Players First Quotes

“I need people who look at adversity as a challenge and failure as a learning opportunity.”
― John Calipari, Players First: Coaching from the Inside Out

“It doesn’t matter how old you are or what you think you’ve accomplished. You don’t know everything. If you let your success harden into stubbornness, you may actually know less as the years go on. You get stupider because you stop listening. Nobody can tell you anything.”
― John Calipari, Players First: Coaching from the Inside Out

“They knew we cared about them individually. I believe that gave them an even greater ability to care about each other—to be fully invested as teammates.”
― John Calipari, Players First: Coaching from the Inside Out

“a year in a young man’s life is not forgotten by him or his family, and it may set the trajectory for the rest of his life.”
― John Calipari, Players First: Coaching from the Inside Out

“Talent is not the determining thing: grit is.”
― John Calipari, Players First: Coaching from the Inside Out

“NURTURER: That's what I am. Be patient and create a successful environment.
PROTECTOR: Help guard them against themselves and others.
CHALLENGER: Help them push through comfort levels. Make them uncomfortable.
TEACHER: Help them create within themselves a love of learning and growth.
PROMOTER: Put them on a stage. If we lose, it's on me. If we win, they get all the glory. Players First.
LASTLY, A FATHER: Give them unconditional love at all times.”
― John Calipari, Players First: Coaching from the Inside Out

“Improvement is not just about working harder. If you're a drug addict and you work harder without recognizing what your problem is, then what are you - a better drug addict? You've got to admit to a bunch of people what your problem is and then figure out how to change it.”
― John Calipari, Players First: Coaching from the Inside Out

“My most successful college teams take ownership at some point in the season. It's their team. They don't play for me; they play for one another. They lean on one another. They feel their own power.”
― John Calipari, Players First: Coaching from the Inside Out

“special assistant to the head coach.”
― John Calipari, Players First: Coaching from the Inside Out

“I can’t hide you. There’s no hiding at Kentucky.”
― John Calipari, Players First: Coaching from the Inside Out

“In that way the assistants are like filters, determining what should get all the way to me. But the staff can’t just take the player’s side. Their job is to explain what I’m doing and why. It’s just like if you’re married. You don’t let the kids divide and conquer the mom and the dad. You listen, you try to fix what needs fixing, but you don’t throw your spouse under the bus.”
― John Calipari, Players First: Coaching from the Inside Out

“When it comes to how we make up our staff, I need positive people around me. People with a “we can do this” mentality. I’m not saying everybody has to be whistling and skipping every day, but they have to look at things with an idea that we can tackle anything together.”
― John Calipari, Players First: Coaching from the Inside Out

“Nobody makes a big deal out of it when baseball players turn pro right out of high school. I don’t remember an uproar when Tiger Woods left Stanford for the PGA Tour. Neither Bill Gates nor the late Steve Jobs made it all the way through college. We’ve had swimmers turn pro and pass up college.”
― John Calipari, Players First: Coaching from the Inside Out

“Their first coach was James Naismith, who invented the sport of basketball. (He is less known for being the only Kansas coach in history to have a losing record.)”
― John Calipari, Players First: Coaching from the Inside Out