“Strength is not nearly as important as desire. I don’t think you can teach anyone desire. I think it’s a gift. I don’t know why I have it, but I do.”

It doesn’t matter who scores the points, it’s who can get the ball to the scorer.

My goal was just to try and be the best player on my high school team, and look where I am now. And that was still my goal as a young kid, just to try and be a little better than my brother was.

When I was a kid, like 14 or 15, I played with the waiters from the hotel, ’cause that was the best game. And these guys, they’d let me play. And they were black guys.

What’s better? Dogs or broomsticks? I mean will the world really ever know?

You know when I played, you had me and Kevin (McHale) and some others throughout the league.

The nature of competition is such that any number of people invariably have their eyes on the same prize you do. Recognize your assets and employ them to the best of your ability.

Push yourself again and again. Don’t give an inch until the final buzzer sounds.

When I was young, I never wanted to leave the court until I got things exactly correct. My dream was to become a pro.

While day by day the overzealous student stores up facts for future use.

It’s been a journey, the NBA. It’s taken me a lot farther than I ever expected.

Before every game I used to go out and shot the same shots over and over and over. In the summer time I spent a lot of time just shooting. So really it just came natural.

The more you win, the better you’re gonna get. It grows on itself.

I think that takes it all. That’s the greatest thing you could ever achieve in your sport. So, I have been very fortunate to play on great teams, but the gold medal was probably the best.

Don’t let winning make you soft. Don’t let losing make you quit. Don’t let your teammates down in any situation.

Leadership is getting players to believe in you. If you tell a teammate you’re ready to play as tough as you’re able to, you’d better go out there and do it..

I used to love the feeling of running, of running too far. It made my skin tingle.

Ill put my progressive credentials up against anyones.

In my experience, anyone can paint if he doesn’t have to.

Can anyone expect that a step of this kind will improve the quality of our long-term investments?’

Anyone who puts 110% into their work deserves as much success as they can get.

This leads to deep humility and deep confidence at the same time. It undermines both swaggering and sniveling. I cannot feel superior to anyone, and yet I have nothing to prove to anyone. I do not think more of myself nor less of myself. Instead, I think of myself less.

I thought anything might happen if I wasn’t vigilant. I didn’t eat. I didn’t go out. I didn’t want to see anyone. But I survived, Paul.

If anyone can show me … that there is any reason – other than fear – to believe in any version of an afterlife, I’ll give you my piano, one of my legs, and my wife.

By helping you, perhaps I was trying to lift up my life a trifle. Heaven knows anyone’s life can stand a little of that.