“Basketball, Sports, Winning, Average”

I lived to play basketball. Growing up as a kid, Bill Russell and the Boston Celtics were my favorite team. The way they played, the teamwork, the sacrifice, the commitment, the joy, the camaraderie, the relationship with the fans.

I’m a different person today than I was yesterday. I live for the moment and everything that happens in my life changes me.

Bob Dylan, Neil Young, The Beatles, Crosby, Stills & Nash, The Rolling Stones, Carlos Santana. So many of them are still around and still going strong. I go out to see them all the time.

When I think of Boris Diaw, I think of Beethoven in the age of the romantics

When I’m at a show, I’m yelling and cheering. I’m with those guys [the Grateful Dead].

My life changed irrevocably four-and-a-half years ago when my spine failed and collapsed. I spent two years on the floor, in excruciating, debilitating and unrelenting pain.

I’m a fan and a friend, I met them in 1974 when I first joined the NBA and my life has never been he same since. I became the basketball player I was because of the Grateful Dead.

[Peter] Tchaikovsky’s “1812 Overture” was my first go-to song in terms of getting into the zone and getting ready and then I quickly gravitated to rock and roll music in the mid-’60s with the Grateful Dead,

Bill Russell was my favorite player of all-time.

Mick Jagger is in better shape than far too many NBA players. It’s up in the air whether the same can be said of Keith Richards.

The NCAA is working night and day trying to get Jerry, but no one from the NCAA ever questioned me during my four years at UCLA!

Growing up, my parents were very, very strict. And then I went to UCLA with John Wooden, who was just off the charts.

I was a skinny, scrawny guy. I stuttered horrendously, couldn’t speak at all. I was a very shy, reserved player and a very shy, reserved person. I found a safe place in life in basketball.

Kazemi has to understand that nobody is going to tell him he has to go back to Iran if he misses a shot.

Never rank, rate, or compare coaches, children, concerts, or championships or congratulations. Just enjoy them all.

If you’re living for today, if you’re only dreaming about yesterday, it doesn’t work. You got to know that tomorrow is going to be better. Then you’re on your way.

I read every single thing I could find on publishing and writing, went to conferences, joined professional organizations, hooked up with fellow writers in critique groups, and didn’t give up. Then I wrote one more book.