Quotes from Brad Stevens

Every decent person feels the pain of the African-American community, but I also don't want to pretend like I know the exact distinct pain.

Strength is never a negative. The stronger you are, the more you're able to defend. The more physical you are, the better you are. The top teams in the NBA are the most physical teams, too.

I think the game will always be dependent on the players that are at its most elite level at that time.

I told our players at Butler, 'I hate to break it to you, but you aren't playing beyond here. That's reality. So why are you so concerned with yourself?' It's a hard lesson, but I told them, 'How you handle your role on this team will be remembered by your coaches and your teammates. It will define you.'

I can tell you right now, anybody that says I'm genius, that is the farthest thing from the truth.

We want to be as routine-oriented as we can, but it's just not always feasible.

When you've worked in the same place for 13 years, when things go well, you know how to keep it going well. When things go bad, you know how to fix it. The biggest thing is that familiarity.

That's part of free agency. You can go where you want at the end of the day.

There have been many a days in coaching where I've said, What was I thinking? Because it is not the easiest job in the world. But it is very fulfilling, not because of the results you achieve but because of the relationships you build.

I don't have the five positions anymore. It may be as simple as three positions now, where you're either a ball-handler, a wing or a big.

Just as you get older, you gain more experiences, you see more things.

I could probably go through our losses in a lot more detail than our wins, all through my career. But you have to be able to move on to what's next, and I'm very process-oriented and next-day oriented.

My goal is to win the next game one possession at a time. That's it. I don't have any other goals

The key is to maintain an evenness. Try to play one possession at a time, regardless of what happened on the last possession

We truly love Butler University and Indianapolis and are very thankful to have had the opportunity to celebrate so many wonderful things together.

It's so much fun to dream in your driveway. I had an old wooden backboard in my driveway. That's where my friends and I hung out.

When you work in the pharmaceutical industry you realize that there's a lot out of people's control, and there's ways that people can be helped.

I've said this about many people, but when you were recruiting against John Beilein you knew it was a fair fight, a real fight and he was going to do it the right way. I have a lot of respect for John. He's a heck of a coach and he will do a great job in Cleveland.

I love Evan Turner. I think he's a great teammate. I think he's a hard worker. I think he loves basketball. I don't think you can overvalue that.

My care is that we play with great effort and togetherness. That is what we're looking for. That's what we want to be.

One of my greatest regrets in coaching is the Butler Final Four runs, because if I would have been a seasoned coach, I think we would have won.

One of my biggest regrets in coaching was my eighth or ninth game of my career. I was wound up about a conference game in December - I was wound up tight, and we ended up playing really tight. Our players were bickering with the officials, I was bickering... and then all of a sudden we lose.

I think the first assumption as a coach can't be that we just have to run harder or do it tougher. You have to understand that everybody is a human being and you have to understand that everybody has things that they're dealing with.

That's the toughest part about coaching, I think, is that the longer you're in it, the more winning becomes, 'Phew, I'm glad we won,' and the losing is like just the most brutal thing ever.