Sam Hinkie

“I think sometimes it's about just finding the measuring stick that's different than the one the world puts on you. It's finding the one in which you're held accountable and how you hold each other accountable; what a good job looks like in a particular situation and how to be better at your job than you were yesterday.”

“I've made plenty of mistakes, and I'm sure I'll make more.”

“I'm a lot of things, but I'm not reckless.”

“You can't let someone else's agenda hijack your day.”

“The last time I was unemployed was 1989, and I've seen the research on retired people and how they feel about it. I'm definitely wired in a way that you wouldn't predict it would go wonderfully.”

“I start with an end in mind. In everything.”

“I think it's pretty important that you learn how to keep your own scoreboard and how to be focused on what truly matters over the long term.”

“I don't have anything to hide, but prefer to shine the spotlight on others.”

“Getting a star player in the NBA is not impossibly hard, but close. It requires either an incredible amount of luck, or an amazing amount of time, or some other way to try and get at it.”

“I'm a big believer that inclusiveness is helpful because everyone brings a different perspective.”

“I like surrounding myself with people who think in sort of the timeframes I do, which is often longer.”

“I think to perfectly understand somebody is to predict their next move.”

“I've been careful, too careful maybe, about trying to not keep the spotlight on me.”

“Every place you can find an edge, you should - the free agent market, the undrafted market, the D-League, international players, Americans playing overseas, international players playing in America, the second round. You should be looking for all those opportunities, finding whatever edge you can.”

“But making big decisions shouldn't be easy - it shouldn't be that you have an idea, and you get to execute it without anyone questioning it.”

“Often times, when you find an edge, it's not for very long. People figure it out, so you have to try and exploit it, quickly, while you can.”

“I don't know if six picks in a draft is a record, it's not the kind of thing I would look at, but it's unusual.”

“Nominally, I stated a company. Practically, it's a venture capital firm that allows me to be an investor in early stage companies.”

“I learned that Yao Ming broke his navicular bone like five days before the 2009 draft. From that moment on, all I thought about was going from zero stars to one star. How do you do it?”

“When the draft comes and goes, there's a certain set of players you acquire and there's a whole bunch of others you had interest in acquiring. That doesn't die.”