A Quote by Paul Pierce
When you come off a losing season - one of the worst seasons in all of basketball - and get guys like Ray Allen and Kevin Garnett, two perennial All-Stars, we felt like we had a championship team.
Related Quotes
I think in Boston we had three great players in Kevin Garnett, Paul Pierce and Ray Allen.
I had a poster of Kevin Garnett hanging in my room. He was one of my inspirations when I was young. I was at my friend's house - he had a lot of money, so sometimes I'd go to his place to watch some NBA action. I remember the first time I saw Kevin Garnett, I just felt something in my body: 'This feels like me.'
I think the biggest thing I want to learn from Kevin Garnett, with him having a ring, is how do I become a championship player? How do I see how a championship team looks like? How do I use myself to be a championship contributor?
We had guys come out of high school, Moses Malone, Kevin Garnett, LeBron James, but all these guys could play.
Guys like Kobe Bryant, LeBron James, Kevin Garnett, they'll take bad criticism in a good way.
Our goal as a team is to keep playing as a group for as long as we can because you will never have that team again. It is like a dying limb, you have to prune it off and let another one grow in its place. That is the way you have to do it, but it still hurts losing these guys and that team because they and you have put so much effort into building a team. Even if you win that last game (and a national championship), it hurts badly because the players know they will never have that same special group of guys together on the same team again. Somebody always goes and somebody new always comes in.
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.
Guys like Andre Miller and Kevin Garnett - they're posting up hoping a second guy will run at them so they can pass. You're better just playing one-on-one in the post if you can.
Obviously playing on a team like the Cavs in 2014, they were championship contenders, not allowing a ton of young guys to come in and play through mistakes. If you weren't helping the team have success you weren't really afforded a lot of different opportunities.
I follow tennis, and I actually went to Wimbledon during the summer, and it was nice to get a day off during pre-season to watch it. Basketball as well - I don't have a team; it's just a casual interest - especially when the play-offs come around and the intensity rises.
I've been watching basketball for a long time, I'm a historian of the game. I don't know any other team that's gotten to the Finals without two All-Stars... I cannot remember thinking of it. I don't even know if it's ever happened, for a team to lose two All-Stars and still be able to make it to the Finals.
The great thing about [Michael] Jordan was that he made them want it just like he wanted it. And a lot of times like a lot of the basketball players, not to be getting on basketball, but, with a lot of the basketball players you might have one superstar on the team, and they're not willing to play up to par with the way he is, so they don't make it. But then you have some celebrities on the basketball team, and they don't know how to get along with each other!
You watch guys like Ray Lewis, you watch guys like Brian Urlacher, everything they accomplished was dope. But it was cool to see them do it for one team, one city and really cement their legacy where they were at.
Football has an off-season. Basketball has an off-season. TV has an off-season. Everything has an off-season except wrestling.
I had a vision of how basketball should be played. And the vision was the Knicks teams that won the championship in 1970 and 1973. I wanted a team that emphasized defense. I wanted a team that on offense had a system where players moved off the ball, and the ball moved.
I tried to convince those guys at the Bullets in the '95-'96 season that they could try to beat the mighty London Towers, who won everything the year before. I got out of bed every day with the mindset of getting the team to Wembley for the play-off final and to win the championship.
Related Authors
Allen Iverson Quotes
American
Athlete
Andy Murray Quotes
Scottish
Athlete
CM Punk Quotes
American
Athlete
Conor McGregor Quotes
Irish
Athlete
Georges St-Pierre Quotes
Canadian
Athlete
Jack LaLanne Quotes
American
Athlete
Jillian Michaels Quotes
American
Athlete
Jon Jones Quotes
American
Athlete
Kenny Smith Quotes
American
Athlete
Kevin Durant Quotes
American
Athlete
Rafael Nadal Quotes
Spanish
Athlete
Ronda Rousey Quotes
American
Athlete
Scottie Pippen Quotes
American
Athlete
Shaquille O'Neal Quotes
American
Athlete
Stephen Curry Quotes
American
Athlete
Usain Bolt Quotes
Jamaican
Athlete