It's tough at first. You realize in the NBA, it's not easy. Each and every night, you're playing against that player that was the best high school player, that player that was the best player on his college team.
I mean, it took me a long while to realize that I wasn't gonna play football on a regular basis anymore. I still play once in a while, but that took me a long while to adjust.
When I come home, I'm not a basketball player, but "dad". While everyone sees me as an NBA player, to my boys, I'm just "dad" and that's very important.
Even before I made my high school team, I'd say I want to be a NBA player, and people laughed at me with, 'Get out of here, you ain't going to be a NBA player. You don't even play basketball.'
Some people think, 'Who is this guy? Where did he come from? I never heard of him.' But it took me time to become a good NBA player.
You can ask all the best players in the NBA - there's not one player in the NBA that guards them like me.
Inch for inch, the 6-foot-3 Westbrook is the NBA's most sensationally talented player, a relentlessly explosive basket-attacker with a deadly pull-up jumper - a top-10 NBA player by any big-picture statistical measure from Player Efficiency Rating to Win Shares.
It took me a long time to understand not to get caught up in other people's expectations. It really comes down to creative fulfillment. It took me a while to realize I don't want to just be on a show to be on a show.
It took me a while to realize that basketball wasn't football.
NBA has a selfish rationale. It saves the owners money by delaying the time a player gets to a second, more lucrative contract. Even the player's union is on board. There are only 450 jobs in the NBA, and the one-and-done protects veterans' jobs.
Basketball was always my sport. It just took me until my second year of college for me to realize that I was a better baseball player than a basketball player. But basketball was always my number one love. Finally found out I was better at baseball and chose to pursue that route.
It took me a while to realize that's just your body preparing you to do something.
I'm not a standup. I don't really have jokes. I don't have 10 minutes. It took a while for me to realize this.
A lot of people don't understand that playing in the NBA, the toughest thing is to win an NBA championship. I was in the NBA 15 years. I'd been in the playoffs. I'd been in the Finals. But it took me 15 years to finally win one.
My dream was to be in the NBA. I wasn't really focused on being a star player on a team. I just wanted to make it to the NBA. I've been blessed for the opportunities to be in the Finals, been in the playoffs ever since I've been in the NBA.
Only recently I’ve learned, it’s an obvious thing, but it just took me a while to realize