Motivation Quote by Scott Brooks

Coaches love to talk about “the paper” because it’s the cleanest stand-in for noise: headlines, column inches, radio segments, the nightly churn that turns a game into a morality play. Scott Brooks’ line is blunt to the point of being protective. It’s not anti-media so much as pro-focus, a way of building a psychological fence around a locker room where confidence is fragile and attention is currency.

The intent is behavioral: don’t let outside narration change your inside work. “Nothing that you can say” is deliberately sweeping, almost defiant, because moderation (“some things might affect you”) invites loopholes. Brooks is coaching an emotional habit: treat praise and criticism as equally irrelevant. Today they like you, tomorrow they don’t; the only stable input is film, practice, and the scoreboard.

The subtext is also about power. If players grant legitimacy to newspapers, they cede control of their identity to strangers with deadlines. Brooks is pushing back against a modern sports economy where perception can shape minutes, contracts, and reputation. By framing media talk as something that “shouldn’t affect you,” he’s offering his athletes a kind of dignity: you are not the story people tell about you.

Context matters. Brooks came up in an era when “the paper” meant gatekeepers; now it also means tweets, podcasts, and algorithmic outrage. The line still works because it’s less about journalism than about refusing to live as a public opinion poll. It’s a mantra for competing in public without becoming public.