“I can see why fans don’t like to watch pro basketball. I don’t, either. It’s not exciting.”

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.

I was always making decisions and they were easier decisions because I had control of the game.

It’s talent. Either you got it or you ain’t.

The birth of a baby and the blooming of a flower are natural events, but the laboratory methods forever fail to give us the key to the secret of either.

I have discovered the secret of happiness – it is work, either with the hands or the head.

So that the injury done to a man ought to be such that vengeance cannot be feared.

Either you repeat the same conventional doctrines everybody is saying, or else you say something true, and it will sound like it’s from Neptune.

When you disarm the people, you commence to offend them and show that you distrust them either through cowardice or lack of confidence, and both of these opinions generate hatred.

We cannot attribute to fortune or virtue that which is achieved without either.

I think that they go hand in hand – notoriety and people lookin at ya. If they look at ya, either you look like a million dollars, or you don’t.