A biography for Kelvin Sampsonhasn’t been written yet.
“The most important thing in the world to me is my faith and my family.”
“The coaching community is really tight-knit.”
“Coaching is competitively addictive. It just gets in your blood, especially if you win.”
“Any time you work with your son, it's special.”
“Tim is old school. He plays that way. That's why a lot of fans identify more with a Tim Heskett than with someone who is more dynamic. The more dynamic guy might be more pleasing to the eye, but he doesn't contribute any more to his team winning than Tim does.”
“One of the things I enjoy most about what I do is I can give my father joy.”
“In my formative years, when I was a little kid, I'd get out of elementary school, and because my mother worked as a nurse, I'd have to find a way to get a ride to the high school and watch my dad's team practice.”
“I don't think I was a good enough coach to help an NBA team win a game when I first got to that league.”
“I've always been a goal-oriented person.”
“Sometimes players just take a little while to develop.”
“All I wanted to do is coach in the NBA. I didn't want anything to do with college basketball.”
“I've been taking off my tie for a lot of years. When I take it off, I usually throw it down.”
“The thing that surprised me is you hear a lot about NBA guys, do they really want to be coached? My experience is they really do want to be coached. They want a plan: 'How are we going to win the game?' And they'll follow that plan.”
“Iowa State's a great team; I know how tough they are in Ames.”
“In basketball, there are no trap games. If you walk out on that court and lose a game, it's because the other team beat you. You played poorly. But there's no trap game.”
“The one thing about Lumbee people is that there's so many stereotypes about Native Americans, especially reservation Native Americans, and we all tend to get lumped under that umbrella. But the Lumbee are non-reservation. I grew up no different than anybody would in normal American communities.”
“Scott Skiles is one of the best coaches in the NBA, someone I observe and learn from on a day-to-day basis.”
“I learned to be more flexible offensively, to not talk as much in practice.”
“The people who know me, know me. Those are the only ones I worry about.”
“Guys like Andre Miller and Kevin Garnett - they're posting up hoping a second guy will run at them so they can pass. You're better just playing one-on-one in the post if you can.”