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If you make every game a life and death proposition, you're going to have problems. For one thing, you'll be dead a lot.

Dean Smith

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Dean Smith
Age: 83 †
Born: 1931
Born: February 28
Died: 2015
Died: February 7
Basketball Coach
Basketball Player
Engineer
Emporia
Kansas
Dean Edwards Smith
Problem
Basketball
Thing
Problems
Going
Dead
Every
Game
Proposition
Make
Games
Propositions
Life
Funny
Nba
Inspirational
Coaches
Death
Competition

More quotes by Dean Smith

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I enjoy basketball. I enjoy coaching basketball. It's the out-of-season stuff I didn't handle well.
Dean Smith
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You should sub a player out when you see a player not going full-speed or playing selfish basketball.
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Basketball, more than any other sport, is a team game...about the thousands of small, unselfish acts, the sacrifices on the part of the players that result in team building.
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I know a lawyer who'd love to retire and be an assistant coach. I mean, it's fun.
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There is a lot of basketball beyond our control, but a player should never let anyone try harder than he does
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I always mean what I say, but I don't always say what I'm thinking.
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The most important thing in good leadership is truly caring.
Dean Smith
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As soon as you try to describe a close friendship, it loses something.
Dean Smith
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The focus should be on the players. I'm here a long time. You can call me in the summer. Our seniors will be gone.
Dean Smith
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I would never recruit a player who yells at his teammates, disrespected his high school coach, or scores 33 points a game and his team goes 10-10.
Dean Smith
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The key statistic is still to get to the foul line.
Dean Smith
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One player's selfish attitude can poison a locker room and make it hard, if not impossible, to establish team work
Dean Smith
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Always have your players go and pick-up the guy who draws the charge.
Dean Smith
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Over coaching is the worst thing you can do to a player.
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Given the fact that we are in a capitalist society, we still do not want to overlook not only what a corporation produces and its profitability but also how it impacts the environment, touches human life and whether it protects or undermines the dignity of the human person.
Dean Smith
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Only praise behavior that you want to be repeated. Never use false praise.
Dean Smith
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I just think we shouldn't get into counting coaches' records. I've never been for that but I know that's just American society.
Dean Smith
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Our teachers at the public school level are the most underpaid for the importance of their job in America.
Dean Smith
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A leader's job is to develop committed followers. Bad leaders destroy their followers' sense of commitment.
Dean Smith
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The flash of rain, the shining rainbow riding completely around the plane, the lift over mountain ridges, the steady, pure air at dawn take-offs. ... It was so alive and rich a life that any other conceivable choice seemed dull, prosaic, and humdrum.
Dean Smith