If you can get in trouble for supporting a friend you've known for almost 50 years, I don't want to live in that country.
— Jim Boeheim
There should be some civility when it comes to being president of the United States.
If you say something you have to take responsibility for it.
Katie Ledecky is the best swimmer in the world. You could say she's impressive with what she can do in a pool.
There are different psychologies that different coaches have.
We want every guy to graduate, and we work very hard on that.
You can't try a man-to-man if you don't practice it.
College, our job is to get guys to get better. Work hard, get better and be in position so when your time comes you get to play in the NBA.
We guard the shooter. A lot of guys shoot way behind the 3-point line. We guard where the shooter is, not where the line is.
I like coaching.
The thing is 3,900 out of 4,000 college basketball players are very happy to have a scholarship. They're happy. They've got a $70,000 scholarship and they've got money in their pocket. It's the other hundred guys and they're all going to make money playing basketball and the top guys are going to make a lot of money.
It's a myth that I run things at Syracuse University.
If I could hire a coach in this country and I could get Tony Bennett, there would be nobody in second place. Nobody.
Against our zone, even really good offensive teams take longer than usual to get into their patterns, maybe 30 seconds. So we're locked into playing defense for that long... it's hard to run on offense after you've been hunkering down on D for that long.
The facts are, when we played here, we were treated better in Greensboro than any other tournament venue.
It's not harder to make a couple extra substitutions. That's not hard. You get different things when you make changes, you gain things and you lose things. But overall, if you gain things, that's why you play extra guys.
Syracuse, New York, is like Hawaii for eight months of the year. The other four months, I don't care about the weather because we're playing basketball.
The national championship for Syracuse in 2003 will always be the high-water mark for me. That was my alma mater, my team, my players, our fans. That remains the top experience of my basketball life.
I'm not trying to make a big deal out of this. It's just the things Donald Trump says are crazy. You can't say those things. You shouldn't say those things.
I mean, it's very difficult up there in the NBA.
If you look at the terrorist attacks around the world, they're in places where there is no security - a club or a movie theater or wherever.
Each Olympics is different with their own great parts to it.
I don't think Harvard was punished when Bill Gates left early. I don't think they were. I don't think he did too badly.
I don't think we should ever compensate players. I think we can do as much as we can for players. The cost of attendance is good. They get more meals now so they can keep their meal money. I think those are all good things and I think more of those things should have been done. But I don't think you can compensate players straight out.
They don't work with you to get better in the NBA. Either you're ready or you're out and you go to the G-League or Europe.
The ACC is a great league.
You have to show high school players that fans care about your program, that they're gonna be at the games. I think that's a huge key to success in college basketball.
I've always felt in life, you get a lot of things you have to overcome.
I've seen countless situations where I've been around him where he always does the right thing, 100 percent of the time. Tom Izzo would never do the wrong thing. And anybody that thinks other than that, they don't know Tom Izzo. I know him.
Unfortunately, in our business, it's all about the tournament when you're a good team.
I don't love playing zone all the time, because it does have an effect on your offense.
All the way through my high school and college there was never a doubt in anybody's mind the ACC was the best conference.
You don't play extra guys just to play them. You play 'em because they can help you in some way.
You give hundreds, probably thousands of speeches in this business, but you only get one chance to make an acceptance speech at the Hall of Fame. That's pressure.
I've had good players in my time. I really have.
I've said some things that are a little bit off the wall, but I don't run away and hide from them.
The thing is, I'm a sports junkie.Everybody knows that. I could watch any of this stuff - track and field... anything - and really enjoy it.
Every Olympics, they make a big deal out of something - security... traffic... pollution... something - and it really doesn't come true. For me, there's never been a problem.
I know every year what my players get and what courses they get them in. I get a report every semester. What course. What grades.
I'd never switch to man-to-man unless we were able to play good man-to-man. Ever.
You can't put pressure on yourself. You've just got to go out and play.
You've got to work your way into the NBA. Guys like Seth Curry, it took him a couple years in the G-League.
Klay Thompson stands out. He's just a tough kid.
The NBA is going to do what they want to do. They're going to do what's best for them; not what's best for us.
I love Charles Barkley, he's a good friend of mine and he's a funny guy. He knows nothing about college basketball. Less than nothing.
I loved Jud Heathcote.
It's one thing to play through injuries, quite another to play well through injuries.
You've got to understand, every kid in college basketball, if you ask them where they want to play a game, in the NBA or college, they will tell you Madison Square Garden, a huge percentage.
I grew up in the Big East Conference for 30 years. We were a conference that was nothing. We were a bunch of schools thrown together and within five years we were one of the top two basketball conferences in the country.
I first came to the Garden when I was a sophomore in college. The old, old Garden.
