Al McGuire Quotes

The only mystery in life is why the kamikaze pilots wore helmets.

Winning is only important in war and surgery.

Don’t be just another guy going down the street and going nowhere.

If you’re straight with your players, they’ll be straight with you.

I don’t discuss basketball. I dictate basketball. I’m not interested in philosophy classes.

Live in the moment that you are in.

It bothers me that the average fan, the average sportswriter for that matter, pays so much attention to what’s in a box score. A box score does not properly represent the most important thing – team play. It shows some guy scoring 27 points, but it doesn’t show that my 27-point man let his guy score 30.

I think everyone should go to college and get a degree and then spend six months as a bartender and six months as a cabdriver. Then they would really be educated.

My rule was I wouldn’t recruit a kid if he had grass in front of his house. That’s not my world. My world has a cracked sidewalk.

I’m not saying that they were Einsteins; they were marginal students. But every ballplayer whoever touched me has moved up his station in life. And the players moved up my station.

I don’t know why people question the academic training of an athlete. Fifty percent of the doctors in this country graduated in the bottom half of their classes.

Live every day as if it were Saturday night.