The 76ers currently play very good basketball, and we don't. However, we are still only one win behind them. If we continue to improve, we should be on the top of our division at the end of the regular season.
Of course my goal at Duke was to win the national championship, but we were shorthanded, and lost one of our big guys that was very important to the team. By the end of the season we only played about six guys. But we tried our hardest and did our best and overall had a successful season.
I had a coach when I was getting recruited say maybe you should play basketball at a Division III level, because you're not good enough to play football in college.
At the start of the season, there are 16 teams in the top division looking behind them, making sure they avoid relegation. The fear starts in the boardroom, comes down to managers and through to players. The fans sense it.
Every team in the NFL is hard, but when we play our own division it's a fight. Our goal is to make it to the playoffs and to do that we have to win games within the division. We match up well against this division, it's just a matter of getting on the field and doing what we know we can do.
I played Little League baseball, but I also played basketball. Basketball was my primary sport. When you play basketball seriously, a lot of times, through the summer season, you continue playing. So that replaced me playing baseball.
I enjoy doing both of them very much, concert work particularly, and the division varies from season to season.
Guardiola took the decision to not play me in the DFB-Pokal final. He did not want me to win the trophy as top scorer, so he did not let me play during the end of the season. It was not really so important for me, but I felt it was a lack of respect towards me.
It's basketball. At the end of the day everyone wants to win, and that's really the reason why we play is to win.
Anytime you have a Pat Riley running things, calling the shots, you are not going to question things because he has been through it. He knows what it is all about and what it takes to win. All we have to do on our end is play basketball because we know the right calls and the right decisions are going to be made up top.
Arsene Wenger's idea is not only to play good football. It's to play good football to win. In my day, we knew that with our style we could hurt teams and win trophies too. But we did it our way, with the positional game, passing, movement.
We tied the milk crates on each end of the fence, and we had our own milk crate basketball pickup game, and it was a good time 'cause we could jump off the fence and dunk the basketball. You had to be creative in order to play, and I wanted to play.
I want to continue to improve season after season, which I think I've done.
Going in, you want to play a perfect season and play throughout the whole entire season, but injuries are a part of basketball.
If you look at Arsenal today, I really enjoy watching them play - they play some really good football - but that is not enough to win football matches or to win competitions. But in our time, we were winning, and we had the strength to not play well but somehow manage to win the game 1-0.
From where started, I think it is too far down to try and win a championship at the end of the season, although we had a very good first race at Mondello and scored some good points.
At the end of the day, you're only going to be allowed to play basketball for a short period of time. You're a human other than that for the rest of your life. So it's safe to say that basketball doesn't define me. It's just a sport that I was blessed to play.