It's when the runs are not coming that even the minutest of flaws are viewed under the microscope. You look into your game and try to pick every single thing you can improve about it. At the end of it, you emerge as a better player than you were.
I can still improve, and that's what I try to do every day and train strong, and as I said, I try to improve every day and make myself a better player, and that's what I am trying to do.
Nobody's going to be able to do every single thing better than everybody. Not even LeBron does everything better than everybody else. It's all about using your advantages.
Every year I try to grow as a player and not get stuck in a rut. I try to improve my game in every way possible. But that trait is not something I've worked on, it's part of me.
Every girl/woman in the world has flaws. Instead of focusing on your flaws when you look in a mirror, focus on the parts of you that you love; try to do this every morning. You will ooze confidence all day long.
I played against Kobe a lot when I was in high school during the summers, even in college, just being that guy in L.A. coming up. He always gave me advice here and there, and even the smallest things stuck with me. I watched every single thing that Kobe did, every game, every move. He made me a student of the game.
Every time I make a new game, I put all of my effort completely into that game. It's like putting all your effort into a new child that's being born. Once the project is done, I can step back and look at it objectively, which is when I can see a lot of flaws. That's when I start to make a new game that tries to fix some of those flaws.
Baseball is just a game you go out every single day and try to win, go in the cage every day and stick to your routine and try not to be results-based, even though that's what the game is based on.
I try every day to become a better player - passing more to open the game - I try everything because you can always be better.
You can improve in every stage of your career, and even in training, after training, analysing your game, you can do a lot of stuff to make steps, and that's also a major point of becoming a top player.
Every manager has different opinions and all you can do as a player is try to fight and get your spot back, or at least earn your manager's trust back to try and get your spot back. There's no use sulking about it, you just get on with it and try to raise your game to get back to the level you need to be when you were starting.
Every player should look to build on the previous season and do everything they can to make themselves a better player than they were the previous year.
There's no such thing as a player who scores in every single game.
When guys feel like it's a contract year so you're forcing, you're stressing, you're trying to do that, what I try to tell them is GMs and scouts don't even look at your points per game. They look at your efficiency, your plus-minus. Everything's so analytical. You can average 15 and be a terrible analytic player - you're not going to get paid.
I've tried to improve - defending, attacking, pressing, trying to think before a game, to be more clever, do something before the defender can think of it, to become a better player. That makes me feel good, that hunger to improve in every way.
Long runs improve your endurance but shorter intervals improve your speed. They are mutually beneficial for a distance runner. If you do 5k runs it will help your marathon.
Every single player matters. Every single player can change the course of the game.