To be honest, I never thought I'd be famous for baseball. I want to play basketball, and I could also do both basketball and baseball - but I really want to play basketball.
I was a mediocre basketball player. But I was there, and I could remember the plays. And my basketball coach, after he retired from teaching, would come to my performances all the time. And I was very happy about that, because I was not memorable as a basketball player.
Going to the Portland Trail Blazers, who actually took the time to invest in me, was perhaps the best thing that ever happened to me in my career. I got to a small market where I could focus on basketball, basketball, basketball. No distractions.
I don't really want to go into my problems with the team at the time except to say that no one's ever had to pay me to play basketball.
Growing up, I played about every sport imaginable except soccer and hockey. I've always had a passion for basketball. I remember actually playing basketball when I was two or three years old. The time I knew that I could really take my game to the next level.
I used to play soccer when I was in Morocco, but I was more of a basketball player. I played high school basketball, I played AAU basketball.
In the original script, my character was a basketball player rather than a boxer. I didn't think I could pull that off. I'm a little short to be a basketball player!
A football player is often bigger than a basketball player - more massive, that is. The basketball player is taller and more slender. So it is with redwoods. The tallest redwoods are often slender, and so they aren't the largest ones.
I'm just playing basketball. I just want to be a great player. That's it. That's all I'm thinking about. If the other stuff comes, it comes, but I'm just fortunate to play in the NBA Finals and just to play basketball, period.
Who knows, maybe I'll be a basketball player one day? No, I'm definitely never going to be a basketball player. I have no hand-eye coordination.
My mom used to be a basketball player so I was really into it. Plus of course my height made it easier for me to decide what kind of sport I wanted to play, so at the age of nine I went to my first basketball practice.
The thing about playing basketball in Houston was we had a great coach, great system, and we had guys that believed in me. Once you get that belief in you, it's easy to play basketball, so, we really never had so-called role players.
At the end of the day I'm a basketball player. I'm going to try and shoot more threes than mid-range or long twos or whatever. But if someone gives you a shot, you're a basketball player, you got to make reads and play.
Would I have been a great basketball player? No. But I think I would've been a good basketball player, one of those grinders getting eight to 10 rebounds. I would've been like Kobe and been in the gym five to seven hours a day and never missed a 10-foot jump shot. I would've been a great role player for a team.
Who's to say because you're just a basketball player, or you are a basketball player, who's to say you can't chime in on other subjects or other important topics?
When you think about basketball, and you watch someone like Michael Jordan play basketball - even if you're a baseball player, there's still a lot to learn from there.