A Quote by B. J. Armstrong

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.
And yet I know I am too young, that we're too young, for me to live my life only as it relates to you. If you had asked me to marry you the night you first told me about your acceptance, I would have embraced Princeton as part of a larger plan that involved me. I probably would have reacted differently. I might even had said yes. Alas, you didn't ask me then. You made plans for your future without me in mind, And that's okay. But how can you now ask me to arrange my life around you?
My wife asked me about that: "What happened to your beard?" I said, "What are you talking about?" She said, "Hey, the right side is shorter than the left." I said, "You gotta be kidding me." So I went in there and looked, and I combed it out and I said, "I don't know, that's just the way it grows."
Earlier, I used to always ask people if they want me to answer as Supriya or Hansa. If they said Hansa, and asked me a question, I would say, I don't know. That's because Hansa doesn't know anything! For me, it was important to reach that state of thing in mind where I don't question anything.
I wanted to greet people in Telugu, so I asked someone how to say 'How are you' in Telugu. In fact, I instructed my entire staff to speak to me only in Telugu. So, there were times when I would ask them to translate certain words for me in Hindi, but the effort paid off.
I guess early on in my Christian walk, you know, people said to me, "Never question God" you know? But actually I just found Him to be such a good Father. He's such a good Father and He spoke to me in amazing ways that I'm sure I never would have learned some of these things on mountaintops, you know? I thought I knew how much he loved me, but then one day He asked me "What do you believe?" And I'm like, "I believe this and this and this and this" you know. I was a very good Christian in all my answers, and then he said, "No, no, what do you believe, Daughter, about how much I love you?"
Coaches would have me in the gym do 1,000 kicks for a practice. I would do them until everyone was gone, until I had done all my kicks. People asked me why I would do it - that's stupid. But my coach told me to do something like that, and I knew it would benefit me, and I would do it.
I always managed to get in trouble, like every kid. But I had to learn a lot of hard lessons on my own, without parents who would nurture me and guard me through that part of life, at a very young age.
I was fortunate to be around a couple of coaches who took me under their wing and taught me how to train, how to work and how to prepare myself for a game. They gave me so much, and I saw the passion they had for the game and for teaching it. What I learned from them led me to want to become a teacher and coach.
I'm just right down the middle, man, ... It doesn't matter to me. I'd love him (Phil Jackson) as a coach. It doesn't matter to me. If they want him here, he'll be here. If he wants to come, he'll come, he'll coach and we'll go from there.
I just said, you know, this is a great track but this lyric, I don't believe it. It sounds like I'm trying to say something, instead of it naturally coming out of me, like I was saying something that I already knew. Anyway, I can't remember what it was. And either I threw it all out or I threw 90 percent of it out, and kept a line or two. That's happened a couple of times to me. Not too often, but a couple of times. Very aggravating when it does happen.
I find that my entire life has come to me, and things happened without me planning them. You know, I never asked to photograph Princess Diana, and that made me more famous than I wanted. I never asked to photograph Madonna, and that pushed me to another level. There are things that just take you into the limelight.
One of my big, big strengths I think early on in my career was that I could learn very quickly. You wouldn't have to tell me the things 10 times or 50 times until I would understand them. You would only have to tell me two or three times.
I think Phil Jackson started that feud. It happened many times that after team practice he would say, 'Kobe said this about Shaq, and Shaq said that about Kobe... ' We couldn't believe how could that happen, because just the day before we saw them together, jumping on one another.
I really wasn't expecting to fall so hard for Phil. As a matter of fact, when my dad said he was talking to Phil Jackson about him coming to L.A. to coach the Lakers, I tried to argue against it.
I had a question asked of me the other day, and this is asked of me a lot, surprisingly. 'Is there anything you want that you can't have?' And I said, 'Of course! What kind of question is this? Of course there is.' There's any number of things that I would like to have that I either can't afford or it doesn't make sense to buy. You know, I'd love to have world peace.
I'm passionate about coaching and being able to mentor young men in a lot of different ways. I think it's good to be able to do what you love to do. It's been in me since the beginning. I was telling my college coach what to do and he trusted me. When I got into the NBA, I started having conversations with coaches. Coach Gregg Popp(avich) brought a lot out in me. Coach Don Nelson gave me an incredible opportunity to spend some time with him and he molded me but at the same time allowed me to be myself.
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