DeAndre Jordan Quotes

You look at today, it's a different situation. You have a game that has been transformed into a game where almost every shot is either an outside shot - a three-point shot - or a dunk.

This should be a written rule: Guards should always defer to centers. I don't care how good you are, those big guys make the game so much easier for every other person on that team, and without them, everyone else needs to work twice as hard.

Just seeing the progression, the evolution of the NBA game, I feel like you have a lot of big men shooting 3s.

At the end of 2003, my game was complete. Shooting, defense, using the dribble, transition, midrange stuff was all there. Then it was about fine-tuning and trying to improve in each area.

The 3-point line has changed the game so much. The day of the big man, unless you're extraordinary good, is not numbered, but certainly you gotta be a lot more versatile to play the game today. You gotta be able to really run up and down the court.

I'm a big-guy guy. I look at guys like Shaq, Ben Wallace, guys who play inside and play tough. I don't pay much attention to the little guys; I like the big guys who do the dirty work.

I remember I came into the NBA in 1999; the game was a little bit more rough. The game now is more for kids. It's not really a man's game anymore.

When you're watching from the bench, you can pick up on everything - where guys like to shoot the ball from, how teams defend the pick-and-roll, which big men are good at hedging the screen and so on.

There's a lot of big guys who can play-make. We put labels like, 'Oh, he's a point guard, he's a center.' But sometimes your center can play-make for you and not just be the center, boxing out for rebounds and playing in the post.

Even since I've been in the NBA, a lot has changed with the game.

Everyone's system in the NBA makes sense. It all comes down to the quality of player and the quality of execution.

Every season, I've adjusted. My first couple of years it was still banging in the post and doing all the nitty gritty stuff. Over the years, it's changed to bigs being able to shoot and run the floor and be more agile, which is good for me because I'm a very agile guy.

When you have a dominant big man, that changes the aspects of the game.

I don't need players who won't track back, and I'm certainly not keen on specialists.

We see that as 'Fortnite' evolves, it's evolving beyond being a game.

I think there's a role for everybody. Even a guy who's not known as a scorer, like a DeAndre Jordan - he sets the best screens, he blocks the most shots, he gets the most rebounds, he's great for your team, he helps you win games. Like, he helps you win big.

Pau Gasol is one of the best big men in the game.

Players at the highest level have got high football intelligence, so they can adapt, but at the same time you need a structure and an idea of how you've got to play that system.

We've changed a lot of things to help certain groups of people. We widened the lane from 6 feet to 12 feet to 16 feet to make it so the big guys aren't as dominant. Well, why didn't we just say, 'You've got to learn to play against them in the post?'

In the U.S. system, too often the best player on an under-17 team will be treated like a 'star' - not having to work for the ball, being the focus of the offense at all times, etc. - at a time when they should be having to fight tooth and nail for their spot.

If you asked a baseball pitcher from the '50s what a middle reliever was, he'd laugh at you. In the '50s, everyone pitched complete games.

You can play Dybala and Ronaldo; it just depends on the situations.

I think what Brendan Rodgers did was right; I thought it was successful. He was able to show that he was able to change several players, prove to everybody in the team that no-one's guaranteed a spot, rest a lot of key players, and at the same time walk away with a very reputable result.

When you talk about forming an offensive identity, it's about, first, let's figure out what our players do best.

Andre Villas-Boas wasn't the ideal coach for me. He bought Gylfi Sigurdsson and then told me he would be his new No.10.