Kobe Bryant demands his teammates to be the best every night, and he's not afraid to challenge them. He's not afraid to challenge them publicly, he's not afraid to challenge them in the locker room, and that's what you need from a leader.
Jay Williams
I personally love watching greats like Matt Lauer, Scott Pelly, Howard Cossell, Bryant Gumble and others that can stimulate an intelligent, thoughtful, moving conversation or interview.
I'd be remiss if I didn't say that a lot of my identity was formed around basketball, and after the accident I had a lot of animosity toward myself because I'd lost the one thing I wanted to do for my entire life.
I've always been around people who are older than myself, I've always played on basketball teams with older guys.
I am a point guard. It's a job that I'm not scared of.
I hope people remind me of my accident every day of my life. Because that means I'm a prime example of somebody who had it and lost everything and may not have gotten it back in the same capacity but still reinvented myself.
I see the NCAA holding off as long as possible to continue to make money off of its players. It's almost like modern day slavery.
My story's been an open book for a long time, no pun intended.
LeBron's had so many legendary moments because he was in the NBA Finals eight or nine years straight, and because to that his brand will endure and keep growing.
I love to dress in Italian clean-cut three-piece suits.
Nolan Smith is going to be a guy that can drive to the basket, can create his own shot.
The only thing that can blow away the Michael Jordan sad face meme, is the Floyd Mayweather knockout meme. If Floyd Mayweather got knocked out - knocked out to the point where he is ice cold on the ground - I think that's the one meme that can just overwhelm the whole Jordan issue.
There's different types of coaches in life. I don't have to be a coach on the basketball court. I can be a coach for businesses. I can be a coach for kids. I can be a coach for people who have gone through adversity, because everyone has had some type of damn accident in some form or capacity.
The rules within the educational system really teach you not push the boundaries, or not to think outside the box. They teach you to think inwardly about what's in the box.
In dealing with athletes or celebrities or people in general, I think there's a tendency to get on their pedestal or their platform and just kind of blow the ink.
People associate strength with physical, and that's the wrong assumption. You're as strong as your mind is.
I think Villanova is a really good basketball team and Jay Wright's a great coach.
For me personally, I played better when I was angry.
If you have a team that believes in one another that's ok, but you still need that individual motivation.
The thing about being a kid is you're going to make mistakes in the heat of the moment.
I was a scorer in college. That was the one thing that I loved to do, I loved to score the basketball.
You always have to knock down shots in order to win big-time games.
I've dreamed about being in the Final Four since I was a little boy.
I was very close to having my whole leg amputated. It was a life-altering event. It took years of rehab.
Five years before my accident in 2003, you saw Kobe and Shaq pull up to games on bikes. Michael Jordan owned a racing team. So it wasn't that weird that I was on a motorcycle, even though it was against team rules. You've got to live your life, you know? But yeah, I made a dumb choice.
I love journalism and broadcasting. So I'm happy about my life and I wouldn't change a thing.
The NBA is way more progressive than the NFL or MLB.
Hey, I was competitive as hell if you had put me up against anybody in 2002 or 2003. I had a lot of dog in me.
If I take five seconds to think about something on TV, that five seconds is an eternity.
When you're at the bottom, everybody is taking shots at you. It's up to you to stay with it and fight through it.
Growing up and meeting people, you always want to work hard to become something.
I've been lucky enough with my NBA money to make some investments in some pretty cool things, whether it be partnering up with Ben Sturner and the Leverage Agency; being involved in an analytics company called Simatree; or creating a production company and working with brands and creating content in house.
I've had to learn how to control my animation.
I've been around business since I've been a little boy.
Well, look, man, I know that Corey Sanders is a player that I've watched for a long time. I love him. I think he has that dog in him.
I don't want to get into who's the No. 1 player. The player who is the most electrifying to me is Cole Anthony.
I would love to see Cole Anthony go against Kyrie Irving.
Look, Zion Williamson is Zion. Whenever you give somebody just one name, you know they're doing something pretty spectacular. Think about one name people. Madonna. Prince. Zion. He's in that category for what he's brought to the sport.
I don't really compartmentalize and put players in high school, college, or the pros. For everybody, it's physically and mentally, where are you? How do you evolve? Where's your game at?
The more I accomplish in a day, the happier I am. I truly love to work.
For me, the best part about doing television is the moment the red light comes on and you are live. As a former NBA player, performing live on air gives me the same exhilaration.
I was so competitive, I wanted to win games but... I lost 13 games in my first three years in college. I lost 13 games in my first month in the league and it felt like nobody cared. So, eventually halfway through the season, I'm like 'well, why the hell do I care?' If they don't care, why do I care.
Legacies are defined not by what happened to you or how it happened. It's how you pick yourself back up and you continue to fight each and every day.
I can't imagine the difficulty of going from coaching a college team where you control your own environment to coming to a pro-style where the players control the environment.
I love Joakim Noah. He's energetic.
I'm a young-old guy. I go home, I don't need to go out, and I watch TV on my couch and relax, maybe have a cigar here or there. A couple of the coaches tell me, 'You're old school for someone who's young.'
The thing about me is, all my life, the only way I've known to be better is to try to outwork people.
I've never been the type that's been highly athletically talented or can jump that high. I'm a guy who's 6-2.
There's nothing like watching basketball being played at its finest.
Kyrie Irving, before he even played one game of college basketball, had 7,000 fans on Twitter. Seven thousand. So these kids these days are put on this pedestal up here. I really think it discourages the value of hard work and of patience.
