Transcription
My philosophy was a very simple one. I, um, you know, Rudy was one of my favorite films growing up. After watching that film, I come to understand if I could work that hard every day, being blessed with the physical tools that I have, what would my career be? And I made a promise to myself from that day that I was going to work that hard every single day so that when I do retire, I have no regrets. And that was the most important thing for me: is to leave no stone unturned, get better every single day. And if I live that way, then over time, you know, I'd have something that was beautiful. But that was my philosophy. It seems like a pretty simple one, but, you know, if you live your life to just get better every single day and do that for 20 years, I mean, what do you have?
Once you have the passion, the thing that you're passionate about, now you can look at other people or other entities or other things or works of art, and you can draw things from that to help you be better at what you do by looking for those common denominators. Johnny wanted to know, "How do I prepare? How do I prepare? How do I study? How do I view the game? How do you build your game?" And my response is much like the way he builds products. You think sequentially. Yeah, you look at this, the end result of what you want to create, but in order to create that, there's so many other little things that go into this massive entity or device. It's no different than building my basketball game. You start with, "What do you want your game to be? What would make your game most unstoppable or hard to deal with?" And now you work backwards from there, and you start building it one piece at a time, one move at a time, one counter at a time. You just got to put one foot in front of the other.
And, you know, sometimes I think, uh, you know, even for myself, it's easy to become distracted a little bit and start trying to look at the final, what the final picture is going to look like. And, you know, when you do that, you can, you can easily become frustrated with where you are at the moment. So, um, you know, my advice is just to focus on each day. And, you know, you have a plan in place of how you want to improve and how you want to get better, and you stick to that plan and trust the fact that, you know, every day that you, you know, um, stick to the plan, it'll get you to your end result.
The passion came from the love for the game. You know, I loved everything about it, like the smell of the ball, you know, the smell of like brand new sneakers, and like the sound the ball makes when it hits the ground, ball going through the net, like all those things I love. And so the passion comes from that because once you have that love, you just want to be a part of this thing all the time. You know, like basketball's helped me be a better person, a better friend, a better house, well, because there's life lessons that are within the game, like communication, like unselfishness, like attention to detail, and empathy and compassion. Like all those things are in the game. And, uh, as an athlete, if we are aware of those things, um, it helps us become better human, human beings.
"Where did you get your killer instinct from?" Well, yeah, I think a lot of it had to do with, um, isolation growing up over there and being the only, uh, African-American kid, not being able to speak the language. I gravitated towards the game, and in that game, you find a lot of, you find solace in the game. And then when you play with kids that might not accept you because you're an outsider, but yeah, when we come to play the game, that's my chance to, to, to get vengeance on them for not accepting me. And that's where it kind of started developing. And throughout the course of my life, it's always been that. It's always been the outsider to come in and prove, you know, or, or to seek some sort of vengeance when I play.
Taking things, using things in your life that are scars, using those moments as a weapon. You know, using basketball is kind of like a vehicle through which to express yourself, right? So at that moment for us to face the Celtics again, it's not about the Celtics, it's not about your opponent, it's about you. It's about you taking your inner struggles and channeling that through the game, right? As a way to, to unleash, right? So now it became a matter of, "How do I express that to them? How do I get them to that point where they figure this out for themselves?" Because I can't say, "Hey, listen, I need you to play harder." So what'd you do? Well, I had to share my story. I had to open up to them and let them know, "I've dealt with things. This is the things that I use. This is how I go about focus. This is how I deal with adversity. This is how I deal with, you know, arguing with my wife the day of the game and showing up to the game and still having that focus to be able to play." Like I used those things to open up with them, and then in turn, they were able to take those stories and and make them their own.
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What I try to do is just try to be still and understand that things come and go, emotions come and go. The important thing is to accept them all, to embrace them all, and then you can choose to do with them which you want versus being controlled by emotion. You know, a lot of times I've seen players, even myself, and, you know, when I was younger, being consumed by a particular fear, um, and to the point where you're saying, "Okay, nah, it's, it's not good to feel fear. I shouldn't be nervous in the situation." Like, not, and it does nothing but grow. Versus stepping back and saying, "Yeah, I am nervous about the situation. Yeah, I am fearful about the situation, but what am I afraid of?" And then you kind of unpack it, and then it gives you the ability to look at it for really what it is, which is nothing more than your imagination running its course.
You know, when you're going into the league, you're going with a lot of guys that were, you know, same, same age, you know, same class as you were going in. Were you sizing those guys at the same exact way as you did in high school? I did. But, you know, the NBA, it was actually easier because what I found in the NBA is a lot of guys played for financial stability. When they came to the NBA, they got that financial stability, so therefore the passion and the work ethic and the obsessiveness was gone. So I'm looking at that, I'm like, "Oh my gosh, it's gonna be like taking candy from a baby." And I wonder, Mike wins all these [ __ ] championships, this is crazy, you know what I'm saying? And like, and then you had the players that had that passion but weren't willing to commit their entire lives to doing that, right? It's a choice, right? You have other things, you have family, you have all these other things that you have to do. The game can't really be your number one priority. And so I was looking at that like, "Man, I'm, this is gonna be fun."
It's just a matter of what's important to you. And what's important to you for, for whatever reason. You know, I, I felt like, um, I didn't feel good about myself if I wasn't doing everything I could to be the best version of myself. If I felt like I left anything on the table, um, it would eat away at me. I wouldn't be able to look myself in the mirror, right? So the reason why I can retire now and be completely comfortable about it because I know that I've done everything I could to be the best basketball player I could be. And so that's where it comes from for me. You can't leave any stone unturned. I'm not one that really believed in failure. I believe you have setbacks, and you know, you have to learn from those. You have to learn, "What are those landmines that can be avoided the next time? What are those pitfalls?" You have to learn from that stuff, um, so you're not welcome those things. It's a part of life.
But are you prepared to like, really fail? It's something totally new. Like, what if you're just DVC? Then I'm going to UBC. Yeah, you know, and then I work at it, and then I'm not a, you see the next. Yeah. Or, you know, whenever it happens. Listen, I, my first year in league on national TV at 18 years old, and I shot five straight air balls in the playoffs in front of millions of people. Yeah, I think my time is pretty high. Yeah, yeah, I think I'm all right.
There's a quote from one of my English teachers, a little Marian named Mr. Fisk. He had a great quote that said, "Rest at the end, not in the middle." And that's something I always live by. You know, I'm not gonna rest, I'm gonna keep on pushing. Now, there's a lot of answers that I don't have, even questions that I don't have, but I'm just gonna keep going. It's gonna keep going, and I'll figure these things out as you go, right? You just continue to build that way. So I try to live by that all the time.
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