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As always, the illusion of self-transcendence is far more facile and available than self-transcendence itself: in the vast majority of cases what human consciousness opens up to is merely a more encompassing form of finitude (another captivating illusion or delusion).
For once in my career, I won't have to hold anybody's hand and they won't have to hold mine. I'm surrounded by veterans. We had a great battle last Thursday at HealthPoint. It was something I never had before - three, four, really great players all in one pickup game.
I can speak volumes about the guy sitting next to me. You look at his stat line tonight, he had a lot of foul trouble and didn't really get going, but when he was in there, he was defending. He was playing physical, and he was doing everything he could to help us win.
In my late teens, like many a devout Catholic boy, I considered the priesthood and even went as far as discussing the idea at a seminary in Belfast but hesitated. I decided to focus on physics at university, another way perhaps to contemplate the mysteries of reality.
Me and my family are straight. I am blessed. I am alive, man, and I am healthy, and that is the only thing that matters. Me and my family, everybody else, it really doesn't matter because why do you care about somebody talking negative about you if they don't know you?
Whether you're playing sports, starting a business or anything else in life, you need to identify your talents. Your responsibility is to find what you do better than anyone else. Once you identify what that is, you need to put yourself in the best position to succeed.
I learned this lesson very quickly when I came into the NBA: Almost all the media and accolades go to the No. 1 guy. But if you're building a team, the most important player is the No. 2 guy. Because if the No. 2 guy wants to be the No. 1 guy, you have a major problem.
I just tried to go out there and play with attitude, doing what I was supposed to do and knowing my role on the team. Doing what my team expected me to do every night, not just once a week. It was all about work and I was just a tough guy who would knock somebody down.
Coming out of high school, I think it was good for me instead of going to college because college and the NBA are two different things. You can dominate on the college level, but the NBA is a whole different story. The dudes that do the best are the ones who work hard.
We talk about players of yesteryear, guys who could play or couldn't play, and I think it's ridiculous to try to even compare people... The things that you can do in basketball today that you couldn't even do then... you can carry the ball; you walk all over the place.
I think it's too easy to just say that there is a direct and necessary conflict between black identity and gay identity. I think it's more nuanced than that simply because I think black is a color and then people layer on top of it all kinds of socio-cultural elements.
What passes for education, culture or maturity in most minds is merely how individuals want to think of themselves, a contrived egocentric self-concept, not actual and effective principles and values. This is what is known in the cliche as the "veneer" of civilization.
I have short goals - to get better every day, to help my teammates every day - but my only ultimate goal is to win an NBA championship. It's all that matters. I dream about it. I dream about it all the time, how it would look, how it would feel. It would be so amazing.
I knew I was becoming popular in Argentina. I was starting to feel that some companies in Argentina were wanting to associate with me, so I just wanted to be a facilitator to raise funds and distribute them the way I thought was fair and to institutions that I trusted.
I remember back in the day, when Jordan wore the 7s, something magical always happened. He always performed at high levels, but it was something different when he laced up the 7s. Some of the Jordans still have that juice that MJ left in them, and the 7 is one of them.
Life changes when you have a child, when you have your own family. You become more careful about what you do. You're not going to be out late, going out to clubs, hanging out with your friends. You're going to be at home, taking care of your daughter, playing with her.
Every jock gets up and tells the world how lucky he is. But I feel that I may be the luckiest one of all in terms of timing and being at the right place at the right moment-even though, for the last 30 years, I was told I was born 20 years too soon, for obvious reasons.
I got some cash from agents. I've talked to the NCAA. I think that should be legal. I want some money, too; everybody else is making money. I want to go on dates. I want to go buy myself some new suits. I want to buy myself some new sneakers, and I paid the agents back.
I didn't really lift consistently before I got to the NBA. In college, I would skip out on it or not do as many reps because, honestly, I didn't like it. I was like 'Man, I'm not going to put on weight, I'm always going to be skinny, I'm not going to be big as the sky.'
Don't get me wrong. I don't take anything for granted. But it seems like the better I play, the more attention I get. And I can't get away from it. You play great, you get attention. But I hate attention. It is weird. I'm in a bind. The more you win, the more they come.
Being down 3-1 [in the Finals] was the worst feeling I've ever experienced in my life. I didn't want to talk to my teammates, I didn't want to talk to my wife, I didn't want to talk to my kids. And to come back from that is a lesson that you can come back from anything.
We are a terrible defensive team right now. We're not putting forth the maximum effort that we need to put forth, especially in our position. You'd think that we'd put forth that maximum effort to not only win the game, but to get a good rhythm to get into the playoffs.
With businesses, you go to the same places because you like the service, you like the people and they take care of you. They greet you with a smile. That's how people want to be treated, with respect. That's what I tell my employees - customer service is very important.
It's weird, the evolution of a person. You understand yourself, you understand your surroundings. Then, when you understand who came before you, once you understand that about yourself and the energy that you came to this planet with, you understand more about yourself.
In other countries, success has been achieved with embryo transfer in a different rhino species, thus that as a technique can be presupposed to be the most promising, However, consultations are ongoing amongst different reproductive technique experts on the way forward.
I had an awful first quarter but I picked it up. To all you single guys out there, it's not how you start the date, it's how you finish it sir. A lot of people can, you know, start the date with flowers and candy, but if you don't finish the date - you know what I mean?
The NBA's been around how long? A hundred years? Fifty years? So to change it now, whoever that person is needs his college degree revoked....Whoever did that needs to be fired. It was terrible, a terrible decision. Awful. I might get fined for saying that, but so what?
I couldn't afford to go to the record store to buy new tapes, so I'd tape everything off the radio. Just hit record when my song came on. I used to take my mom's tapes and tape over them. I had a nice little collection. Had my own Stephen Jackson mixtapes off the radio!
I've been lucky enough to play on NBA teams I really enjoy, teams where I've liked everybody and had fun, and had that college kind of experience with an NBA team. When you have that, and I don't know that everyone does, but when I've had it, that's what it's all about.
I'm gay. Megan's my girlfriend... These aren't secrets to people who know me. I don't feel like I've not lived my life. I think people have this assumption that if you're not talking about it, you must be hiding it, like it's this secret. That was never the case for me.
It's the little things. That's kind of what I bring to the table in terms of doing things that might not show up in the box score. Diving for a loose ball, or switching out on a guard and getting that big stop, cutting someone's water off if they've made a couple shots.
In the early '80s there was a big gap between the NBA and the international game and when we started making our careers here in the NBA, obviously, we became better players. When we used to play each other on the international level, that gap became smaller and smaller.
Michael, to me, he was an assassin. He was one of those guys that prepared himself extremely well and was relentless in his attacking. And there are a few guys who have that mentality. I think Kobe Bryant has that type of mentality, and LeBron has that type of mentality.
The great player, so much of the greatness, in my mind, is in his heart and his head. It's not in his body, in his skill set. It comes from having great talent but wanting to mold that and fit it together into being special. And being special means winning championships.
For an athlete to function properly, he must be intent. There has to be a definite purpose and goal if you are to progress. If you are not intent about what you are doing, you aren't able to resist the temptation to do something else that might be more fun at the moment.
I endorse only products I actually use. Like Wheaties keeps offering me money, but I don't eat Wheaties, so I can't do it. Now, if Rice Krispies or Frosted Flakes offered me a deal, I'd take it right away. Apple Jacks, I'd be on the box in a heartbeat. Apple Shaqs. Yeah.
We're going to miss Damon. He was a great shooter. . . . He got what he wanted, but he gave up a lot. No more night life, no more warm weather and no more a lot of media attention. . . . I guess this was his first shot at getting something big. I guess he had to take it.
Experience is everything. It means so much because it enabled me to learn the game even faster. Playing in the playoffs is the best basketball in the world, and if you can learn under that pressure, succeed under that pressure, it gives you more confidence the next year.
You have so many players all around the world in the NBA, a lot of different generations. If you don't take basketball as a tool in your life, you can get lost. I know a lot of teammates, a lot of players that had a great career and after that career, they just get lost.
I'm a Yugoslavian who loves America - my kids are Americans, you know. They're always going to be half and half because they were born here and, I hope, live here, but they will always have a background of Yugoslavian. I'm still a Serbian, but with an American lifestyle.
I became real good friends with John Stockton and Karl Malone and am still good friends with them to this day. It was always good to go see them and then play with them in the 1996 Olympics as well. I idolized John Stockton at the time, I tried to model my game after him.
I wanted to prove people wrong who didn't think I could play at this level. I also wanted to take care of my family. It was a chance to play against the best players in the world. Mentally and physically I don't think I was ready, but I was ready to take on the challenge.
When you're going through a game and you miss your first couple, you definitely put a little bit of added pressure on yourself. And there is that sense of frustration. You got to block it out and realize that the whole goal of what I'm trying to do is just get open shots.
It is the cruelest of all ironies that moderns imagine themselves to be (abstractly understood) "individuals," because in actuality moderns are "types," abstracted and self-abstractive victims of a process of stereotyping that afflicts even would-be rebels and anarchists.
A big market is something that doesn't really concern me too much. It's cool to think about, it's good for off-the-court deals. But I'm more of a basketball player. That's what I want to be known as. And this is the best place for me to play basketball. I'm glad I'm here.
When you go into a game on offense, you make a couple moves and see what the defender is going to do. Then you pretty much can figure out what he is going to do against you - whether he carries his hands low or high, whether he is bumping or pushing, those type of things.
Despite the amazing diversity we're blessed with in this country, schools are still in large part segregated because of economic disparity. Sports are one of the few areas where kids are really given the opportunity to interact with those of different races and religions.
My way is to talk to my opponent so he makes it a personal thing. He starts playing me one-on-one, and forgets about his team. Meanwhile, I'm still playing team ball and eating him up. Some guys tried talking back, but you can't get a talker when a talker's talking to you.
Difficulty is a nurse of greatness-a harsh nurse, who rocks her foster children roughly, but rocks them in strength and athletic proportion. The mind, grappling with great aims and wrestling with mighty impediments, grows by a certain necessity to the stature of greatness.
Winning an NBA championship is the biggest thing that can happen professionally because it's the top. But representing your country-with more than 30 million people cheering for you and then seeing you up there on the podium-it's hard to find any more words to put on that.