A Quote by Masai Ujiri

Kids in Africa start kicking a ball when they are six or seven years old, if not younger. It's like baseball, basketball and football in America. If you're talented, people will find you. That's what happened with soccer. The number of academies has grown rapidly, and people are really into it.

Masai Ujiri

Quote Topics

Africa America Ball Baseball Basketball Find Football Grown Happened Kicking Kids Like Number Old People Rapidly Really Seven Seven Years Six Soccer Start Talented Will Years Younger

Quote Author

Masai Ujiri
Kenyan - Businessman
Born: July 7, 1970

The natural thing in Africa is to start playing soccer at 8 or 9. You go outside and you play like kids play basketball here, and you grow a feel for the game. In Africa, the kids start playing basketball at 16 or 17 or 18, and when they get an opportunity to come here, they have been playing for only one or two years.

Masai Ujiri

Baseball is the biggest sport in Japan, then soccer, and basketball is... People don't really care about basketball.

Yuta Watanabe

I think we have our sports within our own culture that are huge with baseball, football, basketball, and hockey. Those are the sports in America that we grow up with and soccer isn't really there yet.

Claudio Reyna

When I played football, basketball and baseball, I was always a starter. I played baseball as the number three or number four hitter. Playing baseball, I was the third baseman or pitcher. Football, I was the quarterback. I was always versatile. It came to me naturally. It was always easy.

Future

Kicking the football and the soccer ball is all the same, just a different shape, like an egg. It doesn't make any difference.

Sebastian Janikowski

And of course in America you've got American football and baseball and all those other ball games, soccer has become a little niche that the women have kind of filled.

Parminder Nagra

It wasn't really until the 10th or 11th grade when I started to play well, and football took the place of baseball, which was my love when I was five years old. I don't know what happened; baseball just got boring to me, I guess.

Calvin Johnson

My father was always pushing me to become a basketball player. In Africa, when you're a kid, every kid loves to play soccer, and I loved playing soccer. But my dad didn't want me playing soccer. He would joke, 'C'mon, man, you're too tall!' Then he promised me, 'If you start playing basketball, I'm going to give you my jersey.'

Serge Ibaka

When you look at the last 20 years in the NBA, there have been seven teams that have won the NBA championship. Six of those seven teams drafted the number one or number two pick; their foundational people.

Ted Leonsis

There's a few kids out there who like singing to my songs. They're, like, five, six, seven years old.

Alice Merton

So you're six years old, you're reading 'Snow White and the Seven Dwarves,' and it becomes rapidly obvious that there are only two kinds of men in the world: dwarves and Prince Charmings. And the odds are seven to one against your finding the prince.

Emily Levine

Most kids in Africa don't start playing basketball until they are 13 or 14 years old. This puts them at a disadvantage because they lack the instincts and must work harder to develop the skills and habits formed at an early age.

Masai Ujiri

American leagues - baseball, ice hockey, American football and basketball - you are the best. But in a global sport like soccer, you're not.

Bastian Schweinsteiger

I don't think I started kicking a ball until I was six or seven. Horses were my first love, so I was occupied with that.

Millie Bright

I don't think it's the intent of baseball not to have black ballplayers, but we have to find a way to get these kids back. We lost them to football. We lost them to basketball. We lost them to golf. People don't see how cool and exciting this game is.