“I have always been confident in my skills and once the game got going I knew I was probably the best player on the floor most of the time whether it was junior high, high school or college. I knew I had control of the game.”

When I go to the line I’m thinking ‘All net.’ When I don’t think that, I’m likely to miss.

I just shoot until I feel good.

Practice habits were crucial to my development in basketball.

Whether it’s a tie game or down by 1 or up by five, it was always the same shot. So I always felt comfortable with the ball in my hands because it was in there a million times before.

I don’t think that once you get to one level, you can relax. You’ve got to keep pushing.

I’m a firm believer in that you play the way you practice.

I wanted to compete at the highest level again – and that’s the NBA.

I didn’t play against the toughest competition in high school, but one reason I was able to do well in college was that I mastered the fundamentals.

You never make any of the shots you never take. 87% of the ones you do take, you’ll miss too. I make 110% of my shots.

Leadership is diving for a loose ball, getting the crowd involved, getting other players involved. It’s being able to take it as well as dish it out. That’s the only way you’re going to get respect from the players.

Basketball was always a game to me. One of the greatest things in life for me was to be able to play what I loved dearly and get paid for it. So it was always a game to me and that’s how I perceived everything.

The best players will play. That’s the way it will always be.

I mean, the greatest athletes in the world are African-American.

Once you are labeled ‘the best’ you want to stay up there, and you can’t do it by loafing around.

I like being by myself.

When I was a player, I didn’t expect my teammates to play the way I did. I did expect them to work hard every day and get better. And I never learned anything by losing.

What should I have known or written had I been a quiet, mercantile politician or a lord in waiting? A man must travel, and turmoil, or there is no existence.

I’ve always been interested in jobs in the NBA. But I’ve been in this for 20 years and it might be time to do something else.

As I travel through my country, people often ask me how it feels to have been imprisoned in my home -first for six years, then for 19 months.

One believes things because one has been conditioned to believe them.

I have never been carried around by a large boy, or laughed until my stomach hurt at the dinner table, or listened to the clamor of a hundred people all talking at once. Peace is restrained; this is free.

I’ve been second my whole life.

And remember this, that if you’ve been hated, you’ve also been loved.

I am not now That which I have been.