Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
The fact that Phil Jackson asked a young kid when he didn't have to and said, 'Hey, do I have permission to coach you?' Those are very powerful lessons that you learn. That's only happened to me a couple times in my entire career, that coaches would actually ask me that question. That just lets me know that he saw me for who I was.
It [boxing] helps my hand-eye coordination, my stamina, my footwork, and it gives me that competitive edge and drive. And in the ring it's mano-a-mano. So it helps you build that arrogance, that cockiness, that confidence in yourself that the man that stands in front of you isn't going to beat you, and that translates to the court.
I liked being home playing in front of my people, but I just did not like the situation because I was playing shooting guard, and that is not my position. I would play it if someone like Rip got hurt, but to do it for an entire season, that is not my position. I got it done when I was asked to do. But inside, I know that is not me.
I experienced a lot of spiritual growth when I started traveling to Europe and playing basketball. I saw that just because I was away from home didn't mean Jesus wasn't with me. He is everywhere and you can see signs of Him in the most remote places in the world through people who don't even speak your language. Jesus is universal.
When something drastic happens in our life, one person goes and hides and doesn't want to be seen. That's what I did. [Others] want to stand up and fight and think they're tough. Like if someone gets shot, you're either scared of guns or you think you're Superman. In my situation, I wanted to hide. I didn't want to be seen anymore.
I always tried to make clear that basketball is not the ultimate. It is of small importance in comparison to the total life we live. There is only one kind of life that truly wins, and that is the one that places faith in the hands of the Savior. Until that is done, we are on an aimless course that runs in circles and goes nowhere.
The type of leukemia that I am dealing with is treatable. So if I do what my doctors tell me to do - get my blood checked regularly, take my meds and consult with my doctor and follow any additional instructions he might make - I will be able to maintain my good health and live my life with a minimum of disruptions to my lifestyle.
The problems of human subjectivity replicate themselves at many different scales, like the overtones and undertones in a stringed instrument striking ghost-intervals up and down into infinity. This is not Hegel's ingenuity, it is his responsiveness to the organic structure in us that echoes itself throughout the whole architecture.
Michael Jordan was blessed by God to play basketball and Roger Brown was the closet person to him I ever saw. I don't say that lightly. Roger was phenomenal. There was nothing he couldn't do. He was so quick he would trick people blind - I even saw him miss layups because he was laughing so hard at what he had just done to someone.
Guys have made livings off me. Nick Anderson got a new contract. Travis Knight got a new contract off me. As a matter of fact, Derek Fisher called me yesterday to thank me. If you double me, I'm kicking out to Eddie, who's the best shooter in the East. Or I'm going to give it to Dwyane, or put it on the ground and come bang on you.
My father, Jimmy Walker, was the first pick in the 1967 draft, but I never met him. He passed in 2007. I found out about him in middle school. I was old enough to understand who he was, where he went to college, and what his game was about. Older players like Bill Russell and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar have come up to me to talk about him.
The hunger [to success] is the same, no matter what it is that you're doing. It's like an unquenchable thirst to learn more, or to feel like you could have done more, and to be brutally honest and self critical, which is very hard to do. It's easy, and human nature is to just blame somebody else. It's very, very hard to self assess.
I've always had a passion for giving back. It's a family tradition that comes from my devout parents. They were always giving back and serving the community. So when I became fortunate enough and blessed to play the game of basketball, I was also fortunate enough to follow in my parents' footsteps and give back like the way they did.
Off the floor I'm really laid back, like nothing really fazes me too much. But on the floor I do get emotional and a little carried away. However, I started playing when I was 13 to have fun with my teammates, and that never stopped. I enjoy traveling and having fun in the locker room with the guys. Life is too short to be miserable.
I grew up in the church, and I always kind of knew Bible stories and knew the Sunday school answers, but when I was a freshman in high school I joined youth group, and that's when I started to see radical love; that's when I started to see what Christian community is supposed to look like and what fellowship is supposed to look like.
The word conservative means discriminatory practically. It's a form of political discrimination. What do the Republicans run on? Against gay marriage and for a war that makes no sense. A war that was based on faulty intelligence. That's all they ever talk about. That and immigration. Another discriminatory argument for political gain.
Coming in, I had no idea basketball would be a career for me, but I grew 7 inches in college and was fortunate to have a great career in the NBA. The experience taught me about service, what our great country was built on, the sacrifices people have made, how to work together and trust the people around you to accomplish a great goal.
I was about 6-foot-3 my freshman year of high school, and after the summer, I was about 6-foot-8. It all happened so fast. I went into the summer being tall, and when I came back, I was a giant. My knees, man, they were throbbing all the time. I couldn't sit in the car for long stretches; my knees felt like they were going to explode.
I remember when I went to try out for the Olympic team in 1972, Coach Iba told me he didn't care how many points I could score because if I couldn't guard anybody, I wasn't going to make the team. I knew to make the team I had to become a better defender. If you can play offense, you can defend. It just comes down to competitive will.
Anything you can do to help someone, I just think it's so important because there's a lot of kids that look up athletes of all size and shapes in a lot of different fields, not necessarily in the basketball field. They get involved emotionally with those people because there's something about certain athletes that people rally around.
My bench never heard me mention winning. My whole emphasis was for each one of my players to try to learn to execute the fundamentals to the best of their ability. Not to try to be better than somebody else, but to learn from others, and never cease trying to be the best they could be; that's what I emphasized more than anything else.
I've been in Philadelphia 10 years, man. I knew it was going to be a challenge, mentally. I always thought life would come to an end if I ever left Philadelphia. And I feel like a newborn. Being in Denver it's just a better situation for me. And I'm just happy that I feel like I got an opportunity where I can win basketball games here.
I have always wanted to be part of something special, and when I got to Boston.. actually, when I bought, begged and pleaded my way onto the Celtics.. it was already a championship team. I was just glad to be able to sit there and cheer and to be Larry Bird's valet, to be sure that his shoes were fine and his uniform was folded neatly.
I used to help my grandfather on the farm, driving tractors, raising crops and animals. I used to feed some of the baby cows and pigs, and I had to be no older than 7 or 8. Then at about 9 or 10 I started driving tractors. It showed me at an early age what hard work was all about and how dedicated you have to be, no matter what you do.
LeBron doesn't have any weaknesses, or he doesn't have a glaring weakness. So you've got to pick up on the smaller things to try to make him uncomfortable. Like knowing which side he likes to shoot threes off the dribble, which side he likes to drive. One side he'll drive left more often, and the other side he'll drive right more often.
I was very healthy from a young age. I was always known as the healthy kid in my group of friends. My mom had us drink barley-grass powder, and I've taken vitamins and fish oil and multivitamins since I was a kid. My mom just had me doing that for a long, long time. And I enjoy eating healthy. It's not a chore to me to eat healthy food.
Off the floor, I'm really laid back: like, nothing really fazes me too much. But on the floor, I do get emotional and a little carried away. However, I started playing when I was 13 to have fun with my teammates, and that never stopped. I enjoy traveling and having fun in the locker room with the guys. Life is too short to be miserable.
Everybody needs to realize that it doesn't matter how old you are or how young you are, you still can be a Christian and live for God. It's not easy but that's why we have God's word and He forgives us when we do something we shouldn't be doing. You know, God sent His son to die for us and He paid that sacrifice so you can go to Heaven.
It makes me ill how callously people talk about ripping their clients off I don’t know of any illegal behavior, but will people push the envelope and pitch lucrative and complicated products to clients even if they are not the simplest investments or the ones most directly aligned with the client’s goals? Absolutely. Every day, in fact.
A lot of guys... they want to take the big shot, and they talk about it because they're scared of it. You never heard me talk about it. You heard a lot of guys talk about it. But you don't have to talk about it, because if you have the confidence in yourself, and your team believes in you, you don't fear anything. You don't fear losing.
I came here and actually fell in love with Charlotte and the Hornets. That's exactly what happened to me. I found a new way of motivation. Charlotte basically extended my career for the next seven years. I was thinking of retiring. I was 30 and played seven more years after that, just because basketball felt different here in Charlotte.
We're all making decisions to make ourselves happy and our families happy. That doesn't take away what we've done together and the special bond that we created and the special bond that we have and just all the memories that we had together. That will never change. As you move forward, you appreciate those moments and keep going forward.
You can replace houses. You can't replace people. I mean, it's left me speechless. I was talking to P.J. (Brown) about it. When the storm hit, I just kept it on CNN and watched the whole thing. Just seeing Canal Street, knowing I was there just a few days before storm and seeing all those stores I went in being under water. Unbelievable.
The CRAFT approach, developed by Bob Meyers at U of New Mexico, is one set of important tools that DO work, and it feels great to see families using these strategies and getting results, feeling hopeful again, feeling empowered, getting support, learning to trust themselves again, getting their lives and the lives of their children back.
No building is better than its structural foundation, and no man (woman) is better than his (her) mental foundation. When I prepared my original Success Pyramid years ago, I put industriousness and enthusiasm as the two cornerstones with LOYALTY right in the middle of the pyramid - Loyalty to yourself and to all those dependent upon you.
Pride was his life force; for us it was a live nerve that he could teach us to brush. One stroke, a good practice, and we could tingle for days ... First, he found the pride in each of us, then he taught us how good it could feel. What he was ultimately after was for every one of us to learn to light our own fires and glow our brightest.
A vital part of philosophizing is learning to trust one's own intuitivist intelligence, getting one's center of gravity back between one's feet. In our culture-so outer-directed, "objective" or extraverted-this is already heresy. This is self-mastering thinking, centered in what has been well-tested as certainties: autarkia or self-rule.
So many times, I watch games and think, 'Man, why is that guy trying to score like that? He can't do it.' But he's been told his whole life, 'You have to go get 40 if you want to be one of the top dogs.' It's my goal to build a lane where you can be a top dog, and you don't gotta go get that 40. You can go get four and still be a top dog.
Too often we get distracted by what is outside of our control. You can't do anything about yesterday. The door to the past has been shut and the key thrown away. You can do nothing about tomorrow. It is yet to come. However, tomorrow is in large part determined by what you do today. So make today a masterpiece. You have control over that.
Perk, from the minute you got here... I hated you before you got here... But the moment you got here, man, you just changed my whole perception of you. Just one of the best teammates I ever had. I just thank you so much. The late night calls after tough games, you texting me, telling me I'm the MVP. That means a lot to me, man. Thank you.
I'm trying to get a lower center of gravity. I think, when I play at a lower level, it helps my overall game, just my explosiveness to the rim with the ball in my hands. When I play with a lower center of gravity, my legs are always in my shot instead of playing vertical out there where I don't get the same explosion or legs into my shot.
At that time, I was still in an experimental stage, trying to blend Western drawing techniques and Chinese brushwork together. It was harder for me back then... But that piece is special and important, because it represents vigilance and innocence; the kind of precious innocence only present at the beginning of a new artistic exploration.
That game was dedicated to Rick Adelman. I'm at home, in the bathroom, trying to take a dump, flipping through the channels and he's complaining (on TV) about how I'm stepping over the line. I can't even do a No. 2 in peace. I'm sitting there grunting at 12:30 at night. Can I go one day without somebody saying something negative about me?
It doesn't matter where you come from, what you have or don't have, what you lack, or what you have too much of. But all you need to have is faith in God, an undying passion for what you do and what you choose to do in this life, and a relentless drive and the will to do whatever it takes to be successful in whatever you put your mind to.
You go from being with the guys all the time in the locker room, in practice, having a militarized brain in terms of this schedule, and then, all of a sudden, you are on your own. You lose a sense of purpose; you lose a sense of yourself. And you lose confidence. You find yourself saying, 'I was the best at this, and now I'm not the best.'
I usually dig the single-digit numbers, but No2 is retired. I'm going to change it up and wear No10. I'm going to wear it for Messi, my favourite soccer player. I've been playing a lot of FIFA lately and watching the games. He's the best little guy to do it and I've got to be the best little guy to do it at No10 in the NBA. That's my goal.
I'm from Denver, and basketball there isn't near what it is out in Chicago or Detroit or L.A. There weren't that many great players to come out of the area; I was the best player in high school. I was Player of the Year four straight years for the state. As a freshman, I was State Player of the Year; I was Mr. Everything, so I was a phenom.
In my day I think the toughest was Derek Harper. The old-school Derek Harper. He was tough. He had the most toughest, nastiest game ever. I hated playing against him because he would always try to rip you, and try to talk to you. People just didn't really know that about Derek Harper. I used to hate bringing the ball up against him, really.
Michael Jackson? He was something more (than one of my favorite entertainers), a true friend. He wasn't just a genius. Above all, he was a good person, who gave so much. He gave people values, he encouraged them to better themselves all the time. He was far deeper and more authentic than people could see. He was misunderstood too many times
Right after the draft, when I came out to Oakland, there was a press conference and a dinner with the owner, GM, and Coach Nelson. We did some sightseeing and some house searching the next day, but to be honest, I had no idea what I was doing. I tried to find a spot close to our gym, because I figured that's where I'd spend most of my time.