Messina:
- “At some time you are faced with the question, ‘Are more important the (principles) or the people?’ … Great organisations choose principles over people. When you give up on the principles, sooner or later you will break down.”
- “You can have two kinds of discipline. The kind you force through strength and power or the discipline that people accept to put on themselves because they are responsible.”
- "Sometimes to help them to integrate as personalities is much more difficult than to help them to integrate as basketball players.”
- “I am afraid of people who never say ‘I am sorry, I have made a mistake.’ … I don’t see any problem is telling the players ‘I am sorry, I made a mistake’. To me it’s more a matter of respecting myself first, and then everybody else.”
. . .
Ettore Messina is considered a basketball coaching mastermind. Currently an assistant coach for the NBA San Antonio Spurs , he has won four EuroLeague championships as a head coach. Messina is regarded as one of the best European basketball coaches of all time, having been named in 2008, one of the 50 Greatest EuroLeague Contributors.