Whether I retire tomorrow or in 20 years, I just want to get as much out as I can. But with that, I have an understanding that basketball's not forever.
I'm conservative with my money. I'm the one who's got a family and I can't be playing basketball forever, so when I retire, I want to live on what I've made.
People say, 'Oh, so you should retire.' Yeah, you want me to retire so you won't get knocked out. I won't retire.
In the next 15 or 20 years, I hope I'll be the richest man in the world. That's one of my goals. I want to be a billionaire. I want to get to a position where generation on generation don't have to worry about nothing. I don't want family members from my kids to my son's kids to never have to worry. And I can't do that now just playing basketball.
Most people don't hold a job for 45 years. They pass on or want to retire. I don't want to retire. My real goal is to do 50 years on 'Sesame Street,' and I only got 4-and-a-half years to go.
I cannot get rid of the hurt from losing, but after the last out of every loss, I must accept that there will be a tomorrow. In fact, it's more than there'll be a tomorrow, it's that I want there to be a tomorrow. That's the big difference, I want tomorrow to come.
When you find someone you want to spend forever with you, you don't let them go, whether forever turns out to be a day or a year of fifty years. Don't let the fear of losing them keep you from loving them.
Retirement is a very subjective thing. There are guys I know who retire and they're very happy and they never miss work at all. I can't see myself retiring and fondling a dog every day. I like to get up and work and go out. I have too much energy or too much nervous anxiety or something. So I don't see myself retiring. Maybe I will suddenly get a stroke or a heart attack and I will be forced to retire, but if my health holds out I don't expect to retire.
The shuttle tomorrow is truly like laying the last spike on the transcontinental railroad, only much more so. And whether or not we're going to see in in the next 10 or 20 years, there are people alive today who will see manufacturing in space from moon materials or from asteroids.
I don't measure people by whether they agree with me or not. I measure them by their sincerity. Sincerity, with as much reality as you can get. Sincerity with toughness, experience, and understanding of the issue - real understanding, not just academic and intellectual understanding. That takes some courage.
There's a lot of bands that get to a certain level, and it just stops. They scrap it. Compare this to, say, The Rolling Stones or The Who, where they just continued on forever and are still playing, or they quit after 20 years.
What am I doing, just playing basketball? It was eating at me. Because basketball, you play, you retire, you're done. I wanted to do something more.
I spoke to my parents and my agent a year before Rio. I was like: 'I don't want to do this. I want to get away.' They said: 'Just grit your teeth for a year. Then you can have your break. And if you want to retire, you can retire then.' I was in tears. I just hated it.
Once you get out there and start playing basketball, whether the NBA or college or whatever arena you are playing in or who you are playing in front of, the juices start going, and you want to just go out there and play to the best of your abilities.
It's a really weird mindset to kind of try to take my mentality on the basketball court and bring it here on to the golf course. I don't want to have too high of expectations on, like, each hole, just try to enjoy the process, but hopefully get out to a good start tomorrow and be in the conversation and see what happens.
Whenever I'm out on the basketball court, I lace up and just hoop. Whether it's in summertime, at practice, in the games, playoffs, every time I step out on the basketball court, I approach it the same way.
I was just too young to retire as a 52-year-old. I didn't want to be going out of football after loving it so much.