I'm a basketball player. That's what I do and what I love but that's just not all who I am. I'm talented in a lot of different areas.
Allah says in the Qur'an not to despise one another. So the criterion in Islam is not color or social status. It's who is most righteous. If I go to a mosque - and I'm a basketball player with money and prestige - if I go to a mosque and see an imam, I feel inferior. He's better than me. It's about knowledge.
A lot of late nights in the gym, a lot of early mornings, especially when your friends are going out, you're going to the gym, those are the sacrifices that you have to make if you want to be an NBA basketball player.
Everyone needs a coach. It doesn't matter whether you're a basketball player, a tennis player, a gymnast or a bridge player.
What you are as a person is far more important than what you are as a basketball player.
When I lose the sense of motivation and the sense to prove something as a basketball player, it's time for me to move away from the game.
A lot of times I blend in a little bit easier because I'm not like a basketball player who's going to stand out because of his height.
If you're a basketball player, you've got to shoot.
If we can take young people who excel at the highest levels, put them on the same kind of pedestal as the all-state basketball player and the all-state football player, and begin to get the same kind of recognition, it will have a profound effect, and we are finding that it does.
There is no such thing as a perfect basketball player, and I don't believe there is only one greatest player either.