Matt de la Pena Quotes

I played college basketball in West Virginia for two years, and then I graduated from NYU with a sports management degree because I realized the NBA's not going to happen.

Going to college offered me the chance to play football for four more years.

I ended up switching over to journalism in college. A few weeks into freshman year, I realized that business school wasn't for me. And writing stories and reading and talking to people is something that I just enjoy doing, so I figured why not try to build up a post-basketball career with that.

After my second year in the NBA, my prep years, my college, I hadn't really found myself.

I got hurt my senior year of college. I ended up breaking my fifth metatarsal after I pulled out of the Draft. That was a good experience for me to kind of find myself, figure out a plan for post-basketball because obviously it doesn't last forever.

In my time at St. Mary's College, drifting out of sports because it was something that began to feel really finite. And I could see that I didn't have the passion to sustain a career in sports.

I started playing professional basketball in 1971, and I played professionally for five seasons before going to Philadelphia.

After graduating from high school, I worked at an advertising agency as a designer. After I left, I spent a year doing nothing in particular. At age 23, I drew my first comic.

I love the idea of college, but I first need to figure out how to transition to being an adult because we honestly never thought I would make it to this point.

Of course, in college, you're traveling, especially when you're with Duke basketball, but in the NBA, it's on a whole entire level.

I always enjoyed the training part of baseball. I went to play college baseball and decided it wasn't for me.

I became a poet in Pittsburgh. When I lived in the South, I was a basketball player and primarily a jock. An English teacher essentially suggested that I send the poems that I'd been writing - really just for him - to a few programs, so that when I wound up in Pittsburgh, it's where I figured out that I could actually be a poet.

After I went to college, I realized that no matter how much I loved sports, I was ready to have fun, and that was right when I started to sing.

I was a history major, but that was because it took the fewest requirements of any major. In my sophomore year, I started getting back into making movies. My senior year, I took playwriting classes, and I feel like that's where I learned to be a writer.

After high school, I earned a scholarship to play Division I soccer at a small school in North Carolina, but I didn't get much playing time, which forced me to determine who I was beyond the field, something I had previously never had to do.

It's easy to think that college classes are mainly about preparing you for a job. But remember: this may be the one time in your life when you have a chance to think about the whole of your life, not just your job.

So, college was kind of the only option that I looked at, and I was fortunate to have great coaches when I was at UCLA. They helped me improve on and off the court.

I loved the city of Chicago, and I love the Reinsdorfs. I'm forever grateful for them in taking a chance on me, allowing me to become the player that I am today. It's still incredible to me that I got to hoop in a Bulls jersey.

I did GCSE's and A-levels. I did my finals after the Lions tour in 2009 to get my law degree. So I've always had an eye on life beyond playing, irrelevant of the period in my career.

As I move on to the professional stage of my career, I will always remember my time as a Jayhawk. Playing here has prepared me for the opportunity to have a successful career in the NBA.

I went to college to find myself. That's where I really realized I wanted to be a recording artist and started on the process of figuring out how to do that.

Football was the best route to obtain my independence.

When I came to BYU, I had no idea what I wanted to study. It really was a decision based on football. I wanted to come here and play football. The decision has turned out to be so much more than football.

I learned early in my career that I had to be prepared for life after football because you never knew when it would end.

The bottom line is I'm a football player, and I played three years of college football, and I produced all three years. I also got better every year, and I just felt like it was time to move on.