Coach

I'm a loner.

As far as playing, I didn't care who guarded me - red, yellow, black. I just didn't want a white guy guarding me, because it's disrespect to my game.

Once you are labeled 'the best' you want to stay up there, and you can't do it by loafing around.

I mean, the greatest athletes in the world are African-American.

I get homesick.

When it gets down to it, basketball is basketball.

It's been a journey, the NBA. It's taken me a lot farther than I ever expected.

I used to love the feeling of running, of running too far. It made my skin tingle.

What's better? Dogs or broomsticks? I mean will the world really ever know?

I like being by myself.

I've got a theory that if you give 100% all of the time, somehow things will work out in the end.

But it is a black man's game, and it will be forever.

I really don't like talking about money. All I can say is that the Good Lord must have wanted me to have it.

The best player I ever played with was Dennis Johnson.

I wasn't real quick, and I wasn't real strong. Some guys will just take off and it's like, whoa. So I beat them with my mind and my fundamentals.

When I was a kid, I never thought about anything. Never had to think about where I was going to school or what I was going to do. I just lived minute to minute.

If there was a payment to the bank due, and we needed shoes, she'd get the shoes, and then deal with them guys at the bank. I don't mean she wouldn't pay the bank, but the children always came first.

While day by day the overzealous student stores up facts for future use, he who has learned to trust nature finds need for ever fewer external directions. He will discard formula after formula, until he reaches the conclusion: Let nature take its course.

The best players will play. That's the way it will always be.

Leadership is getting players to believe in you. If you tell a teammate you're ready to play as tough as you're able to, you'd better go out there and do it. Players will see right through a phony. And they can tell when you're not giving it all you've got.