A Quote by Toni Kukoc
Everybody knows the NBA is the top of basketball in the world. The game here is more hard, more physical, faster than in Europe.
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My good friend Yao Ming was the first big player in the NBA to come from China. He gave himself to the game and was successful. That inspired the NBA to invest more and do more for the game of basketball. We're building academies not just in China, but in India, Africa, Europe and South America as well.
Strength is never a negative. The stronger you are, the more you're able to defend. The more physical you are, the better you are. The top teams in the NBA are the most physical teams, too.
I have to give credit to the NBA, because they've done an unbelievable job of taking our game global and putting us in a position to be able to come here and other places in the world and see how big the game of basketball is. If you have never been here, you might not really understand how amazing and how big basketball is. These fans in China love the sport, and they have more players playing than we have people living in the US.
Here you get to play one on one more, individual basketball. I think that fits me better than in Europe. You have harder, different double teams and everybody helps, but in the NBA they let you play one on one, so I think that will fit me better.
Between 1995 and 2009, Western Europe's entrepreneurs created jobs faster than the U.S. did, and European economies exported more than the BRIC countries of Brazil, Russia, India and China. Eastern Europe's productivity increased more rapidly than East Asia's.
That's what people don't understand, that in the NBA these are the best 450 players in the world, in the game of basketball, are in the NBA.
Winning an NBA championship is the biggest thing that can happen professionally because it's the top. But representing your country-with more than 30 million people cheering for you and then seeing you up there on the podium-it's hard to find any more words to put on that.
When I came in the NBA, it was more a U.S. game. Now you can watch the NBA anywhere in the world.
You're more apt to criticize an NBA player than you are a college players. Some of these guys are freshmen. They are learning the game. The other guys have taken it to the biggest stage there is. That's the NBA. So they are going to get more heat if they don't perform.
When I travel around the globe, I try as hard as I can to represent the NBA and the game of basketball to the best of my abilities. I get to go around the world and not only share the game but also my philanthropic work. Building a hospital in the Congo is one of the proudest achievements of my life.
To be honest, I'm looking at today's game, and I put myself in that position and how I would benefit from the faster basketball, more threes, catch-and-go opportunities, attacking the paint with more space, that's what kind of gets me juiced up and riled up when I watch today's game.
The way I play, it's very much more a mental game than a physical game. I'm looking for space and where are players leaving space. Defensively, where are we at numerical disadvantages? Do I shift more to the left because they have more players on their right side? It's about reading the game before the game happens.
Basketball should be more popular. In my opinion, the NBA should rival the NFL. At the very least, no way should the NFL be five times more popular than the NBA.
I know people that was playing basketball better than me. If they were in the NBA, they could be All-Stars, those people. They just never had the opportunity to go play professional basketball in Europe.
Words are easy, but actions are what matters. And for its own protection - and you know this, everybody knows this, everybody has to know this - Europe must do more. Europe must demonstrate that it believes in its future by investing its money to secure that future.
I want to thank the NBA and U.S.A. Basketball. Words can't describe my feeling. I was a small town kid from Hamburg, Arkansas, and you provided me a platform to live out my passion, the game of basketball, on the world's grandest stage.
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