my life as well.

209. “The strength of the team is each individual member. The strength of each member is the team” – Phil Jackson

210. “Before a vision or dream can become a reality, it must be owned by every member of the group.”

211. “Always keep an open mind and a compassionate heart.” — Phil Jackson, American former professional basketball player and coach.

212. “The most we can hope for is to create the best possible conditions for success, then let go of the outcome. The ride is a lot more fun that way.”– Phil Jackson.

213. “If children are fated to live out the unfulfilled dreams of their parents”

214. “Basketball is a simple game. Your goal is penetration, get the ball close to the basket, and there are three ways to do that. Pass, dribble and offensive rebound.”

215. “As I mentioned in the first chapter, management experts Dave Logan, John King, and Halee Fischer-Wright describe five stages of tribal development in their book, Tribal Leadership. My goal in my first year as head coach was to transform the Bulls from a stage 3 team of lone warriors committed to their own individual success (“I’m great and you’re not”) to a stage 4 team in which the dedication to the We overtakes the emphasis on the Me (“We’re great and you’re not”).”

216. “The ideal way to win a championship is step by step.”

217. There’s a Zen saying I often cite that goes, 'Before enlightenment, chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment, chop wood, carry water'.

218. The strength of the team is each individual member. The strength of each member is the team -- Phil Jackson

219. “My confidence grew out of knowing that when the spirit was right and the players were attuned to one another, the game was likely to unfold in our favor.”

220. “The most we can hope for is to create the best possible conditions for success, then let go of the outcome. The ride is a lot more fun that way.” – Phil Jackson

221. “My job as a coach was to make something meaningful out of one of the most mundane activities on the planet: playing pro basketball.”

222. “I think the most important thing about coaching is that you have to have a sense of confidence about what you’re doing. You have to be a salesman, and you have to get your players, particularly your leaders, to believe in what you’re trying to accomplish on the basketball floor.” ― Phil Jackson

223. “Kobe was hell-bent on surpassing Jordan as the greatest player in the game. His obsession with Michael was striking. Not only had he mastered many of Jordan's moves, but he affected many of M.J.'s mannerisms as well. When we played in Chicago that season, I orchestrated a meeting between the two stars, thinking that Michael might help shift Kobe’s attitude towards selfless teamwork. After they shook hands, the first words out of Kobe’s mouth were “You know I can kick your ass one on one.”

224. “I’ve always been impressed by Kobe’s resilience and ironclad self-confidence. Unlike Shaq, who was often plagued by self-doubt, Kobe never let such thoughts cross his mind. If someone set the bar at 10 feet, he’d jump 11, even if no one had ever done it before. That’s the attitude he brought with him when he arrived at training camp that fall, and it had a powerful impact on his teammates.”

225. “No one plays this or any game perfectly. It's the guy who recovers from his mistakes who wins.”

226. “Not only is there more to life than basketball, there’s a lot more to basketball than basketball.”

227. “On Becoming a Person, “is that the more I am simply willing to be myself, in all this complexity of life and the more I am willing to understand and accept the realities in myself and in the other person, the more change seems to be stirred up.”

228. As I see it, my job as a coach was to make something meaningful out of one of the most mundane activities on the planet: playing pro basketball.

229. “I’m a patient person. I think that’s one thing that I feel comfortable I can deal with, the downfall and the errors, as long as I see progress and people trying.”

230. “I was also moved by William James’s The Varieties of Religious Experience, which not only helped me put my childhood experience in perspective but also showed me how my search to find a new, more authentic spiritual identity fit within the vast landscape of American culture.”

231. “I’m a patient person. I think that’s one thing that I feel comfortable I can deal with – the downfall and the errors, as long as I see progress and people trying.”

232. What fascinates most people about sports is not the endless chatter about strategy that fills the airwaves. It’s what I like to call the spiritual nature of the game.

233. The most we can hope for is to create the best possible conditions for success, then let go of the outcome.

234. “His fearless attack on both ends of the court galvanized the team.”

235. “Fall down seven times. Stand up eight. JAPANESE PROVERB”

236. “Approach the game with no preset agendas and you'll probably come away surprised at your overall efforts.”

237. “what I like to call the spiritual nature of the game. I can’t pretend to be an expert in leadership theory. But what I do know is that the art of transforming a group of young, ambitious individuals into an integrated championship team is not a mechanistic process. It’s a mysterious juggling act that requires not only a thorough knowledge of the time-honored laws of the game but also an open heart, a clear mind, and a deep curiosity about the ways of the human spirit.”

238. “When you do things from your soul, you feel a river moving in you, a joy. RUMI”

239. “And yet as a coach, I know that being fixated on winning (or more likely, not losing) is counterproductive, especially when it causes you to lose control of your emotions. What’s more, obsessing about winning is a loser’s game: The most we can hope for is to create the best possible conditions for success, then let go of the outcome. The ride is a lot more fun that way.”– Phil Jackson.

240. “Harvard Business Review that he said reminded him of me. The article—“Parables of Leadership” by W. Chan Kim and Renée A. Mauborgne—was composed of a series of ancient parables that focused on what the authors called “the unseen space of leadership.”

241. “Approach the game with no preset agendas, and you’ll probably come away surprised at your overall efforts.”

242. “The Lakotas’ concept of teamwork was deeply rooted in their view of the universe. A warrior didn’t try to stand out from his fellow band members; he strove to act bravely and honorably, to help the group in whatever way he could to accomplish its mission.”

243. Three aspects of Zen have been critical to me as a leader: Giving up control, trusting the moment, and living with compassion.

244. “Three aspects of Zen have been critical to me as a leader: 1. GIVING UP CONTROL Suzuki writes, “If you want to obtain perfect calmness in your zazen, you should not be bothered by the various images you find in your mind. Let them come and let them go. Then they will be under control.”

245. “I think the most important thing about coaching is that you have to have a sense of confidence about what you’re doing.”

246. “I think the most important thing about coaching is that you have to have a sense of confidence about what you’re doing. You have to be a salesman and you have to get your players, particularly your leaders, to believe in what you’re trying to accomplish on the basketball floor.” – Phil Jackson

247. “The road to freedom is a beautiful system.”

248. “Coaching is salesmanship. Coaching is winning players over and convincing them they have to play together. It takes a team conviction to play together to make things work.”

249. “And above all, watch with glittering eyes the whole world around you because the greatest secrets are always hidden in the most unlikely places. Those who don’t believe in magic will never find it. ROALD DAHL”

250. “The strength of the team is each individual member. The strength of each member is the team.”

251. “It takes a number of critical factors to win an NBA championship, including the right mix of talent, creativity, intelligence, toughness, and of course, luck. But if a team doesn’t have the most essential ingredient – love – none of those other factors matter.”

252. The strength of the team is each individual member. The strength of each member is the team. – Phil Jackson (Click to Tweet!)

253. “What moves me is watching young men bond together and tap into the magic that arises when they focus with their whole heart and soul on something greater than themselves. Once you’ve experienced that, it’s something you never forget.”

254. “Before each series I spent a lot of time visualizing new ways to neutralize our next opponent’s attack.”

255. “What’s more, obsessing about winning is a loser’s game: The most we can hope for is to create the best possible conditions for success, then let go of the outcome.”

256. “I’ve taken a different tack. After years of experimenting, I discovered that the more I tried to exert power directly, the less powerful I became.”

257. “They developed the confidence to bounce back from adversity and tap into a source of inner strength many of them had never experienced before. They faced their demons head-on and didn’t blink.”

258. “That year I stopped pacing along the sidelines during games because I noticed that whenever I got agitated, Dennis would become hyperactive. And if I argued with a ref, it would only give him license to do the same. So I decided to become as quiet and restrained as possible. I didn’t want to set Dennis off, because once he got agitated, there was no telling what he might do. —”

259. Ever since I started coaching in the CBA, I’d been looking for a system of offense that approximated the selfless ball movement we’d used with the championship Knicks.

260. “STAGE 1—shared by most street gangs and characterized by despair, hostility, and the collective belief that “life sucks.” STAGE 2—filled primarily with apathetic people who perceive themselves as victims and who are passively antagonistic, with the mind-set that “my life sucks.” Think The Office on TV or the Dilbert comic strip. STAGE 3—focused primarily on individual achievement and driven by the motto “I’m great (and you’re not).” According to the authors, people in organizations at this stage “have to win, and for them winning is personal. They’ll outwork and outthink their competitors on an individual basis. The mood that results is a collection of ‘lone warriors.’” STAGE 4—dedicated to tribal pride and the overriding conviction that “we’re great (and they’re not).” This kind of team requires a strong adversary, and the bigger the foe, the more powerful the tribe. STAGE 5—a rare stage characterized by a sense of innocent wonder and the strong belief that “life is great.” (See Bulls, Chicago, 1995–98.)”

261. The key was getting a critical mass of players to buy into a more selfless approach to the game.

262. “Por eso soy partidario de la filosofía del difunto Satchel Paige, que afirmaba: «A veces me siento y pienso y otras, simplemente, me siento».”

263. “You can't force your will on people. If you want them to act differently, you need to inspire them to change themselves”

264. “Basketball is sharing.”

265. “The soul of success is surrendering to what is.” – Phil Jackson

266. “As a leader, your job is to do everything in your power to create the perfect conditions for success by benching your ego and inspiring your team to play the game the right way. But at some point, you need to let go and turn yourself over to the basketball gods. The soul of success is surrendering to what is.”

267. “We have a lot of players at that position and, obviously, we’ve got to make cuts soon. Our desire is to find a place for him and a good opportunity for him and Charlotte was a team that really and truly did want him.”– Phil Jackson.

268. “The most we can hope for is to create the best possible conditions for success, then let go of the outcome. The ride is a lot more fun that way.”

269. “Winning is important to me, but what brings me real joy is the experience of being fully engaged in whatever I’m doing.”

270. “Edwin Markham’s “Outwitted”: He drew the circle that shut me out— Heretic, rebel, a thing to flout. But love and I had the wit to win: We drew a circle that took him in!”– Phil Jackson.

271. “In basketball, as in life, true joy comes from being fully present in each and every moment, not just when things are going your way. Of course, it’s no accident that things are more likely to go your way when you stop worrying about whether you’re going to win or lose and focus your full attention on what’s happening right this moment.”

272. “The strength of team is an individual member, the strength for each member is the team.” ~ Phil Jackson

273. “Work is holy, sacred, and uplifting when it springs from who we are, when it bears a relationship to our unfolding journey,” writes activist, teacher, and lay monk Wayne Teasdale in A Monk in the World. “For work to be sacred, it must be connected to our”

274. “Coaching is about ‘How do I get people to play at their peak level?’ It is a spiritual quest. And if it’s not that, you don’t have a challenge. You don’t have a mission. Forming a brotherhood and trying to move it forward, that’s what coaching is.”

275. “The soul of success is surrendering to what is.”

276. “What moves me is watching young men bond together and tap into the magic that arises when they focus with their whole heart and soul on something greater than themselves. Once you’ve experienced that, it’s something you never forget.”

277. Bryant’s long-time coach, Phil Jackson’s journey as a coach, including advice for future leaders and background on Kobe’s development as a leader of the Lakers.

278. “Basketball is a sport that involves the subtle interweaving of players at full speed to the point where they are thinking and moving as one” – Phil Jackson

279. I thought it might be useful for the players to have a refresher course on selfless basketball, but this time from a different perspective—that of the Buddha.

280. “I don’t believe in curfews, because you can’t treat men like they were boys without forfeiting a certain level of trust.”

281. “To inspire the players, I adapted a quote from Walt Whitman and taped it on their lockers before the first game of the playoffs, against the Miami Heat. "Henceforth we seek not good fortune, we are ourselves good fortune".”

282. “As with everything else in life, the instructions remain the same, despite changing circumstances: Chop wood, carry water.”

283. “A coach’s main job is to reawaken a spirit in which the players can blend together effortlessly.”

284. “Hearing the unheard, that’s a skill everyone in the group needs, not just the leader.”

285. “You go in the weight room, and you lift weights, and you do all these things to strengthen your body. This is strengthening your mind. When you can stay focused, and you can use that focus to always come back with your breath to center yourself, so that you’re kind of floating in the moment, in the spirit.”

286. “Not only is there more to life than basketball, there's a lot more to basketball than basketball.”

287. Of course, it’s no accident that things are more likely to go your way when you stop worrying about whether you’re going to win or lose and focus your full attention on what’s happening right this moment.” – Phil Jackson

288. “Winning was fine. In fact, my mother was one of the most fiercely competitive people I’ve ever met, but reveling in your own success was considered an insult to God.”

289. “The Dalai Lama calls it “the enemy’s gift.” From a Buddhist perspective, battling with enemies can help you develop greater compassion for and tolerance of others. “In order to practice sincerely and to develop patience,” he says, “you need someone who willfully hurts you. Thus, these people give us real opportunities to practice these things. They are testing our inner strength in a way that even our guru cannot.”

290. “When the mind is allowed to relax, inspiration often follows.”

291. “In a commentary on CNNMoney.com, Fortune senior writer Anne Fisher reported that scientists have begun to realize “that people may do their best thinking when they are not concentrating on work at all.” She cites studies published in the journal Science by Dutch psychologists who concluded, “The unconscious mind is a terrific solver of complex problems when the conscious mind is busy elsewhere or, perhaps better yet, not overtaxed at all.” That’s why I subscribe to the philosophy of the late Satchel Paige, who said, “Sometimes I sits and thinks, and sometimes I just sits.”

292. What fascinates most people about sports is not the endless chatter about strategy that fills the airwaves. It’s what I like to call the spiritual nature of the game.

293. “Kobe, who had been named the NBA's most valuable player that year, was particularly laser focused. I've always been impressed by Kobe's resilience and ironclad self-confidence. Unlike Shaq, who was often plagued by self-doubt, Kobe never let such thoughts cross his mind. If someone set the bar at ten feet, he'd jump eleven, even if no one had ever done it before. That's the attitude he brought with him when he arrived at training camp that fall, and it had a powerful impact on his teammates.”

294. “The strength of the team lies within the individual. And the strength of the individual lies within the team”

295. “For want of a nail the shoe was lost. For want of a shoe the horse was lost. For want of a horse the rider was lost. For want of a rider the message was lost. For want of a message the battle was lost. For want of a battle the kingdom was lost. And all for the want of a horseshoe nail.”– Phil Jackson.

296. “Every year Tex, who loved inspirational sayings, would recite to the team his favorite proverb about the importance of learning the details: For want of a nail the shoe was lost. For want of a shoe the horse was lost. For want of a horse the rider was lost. For want of a rider the message was lost. For want of a message the battle was lost. For want of a battle the kingdom was lost. And all for the want of a horseshoe nail.”

297. “I bought a bicycle and pedaled all over town, trying to connect with the real New York City. But no matter how much time I spent in Central Park, to me living in the city felt like living indoors. I needed to be someplace where I could feel a strong connection to the earth.”

298. “Make your work your play and your play your work.” – Phil Jackson

299. “I don’t see how you’re going to get value out of this player who, in my estimation, is one of the most valuable players in the league. Of course, I estimate him perhaps higher than other people. I think he’s a terrific player. He adds a big dimension in every game he plays in.”– Phil Jackson.

300. “Before a vision can become a reality, it must be owned by every member of the group.”

301. “In basketball — as in life — true joy comes from being fully present in each and every moment, not just when things are going your way.”

302. “Approach the game with no preset agendas and you’ll probably come away surprised at your overall efforts.”– Phil Jackson.

303. “There’s no I in the word ‘team,’” Tex would say. “But there is in the word ‘win,’” Michael would counter with a grin.”

304. “Those words, Suzuki said, contain the basic truth of existence: Everything is always in flux. Until you accept this, you won’t be able to find true equanimity. But to do that means accepting life as it is, not just what you consider the “good parts.”

305. The key was getting a critical mass of players to buy into a more selfless approach to the game.

306. “Martin Luther King Jr. spoke eloquently about this phenomenon. “In a real sense, all of life is interrelated,” he said. “All persons are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly. I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be, and you can never be what you ought to be until I am what I ought to be. This is the interrelated structure of reality.”

307. “In the West we tend to think of compassion as a form of charity, but I share Lao-tzu’s view that compassion for all beings—not least of all oneself—is the key to breaking down barriers among people.”

308. The best analogy I can think of is the intense emotional connection that great warriors experience in the heat of battle.

309. When I was head coach of the Bulls, the players had to deal with the Michael Jordan media caravan.

310. “time was limited. In The Tao of Leadership, John Heider stresses the importance of interfering as little as possible. “Rules reduce freedom and responsibility,” he writes. “Enforcement of rules is coercive and manipulative, which diminishes spontaneity and absorbs group energy. The more coercive you are, the more resistant the group will become.”

311. “In basketball – as in life – true joy comes from being fully present in each and every moment, not just when things are going your way. Of course, it’s no accident that things are more likely to go your way when you stop worrying about whether you’re going to win or lose and focus your full attention on what’s happening right this moment.”

312. “The most we can hope for is to create the best possible conditions for success, then let go of the outcome. The ride is a lot more fun that way.”

313. “Approach the game with no preset agendas and you’ll probably come away surprised at your overall efforts.” – Phil Jackson

314. The key is to train each player to read the defense and react appropriately. This allows the team to move together in a coordinated manner.

315. “7. THE KEY TO SUCCESS IS COMPASSION In his new adaptation of the Chinese sacred text Tao Te Ching, Stephen Mitchell offers a provocative take on Lao-tzu’s approach to leadership: I have just three things to teach: simplicity, patience, compassion. These three are the greatest treasures. Simple in actions and thoughts, you return to the source of being. Patient with both friends and enemies,”

316. “What you do for yourself, you’re doing for others, and what you do for others, you’re doing for yourself.”

317. “Once you’ve done the mental work, there comes a point you have to throw yourself into the action and put your heart on the line. That means not only being brave but being compassionate towards yourself, your teammates and your opponents.” – Phil Jackson

318. “Now that all of our children were out of the house, she was looking forward to creating a new, more fulfilling life. So was I—or so I thought. I explored other interests, including giving speeches on leadership.”

319. “What I liked about basketball was how interconnected everything was. The game was a complex dance of moves and countermoves that made it much more alive than other sports I played. In addition, basketball demanded a high level of synergy. To succeed, you needed to rely upon everybody else on the floor, not just yourself. That gave the sport a certain transcendent beauty that I found deeply satisfying.”

320. “And yet as a coach, I know that being fixated on winning (or more likely, not losing) is counterproductive, especially when it causes you to lose control of your emotions. What’s more, obsessing about winning is a loser’s game: The most we can hope for is to create the best possible conditions for success, then let go of the outcome. The ride is a lot more fun that way.”

321. “The real value in everything you do is in the details.” – Phil Jackson

322. “An acrobatic dunk will make it onto Sports Center. A simple, unspectacular bounce pass in the rhythm of the offense will not. System basketball has been replaced by players who want to be the system.”– Phil Jackson.

323. “They weren’t the most transcendent team I’d ever coached; that honor belongs to the 1995–96 Chicago Bulls, led by Michael Jordan and Scottie Pippen”

324. “TRUSTING THE MOMENT Most of us spend the bulk of our time caught up in thoughts of the past or the future—which can be dangerous if your job is winning basketball games. Basketball takes place at such a lightning pace that it’s easy to make mistakes and get obsessed with what just happened or what might happen next, which distracts you from the only thing that really matters—this very moment.”

325. “What’s more, obsessing about winning is a loser’s game: The most we can hope for is to create the best possible conditions for success, then let go of the outcome. The ride is a lot more fun that way.”

326. “When patterns are broken, new worlds emerge. TULI KUPFERBERG”

327. “Rather than squeeze everybody into preordained roles, my goal has always been to foster an environment where the players can grow as individuals and express themselves creatively within a team structure.”– Phil Jackson.

328. What I love about Monk’s list is his basic message about the importance of awareness, collaboration, and having clearly defined roles, which apply as much to basketball as they do to jazz.

329. “If you have a clear mind, you won’t have to search for direction. Direction will come to you.”

330. “My philosophy is that you don’t motivate players with speeches; you have motivated players that you draft. That’s where they come in, and those are the guys that are competitive. You can not teach competitiveness.”

331. Kobe respected Derek’s mental discipline and dependability under pressure, and Derek knew how to get through to Kobe in a way that nobody else could.

332. “As much as we pump iron and we run to build our strength up, we need to build our mental strength up… so we can focus… so we can be in concert with one another.”– Phil Jackson.

333. “We remind our players that this is something that was a special night in a heated situation but it’s not going to be a steady diet for us. The onus on Kobe is to stay inside the team offense. The onus on the players is to pick it up a little bit better.”– Phil Jackson.

334. I mean that deep feeling of camaraderie that arises when a group of players makes a commitment to stand up for one another to achieve something greater than themselves.

335. “I always tell the players, “We are in the business that’s very much like a marathon race only we’re gonna be doing it for 260-something days or so.” And the race is something you get ready to do. There’s gonna be some trial inside of there, but you put yourself through it because ultimately it brings a lot of meaning to your life, it gives a lot of energy to what you’re doing.” – Phil Jackson

336. “Basketball is a great mystery. You can do everything right. You can have the perfect mix of talent and the best system of offense in the game. You can devise a foolproof defensive strategy and prepare your players for every possible eventuality. But if the players don’t have a sense of oneness as a group, your efforts won’t pay off. And the bond that unites a team can be so fragile, so elusive.”

337. “Make your work your play and your play your work.”

338. “Heider, whose book is based on Lao-tzu’s Tao Te Ching, suggests that leaders practice becoming more open. “The wise leader is of service: receptive, yielding, following. The group member’s vibration dominates and leads, while the leader follows. But soon it is the member’s consciousness which is transformed, the member’s vibration which is resolved.”

339. “The greatness of Michael Jordan is his competitive drive. The weakness of Michael Jordan is his competitive drive” – Phil Jackson

340. “Kobe was hell-bent on surpassing Jordan as the greatest player in the game. His obsession with Michael was striking. When we played in Chicago that season, I orchestrated a meeting between the two of them, thinking that Michael might help shift Kobe’s attitude toward selfless teamwork. After they shook hands, the first words out of Kobe’s mouth were, ‘You know I can kick your ass one on one.’” – Phil Jackson

341. During his playing career Jackson was a member of three championship-winning teams, two in the ABA and one in the NBA.

342. “My father was the superintendent of the churches in the state of Montana. He was content in his beliefs. He befit the term ‘true Christian.’ He would turn the other cheek. He was truly a man of peace.”– Phil Jackson.

343. In basketball - as in life - true joy comes from being fully present in each and every moment, not just when things are going your way.

344. “In The Tao of Leadership, John Heider stresses the importance of interfering as little as possible. “Rules reduce freedom and responsibility,” he writes. “Enforcement of rules is coercive and manipulative, which diminishes spontaneity and absorbs group energy. The more coercive you are, the more resistant the group will become.” Heider, whose book is based on Lao-tzu’s Tao Te Ching, suggests that leaders practice becoming more open. “The wise leader is of service: receptive, yielding, following. The group member’s vibration dominates and leads, while the leader follows. But soon it is the member’s consciousness which is transformed, the member’s vibration which is resolved.”

345. “NBA is not exactly the friendliest environment for teaching selflessness. Even though the game itself is a five-person sport, the culture surrounding it celebrates egoistic behavior and stresses individual achievement over team bonding.”

346. “Good teams become great ones when the members trust each other enough to surrender the Me for the We.”

347. “Tomorrow gives a beck’ning hand – I turn my face away; I’ll not invite her to my home – I only love Today.”

348. “It’s more fun to be a pirate than to join the Navy. STEVE JOBS.”

349. “The book I selected for him was Corelli’s Mandolin, a novel set on a small Greek island occupied by the Italian army during World War II. During the course of the story, the islanders have to accept the fact that they no longer control their own destiny and must come together and adapt to the new reality. In the end, they win by losing.”

350. “But there’s only so much a player can absorb when his body is pulsing with adrenaline. This is not a good time for deep left brain discussion. It’s the moment to calm the players’ minds and strengthen their spiritual connection with one another before they head into battle.”

351. “I have just three things to teach: simplicity, patience, compassion. These three are the greatest treasures. Simple in actions and thoughts, you return to the source of being. Patient with both friends and enemies, you accord with the way things are. Compassionate toward yourself, you reconcile all beings in the world.”

352. “Basketball is a simple game. Your goal is penetration, get the ball close to the basket, and there are three ways to do that. Pass, dribble and offensive rebound” – Phil Jackson

353. “When I was young, I was dedicated to become a minister – my brothers and I were formally brought in front of the congregation in a dedication ceremony, where we were dedicated to the future service of God.”– Phil Jackson.

354. “After years of experimenting, I discovered that the more I tried to exert power directly, the less powerful I became.”

355. “If you have a clear mind. . . you won’t have to search for direction. Direction will come to you.” – Phil Jackson

356. To be successful at basketball, as author John McPhee once pointed out, you need to have a finely tuned sense of where you are and what’s happening around you at any given moment.

357. The bigger your head, the easier to fill your shoes.

358. “Practice doesn’t make perfect,” he used to say. “Perfect practice does.”

359. The key is to train each player to read the defense and react appropriately. This allows the team to move together in a coordinated manner.

360. “Good teams become great ones when the members trust each other enough to surrender the Me for the We” – Phil Jackson

361. “The best part of basketball, for those people on the inside, is the bus going to the airport after you’ve won a game on an opponent’s floor. It’s been a very tough battle. And preferably, in the playoffs. And that feeling that you have, together as a group, having gone to an opponent’s floor and won a very good victory, is about as high as you can get.”

362. “All things being equal, contend Logan and his colleagues, a stage 5 culture will outperform a stage 4 culture, which will outperform a 3, and so on. In addition, the rules change when you move from one culture to another. That’s why the so-called universal principles that appear in most leadership textbooks rarely hold up. In order to shift a culture from one stage to the next, you need to find the levers that are appropriate for that particular stage in the group’s development.”

363. “experiencing life “vividly, selflessly, with full concentration and total absorption”; making choices from moment to moment that foster growth rather than fear; becoming more attuned to your inner nature and acting in concert with who you are; being honest with yourself and taking responsibility for what you say and do instead of playing games or posing; identifying your ego defenses and finding the courage to give them up; developing the ability to determine your own destiny and daring to be different and non-conformist; creating an ongoing process for reaching your potential and doing the work needed to realize your vision. fostering the conditions for having peak experiences, or what Maslow calls “moments of ecstasy” in which we think, act, and feel more clearly and are more loving and accepting of others.”

364. “We have a lot of players at that position and, obviously, we’ve got to make cuts soon. Our desire is to find a place for him and a good opportunity for him and Charlotte was a team that really and truly did want him.”– Phil Jackson.

365. “My philosophy is that you can’t motivate players with speeches, you have motivated players that you draft. That’s where they come in and those are the guys that are competitive. You cannot teach competitiveness.”

366. “I probably would have no capability of absorbing a 60-defeat season as a coach. It would be a foreign experience. My whole career, even as a player, has been on winning basketball clubs and it just seems to have been a part of the make-up of what’s been given me. That’s what I’ve been given and that’s what I’ve had to deal with. Some people can make fun of it or some people can have a good time with it, or some people can resent it. It’s just what it is.”– Phil Jackson.

367. But after more than forty years involved in the game at the highest level, both as a player and as a coach, I can’t think of a truer phrase to describe the mysterious alchemy that joins players together and unites them in pursuit of the impossible.

368. “The greatness of Michael Jordan is his competitive drive. The weakness of Michael Jordan is his competitive drive.”

369. “The task of life is to keep your world in order.” And that takes discipline, a healthy balance between work and play, and nourishment of mind, body, and spirit within the context of community—values deeply rooted in my own being, as well as my objectives for the teams I’ve coached.”

370. “Winning is about moving into the unknown and creating something new.”

371. “In order to practice sincerely and to develop patience,” he says, “you need someone who willfully hurts you.”

372. “He is still a long ways from being smooth in what we anticipate will be a system that he’ll take to and enjoy, … It’s going to take him a while, as it will everybody, especially a guy who’s a lead guard in a situation like that. It takes some time.”– Phil Jackson.

373. “Your problems never cease, they just change.” – Phil Jackson

374. “What moves me is watching young men bond together and tap into the magic that arises when they focus with their whole heart and soul on something greater than themselves. Once you’ve experienced that, it’s something you never forget.” – Phil Jackson

375. “Remember that scene in the first Indiana Jones movie when someone asks Indy what he’s going to do next, and he replies, “I don’t know, I’m making it up as we go along.” That’s how I view leadership. It’s an act of controlled improvisation, a Thelonious Monk finger exercise, from one moment to the next.”

376. I experimented with a wide range of ideas and practices, from Christian mysticism to Zen meditation and Native American rituals.

377. “For some reason, God is telling me to move on, and I must move on,” he said. “People have to learn that nothing lasts forever.” Then we tried to figure out a way that he could compete in the playoffs without playing.”– Phil Jackson.

378. “The essence of coaching is to get the players to wholeheartedly agree to being coached, then offer them a sense of their destiny as a team.”

379. “Like life, basketball is messy and unpredictable. It has its way with you, no matter how hard you try to control it. The trick is to experience each moment with a clear mind and an open heart. When you do that, the game – and life – will take care of itself.”

380. “As a leader your job is to do everything in your power to create the perfect conditions for success by benching your ego and inspiring your team to play the game the right way. But at some point, you need to let go and turn yourself over to the basketball gods. The soul of success is surrendering to what is.”

381. “Albert Einstein once described his rules of work: “One: Out of clutter, find simplicity. Two: From discord, find harmony. Three: In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity.”

382. “the best way to get players to coordinate their actions was to have them play the game in 4/4 time. The basic rule was that the player with the ball had to do something with it before the third beat: either pass, shoot, or start to dribble. When everyone is keeping time, it makes it easier to harmonize with one another, beat by beat.”

383. “If we can accept whatever hand we’ve been dealt – no matter how unwelcome – the way to proceed eventually becomes clear.”

384. “There’s a zen saying I often cite that goes, ‘Before enlightenment, chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment, chop wood, carry water.’ The point: stay focused on the task at hand rather than dwelling on the past or worrying about the future.”

385. The first thing I did with the Bulls was to teach the players an abbreviated version of mindfulness meditation based on the Zen practice I’d been doing for years.

386. “I often reminded the players to focus on the journey rather than the endgame, because if you give the future all your attention, the present will pass you by.”

387. Derek Fisher—was a natural leader with exceptional emotional intelligence and finely tuned management skills.

388. As an adult, I’ve tried to break free from that early conditioning and develop a more open-minded, personally meaningful way of being in the world.

389. “Zen teacher Lewis Richmond tells the story of hearing Shunryu Suzuki sum up Buddhism in two words. Suzuki had just finished giving a talk to a group of Zen students when someone in the audience said, “You’ve been talking about Buddhism for nearly an hour, and I haven’t been able to understand a thing you said. Could you say one thing about Buddhism I can understand?” After the laughter died down, Suzuki replied calmly, “Everything changes.” Those words, Suzuki said, contain the basic truth of existence: Everything is always in flux. Until you accept this, you won’t be able to find true equanimity.”

390. “Zen teacher Lewis Richmond tells the story of hearing Shunryu Suzuki sum up Buddhism in two words. Suzuki had just finished giving a talk to a group of Zen students when someone in the audience said, “You’ve been talking about Buddhism for nearly an hour, and I haven’t been able to understand a thing you said. Could you say one thing about Buddhism I can understand?” After the laughter died down, Suzuki replied calmly, “Everything changes.”

391. “I’m a patient person. I think that’s one thing that I feel comfortable I can deal with – the downfall and the errors, as long as I see progress and people trying.” – Phil Jackson

392. “For us tall people, the whole key is that your hips and your knees should form a right angle when you sit down. That’s where backs and hips get to be problems for big guys.”– Phil Jackson.

393. “Basketball is a great mystery. You can do everything right. You can have the perfect mix of talent and the best system of offense in the game. You can devise a foolproof defensive strategy and prepare your players for every possible eventuality. But if the players don’t have a sense of oneness as a group, your efforts won’t pay off. And the bond that unites a team can be so fragile, so elusive.”

394. “When we called time-out with twenty-five seconds to go,” he re-called, “we went into the huddle and Phil said, ‘Michael, I want you to take the last shot,’ and Michael said, ‘You know, Phil, I don’t feel comfortable in these situations. So maybe we ought to go in another direction.’ Then Scottie said, ‘You know, Phil, Michael said in his commercial that he’s been asked to do this twenty-six times and he’s failed. So why don’t we go to Steve.”

395. “Maslow puts it, “The great lesson from the true mystics . . . [is] that the sacred is in the ordinary, that it is to be found in one’s daily life, in one’s neighbors, friends, and family, in one’s backyard.”

396. “You’re only a success for the moment that you complete a successful act.”

397. “Michael was more likely to break through his attackers with his power and strength.”

398. “As Friedrich Nietzsche said, “Invisible threads are the strongest ties.”

399. “Rather than squeeze everybody into preordained roles, my goal has always been to foster an environment where the players can grow as individuals and express themselves creatively within a team structure.”

400. You're only a success for the moment that you complete a successful act.

401. “I think the most rewarding part of the job, and I think most coaches would say it, is practice. If you have it, a very good practice in which you have 12 guys participate, and they can really get something out of it, lose themselves in practice.” – Phil Jackson

402. “Approach the game with no preset agendas and you'll probably come away surprised at your overall efforts. ”

403. Although basketball teams are not officially tribes, they share many of the same characteristics and develop along much the same lines.

404. Even though the game itself is a five-person sport, the culture surrounding it celebrates egoistic behavior and stresses individual achievement over team bonding.

405. “Smush was a slight, crafty player who was good at slipping through defenses to attack the basket and playing tough, full-court defense.”

406. “If you live in the river you should make friends with the crocodile. INDIAN PROVERB (PUNJABI)”

407. “I learned to dial back my ego and distribute power as widely as possible without surrendering final authority. Paradoxically, this approach strengthened my effectiveness because it freed me to focus on my job as keeper of the team’s vision.”

408. “Edwin Markham’s “Outwitted”: He drew the circle that shut me out— Heretic, rebel, a thing to flout. But love and I had the wit to win: We drew a circle that took him in!”

409. “Jackson was the student, with Winter teaching him over the years during film sessions, organizing his practices, explaining all the details. Jackson soaked it all up, and then provided that special touch of genius that Winter lacked — a masterful ability at team dynamics and group building. Winter often said the triangle would never have gone far in the NBA without Jackson’s ability to elevate it to relevance and sell it to the players, especially superstars such as Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant.” – Roland Lazenby

410. Coaching the Lakers was like having a wild, tempestuous fling with a beautiful woman. And now it was time to move on and try something new.

411. “Good teams become great ones when the members trust each other enough to surrender the Me for the We.” ― Phil Jackson

412. “Maturity begins to grow when you can sense your concern for others out-weighing your concern for yourself” – Phil Jackson

413. “In the strictest form of Zen, monitors roam the meditation hall, striking sleeping or listless meditators with a flat wooden stick, called a keisaku, to get them to pay attention. This is not intended as punishment. In fact, the keisaku is sometimes referred to as a “compassionate stick.” The purpose of the blow is to reinvigorate the meditator and make him or her more awake in the moment.”

414. “Once you’ve done the mental work, there comes a point you have to throw yourself into the action and put your heart on the line. That means not only being brave but being compassionate towards yourself, your teammates, and your opponents.”

415. “My philosophy is that you don’t motivate players with speeches, you have motivated players that you draft. That’s where they come in and those are the guys that are competitive. You can not teach competitiveness.”– Phil Jackson.

416. “The key to a 3-peat is change. You can't 'repeat' the formula. Your opponent has already figured it out. You have to keep growing. Continue into the unknown.”

417. Most coaches I know spend a lot of time focusing on X’s and O’s. I must admit that at times I’ve fallen in that trap myself.

418. “Michael needed to shift his perspective on leadership. “It’s all about being present and taking responsibility for how you relate to yourself and others,” says George. “And that means being willing to adjust so that you can meet people where they are. Instead of expecting them to be somewhere else and getting angry and trying to will them to that place, you try to meet them where they are and lead them where you want them to go.”

419. “We remind our players that this is something that was a special night in a heated situation but it’s not going to be a steady diet for us. The onus on Kobe is to stay inside the team offense. The onus on the players is to pick it up a little bit better.”– Phil Jackson.

420. Winning was fine—in fact, my mother was one of the most fiercely competitive people I’ve ever met—but reveling in your own success was considered an insult to God.

421. “Basketball, unlike football with its prescribed routes, is an improvisational game, similar to jazz. If someone drops a note, someone else must step into the vacuum and drive the beat that sustains the team.” – Phil Jackson

422. I’ve always been impressed by Kobe’s resilience and ironclad self-confidence... If someone set the bar at ten feet, he’d jump eleven.

423. “The family that plays together.”

424. “Human beings are not born once and for all on the day their mothers give birth to them, but . . . life obliges them over and over again to give birth to themselves. GABRIEL GARCÍA MÁRQUEZ”

425. “The privilege of a lifetime is being who you are. JOSEPH CAMPBELL”

426. “I always tell the players, “We are in the business that’s very much like a marathon race only we’re gonna be doing it for 260-something days or so.” And the race is something you get ready to do. There’s gonna be some trial inside of there, but you put yourself through it because ultimately it brings a lot of meaning to your life, it gives a lot of energy to what you’re doing.” – Phil Jackson

427. The strength of the team is each individual member. The strength of each member is the team. – Phil Jackson (Click to Tweet!

428. “The Celtics were so dominant in the 1960s that Jerry West stopped wearing anything green because it reminded him of the frustration the Lakers had endured during that decade.”

429. “Winning is important to me, but what brings me real joy is the experience of being fully engaged in whatever I'm doing.”

430. Jackson has authored or co-authored several books, including two best-selling autobiographies.

431. “He was good at coming off the bench and igniting the attack with his quickness and speed.”

432. “This trip, you’ve got to do a lot of PR work for the league, pump up that Miami game on Christmas Day because they’re asking you to do this all the time. And don’t forget, Orlando is just as important in the win-loss column.”– Phil Jackson.

433. “But trying to eliminate anger never works. The more you try to suppress it, the more likely it is to erupt later in a more virulent form. A better approach is to become as intimate as possible with how anger works on your mind and body so that you can transform its underlying energy into something productive.”

434. “Fall down seven times. Stand up eight. JAPANESE PROVERB.”

435. “As a leader your job is to do everything in your power to create the perfect conditions for success by benching your ego and inspiring your team to play the game the right way. But at some point, you need to let go and turn yourself over to the basketball gods. The soul of success is surrendering to what is.”

436. “The greatness of Michael Jordan is his competitive drive. The weakness of Michael Jordan is his competitive drive.”

437. “I’ve always been interested in getting players to think for themselves so that they can make difficult decisions in the heat of battle.”

438. “Every now and then, to keep the players focused, he would ask them to nod their heads if they heard the word “defense"...”

439. “NBA is not exactly the friendliest environment for teaching selflessness. Even though the game itself is a five-person sport, the culture surrounding it celebrates egoistic behavior and stresses individual achievement over team bonding.”

440. In basketball, statisticians count when players make assists, or passes that lead to scores.

441. The two teams were both tired, but we were able to ride a little energy in the second half. We were able to build a lead that was tough to overcome.

442. “In his new adaptation of the Chinese sacred text Tao Te Ching, Stephen Mitchell offers a provocative take on Lao-tzu’s approach to leadership: I have just three things to teach: simplicity, patience, compassion. These three are the greatest treasures. Simple in actions and thoughts, you return to the source of being. Patient with both friends and enemies, you accord with the way things are. Compassionate toward yourself, you reconcile all beings in the world.”

443. “Despite their tremendous talent, NBA players are still, by and large, young adults, seeking validation from an authority figure, and there is no greater authority figure on a team than the coach. Needless to say, in today’s warped, self-indulgent climate, too many players couldn’t care less about appeasing the coach.”

444. “Basketball is a great mystery. You can do everything right. You can have the perfect mix of talent and the best system of offense in the game. You can devise a foolproof defensive strategy and prepare your players for every possible eventuality. But if the players don’t have a sense of oneness as a group, your efforts won’t pay off. And the bond that unites a team can be so fragile, so elusive.” – Phil Jackson

445. “Sitting quietly, doing nothing, spring comes, and the grass grows by itself. ZEN PROVERB”

446. “There’s a story I love to tell about how Napoléon Bonaparte picked his generals. After one of his great generals died, Napoléon reputedly sent one of his staff officers to search for a replacement. The officer returned several weeks later and described a man he thought would be the perfect candidate because of his knowledge of military tactics and brilliance as a manager. When the officer finished, Napoléon looked at him and said, “That’s all very good, but is he lucky?”

447. “In basketball – as in life – true joy comes from being fully present in each and every moment, not just when things are going your way.” – Phil Jackson

448. “Bill Russell, the Boston Celtics great who won more championship rings as a player than anyone else (eleven), revealed in his memoir, Second Wind, that he sometimes secretly rooted for the opposing team during big games because if they were doing well, it meant he would have a more heightened experience.”

449. “The strength of the team is each individual member. The strength of each member is the team.” — Phil Jackson

450. “The strength of the team is each individual member. The strength of each member is the team. ”― Phil Jackson

451. “NBA is not exactly the friendliest environment for teaching selflessness. Even though the game itself is a five-person sport, the culture surrounding it celebrates egoistic behavior and stresses individual achievement over team bonding.”– Phil Jackson

452. “If you give the future all your attention, the present will pass you by.”

453. The strength of the team is each individual member. The strength of each member is the team. – Phil Jackson

454. “Albert Einstein once described his rules of work: “One: Out of clutter, find simplicity. Two: From discord, find harmony. Three: In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity.”

455. “know that being fixated on winning (or more likely, not losing) is counterproductive, especially when it causes you to lose control of your emotions. What’s more, obsessing about winning is a loser’s game: The most we can hope for is to create the best possible conditions for success, then let go of the outcome. The ride is a lot more fun that way.”

456. “What I love about Monk’s list is his basic message about the importance of awareness, collaboration, and having clearly defined roles,”

457. “Abraham Maslow, one of the founders of humanistic psychology who is best known for his theory of the hierarchy of needs. Maslow believed that the highest human need is to achieve “self-actualization,” which he defined as “the full use and exploitation of one’s talents, capacities and potentialities.” The basic characteristics of self-actualizers, he discovered in his research, are spontaneity and naturalness, a greater acceptance of themselves and others, high levels of creativity, and a strong focus on problem solving rather than ego gratification.”

458. “Good teams become great ones when the members trust each other enough to surrender the ‘me’ for the ‘we.'”

459. “Your problems never cease, they just change.”

460. “Made people laugh. Dennis had a way of making everybody lighten up when things were tense. How could you get down on yourself when there’s this crazy guy on the team who had dyed his hair with a big yellow happy face?”

461. Basketball is a simple game... and there are three ways to do that. Pass, dribble and offensive rebound.

462. “He was a great student and a really fine leader on the basketball court. He directed a lot of what happened, he was very much one of the reasons why we were successful over those six championships.”– Phil Jackson.

463. “The strength of the team is each individual member. The strength of each member is the team." – Phil Jackson

464. “My mother’s families were Mennonites or Anabaptists that came to Minnesota from Russia. They were actually moving around Europe doing diking and lowland reclamation work, and they moved into Minnesota.”– Phil Jackson.

465. “mean a thing without the ring.” To inspire the players, I adapted a quote from Walt Whitman and taped it on their lockers before the first game of the playoffs, against the Miami Heat. “Henceforth we seek not good fortune, we are ourselves good fortune.” Everyone expected us to dance our way to the championship,”

466. “The strength of the team lies within the individual. And the strength of the individual lies within the team.”

467. “That’s why at the start of every season I always encouraged players to focus on the journey rather than the goal. What matters most is playing the game the right way and having the courage to grow, as human beings as well as basketball players. When you do that, the ring takes care of itself.”

468. “The strength of the team is each member. The strength of each member is the team.” — Phil Jackson

469. “Once you’ve done the mental work, there comes a point where you have to throw yourself into the action and put your heart on the line” – Phil Jackson

470. “The bigger your head, the easier to fill your shoes.”

471. “I added that Red Holzman used to say that “the real mark of a star was how much better he made his teammates.”

472. “If you give the future all your attention, the present will pass you by.” – Phil Jackson

473. “The strength of the team is each member. The strength of each member is the team.” – Phil Jackson

474. “Obsessing about winning is a loser’s game: The most we can hope for is to create the best possible conditions for success, then let go of the outcome. The ride is a lot more fun that way.” – Phil Jackson

475. “Your problems never cease. They just change.”

476. “Love is the force that ignites the spirit and binds teams together.” – Phil Jackson

477. “Management guru Stephen Covey tells this old Japanese tale about a samurai warrior and his three sons: The samurai wanted to teach his sons about the power of teamwork. So he gave each of them an arrow and asked them to break it. No problem. Each son did it easily. Then the samurai gave them a bundle of three arrows bound together and asked them to repeat the process. But none of them could. “That’s your lesson,” the samurai said. “If you three stick together, you will never be defeated.”

478. “Basketball is sharing.” – Phil Jackson

479. “The strength of the team is each individual member. The strength of each member is the team.” -Phil Jackson (Click to Tweet)

480. “triangle offense, that aligned perfectly with the values of selflessness and mindful awareness I’d been studying in Zen Buddhism.”

481. “Forget mistakes, forget failures, forget everything, except what you’re going to do now and do it. Today is your lucky day. WILL DURANT”

482. “When Michael returned to the Bulls in 1995 after a year and a half of playing minor-league baseball, he didn’t know most of the players and he felt completely out of sync with the team. It wasn’t until he got into a fight with Steve Kerr at practice that he realized he needed to get to know his teammates more intimately.”

483. But if a team doesn’t have the most essential ingredient—love—none of those other factors matter.

484. “Basketball is a sport that involves the subtle interweaving of players at full speed to the point where they are thinking and moving as one.” – Phil Jackson

485. “My philosophy is that you can’t motivate players with speeches. You have motivated players that you draft. That’s where they come in, and those are the guys that are competitive. You cannot teach competitiveness.”

486. “The strength of the team is each individual member…..the strength of each member is the team.”

487. “To be successful at basketball, as author John McPhee once pointed out, you need to have a finely tuned sense of where you are and what’s happening around you at any given moment.”

488. “A coach's main job is to reawaken a spirit in which the players can blend together effortlessly.”

489. “Love is the force that ignites the spirit and binds teams together.”

490. “You can’t force your will on people. If you want them to act differently, you need to inspire them to change themselves” – Phil Jackson

491. “For want of a nail the shoe was lost. For want of a shoe the horse was lost. For want of a horse the rider was lost. For want of a rider the message was lost. For want of a message the battle was lost. For want of a battle the kingdom was lost. And all for the want of a horseshoe nail.”

492. “To dare is to lose one’s footing momentarily. Not to dare is to lose oneself. SØREN KIERKEGAARD”

493. “In basketball – as in life – true joy comes from being fully present in each and every moment, not just when things are going your way.”

494. “It’s more fun to be a pirate than to join the Navy. STEVE JOBS”

495. “Made people laugh. Dennis had a way of making everybody lighten up when things were tense. How could you get down on yourself when there’s this crazy guy on the team who had dyed his hair with a big yellow happy face?”

496. “Leadership is not about forcing your will on others. It’s about mastering the art of letting go.”

497. “In the beginner’s mind, there are many possibilities. In the expert’s mind, there are few.”

498. Jackson holds an MBA from Drury University and a master’s degree in theology from the New York Theological Seminary.

499. “After years of experimenting, I discovered that the more I tried to exert power directly, the less powerful I became. I learned to dial back my ego and distribute power as widely as possible without surrendering final authority.”

500. “Like life, basketball is messy and unpredictable. It has its way with you, no matter how hard you try to control it. The trick is to experience each moment with a clear mind and open heart. When you do that, the game – and life – will take care of itself.”