“I always want to win because I never want to sit out on the sidelines outside.”

I just loved being in the gym. It was tough at times. Sometimes I wanted to quit, but I’m glad I stuck with it.

I’ve been more content with just who I am.

If I continue to just get to the playoffs every year, I guess you could say I arrived, but right now I’m just trying to find my way.

You hear all these stories about, ‘There’s one in a million guys that make it to the NBA and stay there.’ To see people cheering for me and when they say my name, it’s just crazy. It’s still crazy to me.

I’ve learned what it feels like to lose, believe me. But I think, in the end, that is just going to make winning that much better.

Beautiful fans of Oklahoma City, I can’t say enough about you guys. All the support you give our team. The home-court advantage we have is the best I’ve ever seen. We disappoint you sometimes, but we try our best every single night to win for you guys. And we want to win a championship for you guys.

If it’s controversy out there, or if it’s some false stories out there, I want to clear it up. That’s just what I’m all about.

I want to go down as a winner.

Dad, it’s been an up-and-down road for all of us, but you’ve always been there supporting from afar, texting me Bible verses every single day, telling me you love me every single day. That builds me up and I thank you so much. I love you. I’m just glad you’re part of this journey with us.

Hopefully before I’m done, I can be on an Olympic team.

I fell so many times and got back up. I been through the toughest times with my family, but I’m still standing.

Last but not least my family. My brother Tony, I love you. Thank you for beating me up when I was a kid. I always wanted to follow in your footsteps.

I don’t watch a lot of other basketball away from the gym. But I do look at LeBron’s box score. I want to see how many points, rebounds and assists he had, and how he shot from the field.

When people are used to you doing something, they want you to stay in that lane.

Me as a person, I’m not the president of the NBPA (National Basketball Players Association). I don’t even know what to say. I’m not like this perfect, buttoned-up, suit-and-tie guy.

I want to be a champion.

Every day is Thanksgiving for me, man. Yeah, I still have an audience, and they ask the local promoter, “When is Al coming back?”

It’s hard for a liberal to go on between Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh, because it’s like doing country music after hip-hop. I mean, just, the audience doesn’t go from one to the other.

And when it’s sold to 50 countries or whatever, for me it’s a great deal. I make movies for an audience so if that audience grows, I feel really honoured and thankful for it.

I would love to work in international movies just because the talent all around the world is great.

There’s a lot of good talent and the audience base is bigger.

It’s basically how I choose movie roles. Would I like to see this movie? Is this movie important? Why would I do this? And Headhunters is a movie that I would like to see in the cinema.

The real resistance now is to an art which forces its audience to recognize and accept imaginatively.

We’ve never written a song and thought ‘oh it’d be great if in this part this happened in the audience’.