The Process is never going to end. It's an ongoing thing. I don't think it's ever going to stop. As I have explained before, it's a process for making it to the playoffs, it's another one to make the conference finals, another one to actually go to The Finals and win the championship.
Well, of course you question it, especially when you get to this point. I always look at it would I rather not make the playoffs or lose in The Finals? I don't know. I don't know. I've missed the playoffs twice. I lost in The Finals four times. I'm almost starting to be like I'd rather not even make the playoffs than to lose in The Finals. It would hurt a lot easier if I just didn't make the playoffs and I didn't have a shot at it.
Milestones you'd like to reach before retiring? Not really. Because when I began it was never to reach 100 games or reach 200 or to get high on the all-time list or whatever else. Those things are by-products. I want to win another championship, beginning with the conference championship. The thing that was disappointing to me last year was the fact that we did not win the conference championship. I felt like we just let that game (against Air Force in Las Vegas) get away from us.
It was a tough year for me, '89, losing two Slam finals and losing another five finals. It wasn't until I won the Masters, or what's now called the ATP Finals, that things changed again. Suddenly I won seven tournaments in 1990 and became No. 1.
A lot of teams who go on to win trophies lose in quarter-finals or semi-finals first.
When you are winning and go to finals, you want to win the finals.
A lot of people don't understand that playing in the NBA, the toughest thing is to win an NBA championship. I was in the NBA 15 years. I'd been in the playoffs. I'd been in the Finals. But it took me 15 years to finally win one.
After I left the Nets, I found out what it takes to not just make the Finals, but to win a championship. I think I have a sense now of how you build a championship structure and how you maintain that structure.
This is the Boston Celtics. This isn't the Phoenix Suns. No disrespect to any other organization, but you don't hang conference titles. Do we hang going to the conference finals?
I get this call and they go, you know, 'Do you want to do the finals?' and I go, 'Yeah, I guess, I've never, never done the finals.' Especially for somebody who's done as many thousands of games as I have, it kind of takes you one step further.
It's a big game tomorrow, obviously, quarter finals. I think that whenever you play the Russians you always get up for it, and tomorrow is going to be even that much bigger, the quarter finals.
Coming to Denver, that's all we talked about - championship and going to the championship. Playoffs was not even a problem. We knew that we were going to the playoffs every season.
Success breeds success and the more you are around a healthy and thriving athletics team, the more the people who only think they can make semi-finals will be inspired to want to aim for finals and go for medals.
There is no such thing as maturity. There is instead an ever-evolving process of maturing. Because when there is a maturity, there is a conclusion and a cessation. That’s the end. That’s when the coffin is closed. You might be deteriorating physically in the long process of aging, but your personal process of daily discovery is ongoing. You continue to learn more and more about yourself every day.
Finishing second and getting in the Champions' League quarter-finals or semi-finals is fine, but at the end of the day you need to take some silverware.
I think that writing is a process that tells you what you think. You sometimes actually don't know what your opinion is until you hear yourself trying to piece it out and have it make sense to you. The process itself is so bizarre and mysterious that you never know what it's going to tell you.
Athletes like me, PT Usha, Anju Bobby Gerorge have reached finals in Olympics, and it's not easy to reach the finals. If Indians were genetically inferior then we wouldn't have reached even finals.